Sumeria was one of the cradles of civilization and they had a mermaid goddess called Nammu.
She was the mother of the skies and the sea.
The Sumerians had their own water god and his name was Enki and he was the equivalent to the Babylonian Ea,
A very similar god with a fishtail and also connected to wisdom and culture,
Same way as Ea.
Enki was pictured having water flowing from his shoulders,
So he had this constant fountain in his shoulders and he's connected to snake gods and snakes,
So in a way he was also a serpent god.
One of Enki's symbols was serpents that were wrapped around his staff.
It's a very common symbol also in Egypt and Greece.
Sometimes he's also connected to Noah from Christianity and tells from the Bible.
In the Sumerian tall tree there was a man called Siadustra who also built a giant boat to save the mankind from the flood and Enki was the one who told him to do that,
So there is a parallel to Christianity.
In these early myths from Assyria,
Babylonia and Sumeria,
Mermaids brought wisdom to mankind.
They were the teachers,
Which is very interesting how their role was really to be the educator,
To bring enlightenment to mankind.
The Greek mythology had a variety of sea gods and goddesses and nymphs,
Mermaid type of creatures.
One of the reasons why this is,
Is because Greece has traditionally been a country that lives from the sea.
The people's lifestyle has been very much heavily linked to the sea around them and the Greek islands,
They all had their own patron gods and goddesses and specific myths that were connected to certain places,
So we all know the main Greek gods Zeus,
Hades and Poseidon being the main three brothers in the mythology.
The three brothers were dividing the earth to themselves.
Poseidon got the sea and Poseidon is in a way a primal god,
He was described to be a very muscular man and in Greek mythology sometimes the gods could appear as humans and then they would have the divine form,
Which was too strong for humans to handle.
Poseidon,
He was the god of the sea and the ocean and he ruled the sea and it was said that Poseidon's moods could change as fast as the weather would change in the seas.
If he would be angry and had a temper then the sea could be stormy and there could be giant waves then some days he was calm and serene like the ocean.
In Greek mythology Poseidon created the horses from the sea foam.
His wife was called Amphitrite,
She's a very interesting goddess because she was the goddess of the deep sea monsters.
We have only searched maybe 10 percent of the earth's oceans,
We don't know all the creatures that still live there and perhaps in the ancient Greece there were creatures living back then that do not exist anymore.
Amphitrite was interesting because she actually had like crab's claws in her head,
Like antlers,
So maybe she was a bit monster like herself.
Some of the most well-known mythical creatures from Greek mythology are sirens and sirens they are not mermaids technically,
Sirens are half birds and half woman.
Sirens we know from Homer's Odyssey.
Sirens they were the daughters of Achelous,
The Greek river spirit,
River god,
And sirens were known for having such a beautiful hypnotic voice that it would drive men crazy and they would smash their ships to rocks and then drown themselves.
The sirens they had such a alluring voice nobody could resist them,
Maybe because the sirens had such a musical element connected to them.
You often see mermaid art with mermaid singing or playing instruments like flutes and even here in Scandinavia are mermaid legends,
They're often connected to music in different various ways.
There is some speculation why sirens were connected to mermaids with fishtails and some historians say that it was because of Christianity,
Because in Christianity wings were more associated with angels.
That's why Christian art wanted to emphasize this angelic character having wings instead of them being these pagan mythical creatures like sirens,
Because sirens in Greek mythology they represent dead,
Destruction and sort of female allure.
It's not something that the church wanted angels to represent.
Fishtail is sometimes connected to serpents and serpents is the bad guy in the story of Adam and Eve.
Maybe there is some truth in this theory,
But also fish is a symbol in Christianity and it represents Jesus,
So fish represents the people,
Jesus being their leader.
There's so many different Greek sea deities that I could probably make another course about all of them,
But I'll try to go through as many as I can here.
One of them was Typhon,
He created typhoons,
He was half man half serpent.
Then there was Seto,
Who was another sea monster slash mermaid goddess and Seto was interesting because she ruled all these big sea animals,
The most dangerous ones like sharks and killer whales.
The most well-known merman slash merguard in Greek mythology is Triton and Triton,
The first one,
Was the son of Poseidon and Amphitrite and Triton was sort of an archetype of a modern merman.
Ariel's father is called Triton,
King of the sea.
The first Triton,
He had this white beard,
He had a lower body of a fish.
It was told that Triton's face was hard like coral,
His hands were tough like coral and his skin was more greenish.
All the other Tritons were the descendants of the first Triton.
Triton's symbol was a shell horn that he used to blow when the sea people were going into a war.
Poseidon and Amphitrite,
They are not described to have fishtails in the mythology,
But Triton has a fishtail.
According to the myth,
Poseidon had a beautiful golden palace in the bottom of the sea and that is where the merfolk lived.
So Triton's shell was this curly conch shell,
This beautiful curly conch shell,
And you can see those fountains in Rome and Italy,
Sculpted by Bernini,
Which represent Triton blowing his horn.
And Triton also had daughters,
They were called Tritones.
Triton's tails were often similar to dolphins,
And dolphin was Triton's sacred animal.
Dolphins were also connected to Aphrodite,
And a dolphin is Aphrodite's companion animal,
And Tritons were also Aphrodite's companions.
I bet many of you have seen Botticelli's painting of Aphrodite rising from the sea in a she-shell,
And then there is this whole parade of mythical beings surrounding her,
They are the Tritons and Cupids,
But that gives Aphrodite a connection to the sea,
Because she was born from the sea.
And the mariners in ancient Greece,
They worshipped Aphrodite because she promised them smooth sailing and good winds.
And of course she was the goddess of love,
So Aphrodite in a way symbolized the gentle side of the ocean,
Gentle side of the sea.
