Origin of a Legend, Part 2
In yesterday’s column, Mr. Saluki took us into the very beginning of vampire legend, which started in 4,000 B.C. This week, he takes us thorugh the legends of Ancient Greece, India, Africa, Asia, and Europe. Come, explore the legends of the creature we are so fascinated with today.
Ancient Greece
The vampire fore-runner is next seen in ancient Greek mythology. While there are several minor deities that have vampire-like qualities, the myths involving Lamia and the Empusa are the closest link to modern day vampires. While neither demigoddess was considered “undead”, both show many similarities to the vampire. Greek mythology tended to be malleable over time, and demigods and goddesses tended to change in quality, form, virtues, and responsibilities. The earliest form of the Empusa was that of being the daughter of the Greek Goddess Hecate. Hecate was originally a Chthonian (meaning not a major deity residing upon Mt. Olympus) Greco-Roman goddess of magic, and was later a three-faced goddess of ghosts, witches, and curses. The Empusa is described as demonic-looking and was said to have bronze feet. She would take the form of a beautiful young woman in order to seduce young men and drink their blood while asleep.
Lamia, however, is something entirely different. Considered somewhat a tragedy (at least by ancient Greek standards), Lamia was something new in the progression of the vampire myth. Lamia is the first vampire-type creature in history who was not a god or goddess, the first who was originally human. According to Diodorus Siculus, a first century BC historian, Lamia was the daughter of King Belus of Egypt. Upon her father’s death, she became queen of one his most prosperous territories, Libya. Diodorus says that Lamia had an affair with Zeus, and they produced several offspring, including Herophile. Herophile was a famous sibyl, or prophetess at Delphi. When Hera, wife of Zeus and goddess of women and marriage, found out about the affair, she flew into a rage and killed all of the children of Lamia and Zeus.
Lamia was driven insane with grief. According to Diodorus, she vowed revenge and began devouring infants and consuming their blood. Lamia then loses the ability to close her eyes so that she would always obsess over her dead children. Eventually, her face began to take on hideous demonic aspects because of her terrible crimes.
Another Greek historian, Horace, states that Hera actually forced Lamia to consume her own children. Lamia then took on a serpentine, with the torso and head of a human, but from the waist down, she had the tail of a serpent. Whether this snakelike appearance was forced upon Lamia by Hera’s wrath or was a disfigurement, resulting from Lamia’s own madness is unclear.
India, Africa, Asia
India has several tales that contain a creature that is widely compared to vampires called vetalas, but upon further research have very little in common with our subject. These vetalas are disembodied spirits that haunt graveyards and inhabit the corpses of the recently dead. The corpse no longer decays while inhabited by a vetalas, as it is used for movement among humans. Vetalas are said to be hostile spirits that are trapped in a nether-world somewhere between life and death.
Various regions of Africa have centuries old tales about vampires and vampire-like creatures. The West African Ashanti people have legends about the tree dwelling asanbosam, and the Ewe people of the adze. People in Madagascar have told tales for centuries about the ramanga, a vampire that not only drinks blood but also eats the nail clippings of nobles.
The reach of vampires even extends in far Asia. The Chinese have always had tales of the Nukekubi, a seemingly normal person whose head and neck detach at night to fly about independently and attack humans so that they may drink blood. East Asiatic vampires tend to be female in the folklore of the people, as seen in the Philippines with the mandurugo (an attractive girl with a long thread-like tongue used for drinking blood), Malaysia’s Penangglan (and old or young woman whose detached heads flies about to drink the blood of pregnant women), and the Leyak and Kuntulanak of Indonesia. The Leyak and Kuntulanak are beautiful undead women who have long black hair which they use to cover up second mouths on the back of their necks. Both use this second mouth to drink the blood of infants.
Europe
Europe, of course, is the region that made vampires famous. The number of stories and tales about “revenants” went up sharply in the medieval period. Stories recorded by Walter Map (1140-1210) and his northern contemporary William of Newburgh (1136-1198) told the earliest known tales of vampires in Europe. Map wrote of the “wicked man of Hereford,” a story which not only includes a man rising from the grave, but also introduces for the first time in known vampire tales killing a vampire by using holy water.
William of Newburgh’s Historia rerum Anglicarum, a history of England from 1066 to 1198, tells several tales of revenants. These tales are written “as a warning to posterity.” Newburg states that such tales were so common that “were I to write down all of these instances that I have ascertained to have befallen our times, the undertaking would be beyond measure laborious and troublesome”.
While tales of vampires and revenants are common during this period, it is nothing compared to the later explosion of vampire legends in Eastern Europe. These particular tales were the basis of vampire legend that later entered Germany and England. In the 18th century, during the “Age of Enlightenment,” there was such a frenzy of vampire sightings that mass hysteria broke out throughout Europe. Even government officials would attend or take part in the hunting and staking of “vampires”.
Join us next week for the final installment of Origin of a Legend, which explores modern day vampire legend.
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