Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Manticore
Summary
The manticore or mantichore (Latin: mantichora; reconstructed Old Persian: merthykhuwar; Modern مردخوار mardkhor) is a Persian legendary creature similar to the Egyptian sphinx that proliferated in western European medieval art as well. It has the head of a human, the body of a lion and a tail of venomous spines similar to porcupine quills, while other depictions have it with the tail of a scorpion. There are some accounts that the spines can be shot like arrows.
The term "manticore" descends via Latin mantichora from Ancient Greek μαρτιχόρας (martikhórās) This in turn is a transliteration of an Old Persian compound word consisting of martīya 'man' and xuar- stem, 'to eat' (Mod. ; mard + ; khordan), i.e. man-eater.
The ultimate source of manticore was Ctesias, Greek physician of the Persian court during the Achaemenid dynasty, and is based on the testimonies of his Persian-speaking informants who had travelled to India. Ctesias himself wrote that the martichora (μαρτιχόρα) was its name in Persian, which translated into Greek as androphagon or anthropophagon (ἀνθρωποφάγον), i.e., "man-eater". But the name was mistranscribed as 'mantichoras' in a faulty copy of Aristotle, through whose works the notion of the manticore was perpetuated across Europe.
Ctesias was also later cited by Pausanias regarding the martichoras or androphagos of India.
An account of the manticore was given in Ctesias's lost book Indica ("India"), and circulated among Greek writers on natural history, but has survived only in fragments and epitomes preserved by later writers.
Photius's Myriobiblon (or Bibliotheca, 9th century) serves as base text, but Aelian (De Natura Animalium, 3rd century) preserves the same information and more:
The beast's name means "maneater", as already noted. Aelian citing Ctesias adds that the Mantichora prefers to hunt humans, lying in wait, taking down even 2, 3 men at a time. And the Indians take their young captive, disabling its tail by crushing it with stone before the growth of sting begins.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.