O, Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. (Isaiah 10:5)
Assyria may have been the rod of God’s anger. I say this lightly, for the Bible explains that only God knows the heart of humanity as mentioned in Psalms. 17:3; 44:21; 139:1-4. The book is not about spirituality, rather an investigative history, concerning the deportation of the ten northern tribes of Israel. However, it would be wrong not to look into the spiritual issues concerning the fall of the Northern Kingdom of Israel.
The beginning of Israel’s troubles starts in the mid 8th century BCE when the Assyrian armies poured down from the north into Israel. From here, we will look into the political and spiritual issues that are associated with Assyria and Israel, as well as the social aspect concerning the deportation of the Ten Tribes of Israel. From there will shift focus on Assyria’s policy towards captives, look into the place of exile.
Understand that there are many facts in this book and just as many speculations. Not everything in this book is concrete. Remember, we are dealing with a history that at times appears to be silent. Therefore, I will do my best in providing information available in areas that appear to be dim on the matter.
In the middle is the Gorgon Medusa, an enormous monster about whom snaky locks twist their hissing mouths; her eyes stare malevolently, and under the base of her chin the tail-ends of serpents have tied knots.—Virgil
Most of you who are reading this first encountered the movie “Clash of the Titans” in 1981 or its 2010 remake. While both movies show elements of truth from the classical Greek stories, it’s all Hollywood, and no explanation is needed. We’ll first examine the classical Greek story to uncover the true story of Medusa and the Gorgons.
The Classical Story of Perseus and Medusa
According to the story, King Acrisius of Argos had one child: a daughter named Danae. Concerned, Acrisius traveled to Delphi to consult the oracle. He asked the priestess if he would have a son, and she said no. The priestess did inform the king that his daughter would bear a son. However, the priestess warned Acrisius that Danae’s son would kill him.
Danaë and a shower of gold, representing the god Zeus visiting and impregnating Danaë. (Public Domain)
To prevent this, Acrisius placed his daughter in an underground bronze apartment with an open roof. Acrisius thought his problem was over, but he was soon shocked. As Danae dwells in solitude, Zeus notices the beautiful Danae. Seeing her beauty, Zeus decided to visit Danae in the form of a shower of gold and impregnated her. Later, a messenger arrived to tell Acrisius that his daughter had given birth to a son. She named the boy Perseus. Acrisius knew he could not kill the infant, or he would incur Zeus’s wrath. To eliminate his problem, he placed his daughter and grandson in a box and set them adrift at sea.
Danae and her son Perseus were set adrift and landed at Seriphus. (Public Domain)
Eventually, the chest reached the island of Seriphus. An angler by the name of Dictys discovered the chest and opened it to discover the woman and child trapped inside. Dictys decided to care for the woman and child, brought them to his home, and accepted them as family because he and his wife had no children. As time passed, Perseus grew to manhood.
Dictys had a brother, King Polydectes of Seriphus. Polydectes was a cruel king who wanted Danae. Danae refused his advances, as she was already Zeus’s bride. Polydectes bullied her, but over time he grew fearful of Perseus, who had become a strong, athletic man. To get rid of Perseus, Polydectes talks to him and tells him he is wasting his time on the island. He should leave, see the world, and become a hero because he is Zeus’s son. Intrigued, Perseus asked what he could do to be considered heroic. Polydectes could have named many things, but he wanted rid of Perseus and told him that, if he wanted to be a hero, he should kill the Gorgon Medusa and bring back her head.
Polydectes explained to Perseus that three sisters, known as Gorgons, lived in the west. But of the three, Medusa was the most beautiful. He told Perseus that Medusa had snakes for hair, and that looking at her would surely turn you to stone. (That doesn’t sound so beautiful).
No one knew the Gorgons’ whereabouts, even though they were said to live west of Seriphus. Needing more information, Perseus consulted the gods. Athena gave Perseus a polished shield that served as a mirror. Hades gave him a helmet that made him invisible when he put it on. Finally, Hermes gave Perseus a pair of winged silver sandals. As a weapon, he was given a sickle sword. With all the essentials to travel and defeat the Gorgon, Perseus still lacked the most crucial information: how to get there.
Athena advised Perseus to seek the Gray Sisters, who would tell him where the Gorgon lived. Although this told Perseus little, Hermes guided him on his first journey. Perseus and Hermes flew to the Gray Sisters’ location.
Terracotta relief of three goddesses. Representational image. (Public Domain)
When Perseus arrived, he met the three old women, who were blind and passed around a single eye to see. When Perseus asked where Medusa lived, the Sisters refused to answer. Seeing his dilemma, Perseus took one of the sisters’ eyes. The Sisters begged Perseus to return it, but he refused until they gave him what he wanted. The Gray Sisters finally gave in and told Perseus where the Gorgons were. Perseus thanked the women and returned the eye.
Illustration from a collection of myths. (Public Domain)
Perseus made this next part of the journey alone. When Perseus landed outside the entrance to Medusa’s lair, he found a grotesque tableau of warriors who failed to slay the beast because they looked directly into Medusa’s eyes. (As the saying goes, “If looks could kill.”)
In legend, warriors had been turned to stone from the Gorgon’s stare. Sculpture from Parthenon Marbles, representational. (CC BY 2.5)
Seeing that each man faced forward at the time of death, Perseus put on his magical helmet and became invisible. Instead of walking forward, he slowly walked backward into the entrance using the shield Athena gave him as a mirror to guide his steps.
Embossed, metal plaque from 1911 featuring Medusa (Sailko/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Once inside, Perseus eventually came upon the sleeping Gorgon sisters. The two sisters were ugly and immortal, so he could do little for them, but Medusa was mortal, and her looks were devastating. Perseus approached Medusa slowly. Once he was over her, Athena guided his hand to cut the Gorgon’s head off with one sweeping blow. Perseus recovered the head and placed it in a leather bag.
Writers continuously shaped descriptions of Medusa and the Gorgons from Classical Greece well into the Roman period. The earliest source on Medusa and the Gorgons is nothing like what we read today.
The Greek poet Hesiod, who lived between 750 and 650 BCE, is the first to mention the Gorgons and Medusa in his book Theogony:
Ceto bore to Phorcys the fair-cheeked Graiae, sisters grey from their birth: and both deathless gods and men who walk on earth call them Graiae, Pemphredo well-clad, and saffron-robed Enyo, and the Gorgons who dwell beyond glorious Ocean in the frontier land towards Night where are the clear-voiced Hesperides, Sthenno, and Euryale, and Medusa who suffered a woeful fate: she was mortal, but the two were undying and grew not old. With her lay the Dark-haired One (Poseidon) in a soft meadow amid spring flowers.
Hesiod does not describe Medusa as grotesque, nor does he suggest that she and her Gorgon sisters are beautiful. Gorgon comes from the Greek gorgos, meaning grim, fierce, terrible, or anything dreadful. From this perspective, the Gorgons are described as ugly without detailing their physical appearance.
“Rondanini Medusa”. Marble, Roman copy after a fifth-century BC Greek original by Phidias, which was set on the shield of Athena Parthenos. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Furthermore, Hesiod makes no mention of Medusa being seduced by Poseidon in the shrine of Athena or that she was raped as told by Ovid in his book Metamorphoses, which states:
A chief, one of their number, asked why she alone among her sisters wore that snake-twined hair, and Perseus answered: ‘What you ask is worth the telling; listen and I’ll tell the tale. Her beauty was far-famed, the jealous hope of many a suitor, and of all her charms her hair was loveliest; so I was told by one who claimed to have seen her. She, it’s said, was violated in Minerva’s [Athena’s] shrine by the Lord of the Sea (Rector Pelagi) [Poseidon]. Jove’s (Zeus’) daughter turned away and covered with her shield her virgin’s eyes. And then for fitting punishment transformed the Gorgon’s lovely hair to loathsome snakes. Minerva (Athena) still, to strike her foes with dread, upon her breastplate wears the snakes she made.'”
After Hesiod, Stasinus of Cyprus, or Hegesias of Aegina, Cypria, in Fragment 21, written sometime between the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, mentions some of what Hesiod states concerning their whereabouts, but adds that the Gorgons were “fearful monsters who lived in Sarpedon, a rocky island in deep-eddying Oceanus.” There is no mention of Medusa. While Hesiod is the earliest source mentioning Medusa, the eighth-century BCE Greek author Homer, in his famed books The Iliad and The Odyssey, provides an earlier account of the Gorgons. Homer states in The Iliad 5. 738 ff:
About her (Athena’s) shoulders she flung the tasselled aegis (shield), fraught with terror, all about which Rout is set as a crown, and therein is Strife, therein Valour, and therein Onset, that maketh the blood run cold, and therein is the head of the dread monster, the Gorgon, dread and awful, a portent of Zeus that beareth the aegis.
Furthermore, Homer states in TheIliad 11. 36 ff:
And he (Agamemnon) took up the man-enclosing elaborate stark shield, a thing of splendour. There were ten circles of bronze upon it, and set about it were twenty knobs of tin, pale-shining, and in the very centre another knob of dark cobalt. And circled in the midst of all was the blank-eyed face of the Gorgo with her stare of horror, and Deimos was inscribed upon it, and Phobos.
Homer’s account demonstrates the absolute psychological terror one can impose by displaying a Gorgon’s face painted on a shield.
However, one must ask whether the Gorgon’s face truly frightened men. Perhaps what Homer’s Iliad overlooks is that Deimos and his twin brother Phobos, sons of Ares, the god of war, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love, caused men to succumb to terror. In other words, the Gorgon’s face can do little alone, but combined with Phobos and Deimos, it would make one recoil in horror.
Fourth-century AD mosaic with mask of Phobos (Fear) (CC BY 2.0)
While some Greeks and the goddess Athena were believed to have displayed the Gorgon on their shields, some Trojans may have used the image. Hector, a prince of Troy, demonstrated this. According to Homer in The Iliad 8, “Hektor, wearing the stark eyes of a Gorgo, or murderous Ares, wheeled about at the edge his bright-maned horses.” While TheIliad demonstrates the power of imagery on the battlefield, Homer’s Odyssey 11. 633, says that Odysseus “feared that august Persephone night send against me from Aides’ house the Gorgon head of some grisly monster.”
Odysseus realized conjuring apparitions was a bad idea and fled quickly before Persephone, Queen of the Underworld and wife of Hades, could confront him. However, Odysseus feared not Persephone herself, but what she might bring—the head of a Gorgon. Therefore, the Homeric passages suggest that Medusa is nonexistent, at least in name, but the Gorgons live on in the Greek psyche. While Hesiod briefly explains their origins and Homer’s terror, questions remain: where did they come from, and how did they become the fearsome threesome the Greeks described?
Possible Origins
As mentioned, Hesiod, Homer, and others give the reader only a brief origin, possible location, and characteristics. Early Greek writers rarely detailed their stories, unlike the Classical Greeks and later the Romans, who ran with the tales and rewrote much of them, turning Medusa into a monster. Because of this, one must look to early Greek narratives to find a possible origin.
Hesiod says Medusa and the Gorgons lived “beyond the famous stream of Oceanus.” To the Greeks and Romans, Oceanus was an enormous river encircling the world, as Homer describes in the Iliad. This suggests the Gorgons may have lived beyond the Pillars of Hercules. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing much later, mentions that Perseus brought Medusa’s head from Libya. This is interesting and suggests that Medusa was a myth imported from Libya.
In Libya, people worshiped Medusa as a serpent goddess representing “female wisdom.” In Egypt, Medusa is closely represented by Ma’at and is associated with the destructive aspect of the triple goddess Neith.
Aegis of Neith, Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt. (Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA-2.0-fr)
Medusa was Athena’s shadow side, and in Egypt, Athena was Neith. Neith and Medusa are very similar, for Neith wore a veil, and to lift the veil was certain death, for Neith’s face signified the distance between man and deity. Athena is connected to Neith, for she was known as Ath-enna or Athene in Libya. At Sais, Egypt, an inscription states that she is believed to be the “mother of all the gods, whom she bore before childbirth existed.” In other words, she is the past, present, and future. “No mortal has yet been able to lift the veil that covers me,” for she was death; like Medusa, whoever looks upon her face is turned to stone. This is interesting, for Medusa not only takes life away but can also create life from her blood, like Neith, who carried a scepter in one hand, representing rulership and power and giving her the ability to enforce her will, even at the cost of death. By contrast, the ankh represented life.
Neith, an ancient Egyptian goddess. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
However, there is another possible alternative as to what Medusa/Gorgons may have been.
Alternative Origin
As mentioned earlier, a Gorgon indicates anything dreadful. Gorgon may have been a hypocoristic of gorgyra, which means “underground chamber” along those lines. A sixth-century Samian inscription lists a gorgyra chryse. The term chryse means “golden.” Therefore, a gorgyra chryse indicates an underground chamber of gold. If correct, the Gorgon’s head refers to money or coins. If one uses gargara, it means “heaps, lots, plenty.” This interpretation suggests not a living creature but a treasury.
Under this interpretation, Perseus comes off as a mere international commercial-venture adventurer who undertook a risky, uncertain, speculative venture in hopes of profit. Thus, the head Perseus seeks is not literal but money or a coin engraved with the image of the gorgoneion. To secure this wealth, Perseus went to the market to buy tools and, more importantly, make contracts to conduct his business in Libya.
In conclusion, the story of Medusa and the Gorgons is intriguing from a classical Greek perspective. Looking further back in Greek literature, the story becomes mysterious and fascinating from a linguistic point of view.
Ultimately, no matter how you take the story, remember that behind every myth lies a general truth. For most of us who have read the story, a closer look reveals that Medusa had one heck of an art collection: a menagerie of death, crying out for life. The dark, humorous side is that, even though Perseus avoided Medusa’s gaze, he still suffered the same fate, as Renaissance romantics turned the hero into a statue for all eternity as a reminder of the story.
Perseus with the head of Medusa. The stone hero stands frozen in time. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Danae and her son Perseus were set adrift and landed at Seriphus. (
Terracotta relief of three goddesses. Representational image. (
In legend, warriors had been turned to stone from the Gorgon’s stare. Sculpture from Parthenon Marbles, representational. (
Embossed, metal plaque from 1911 featuring Medusa (Sailko/
Fourth-century AD mosaic with mask of Phobos (Fear) (
Aegis of Neith, Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt. (Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, 
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