Home > Mermaid

In heraldry, the charge of a mermaid is commonly represented with a comb and a mirror, and blazoned as a 'mermaid in her vanity.'

In the 19th century, P. T. Barnum displayed in his museum a taxidermy hoax that was represented as the Feejee (sic) Mermaid.

Mermaids first appeared historically in Assyria, ca. 1000 BCE. AtargatisAtargatis in Aramaic Ataratah was a Syrian deity, more commonly known to the Greeks by a shortened form of the name, Derceto or Derketo ( Strabo 16. 785; Pliny, Nat. 81), and as Dea Syria or in one word Deasura''. She is often now popularly described as t, the mother of legendary Assyrian queen Semiramis, was a goddess who loved a mortal shepherd and in the process killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine nature. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid - human above the waist, fish below, though the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as being a fish with a human head and legs, similar to the Babylonian Ea, precursor of the Biblical Noah. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo, where she was often conflated with Aphrodite.

Lucian of Samosata in Syria (2nd century CE) in De Dea Syria ("Concerning the Syrian Goddess") wrote of the Syrian temples he had visited. Among them - Now that is the traditional story among them concerning the temple. But other men swear that Semiramis of Babylonia, whose deeds are many in Asia, also founded this site, and not for Hera [Atargatis] but for her own Mother, whose name was Derketo:

I saw the likeness of Derketo in Phoenicia, a strange marvel. It is woman for half its length, but the other half, from thighs to feet, stretched out in a fish's tail. But the image in the Holy City is entirely a woman, and the grounds for their account are not very clear. They consider fishes to be sacred, and they never eat them; and though they eat all other fowls, they do not eat the dove, for she is holy so they believe. And these things are done, they believe, because of Derketo and Semiramis, the first because Derketo has the shape of a fish, and the other because ultimately Semiramis turned into a dove. Well, I may grant that the temple was a work of Semiramis perhaps; but that it belongs to Derketo I do not believe in any way. For among the Egyptians, some people do not eat fish, and that is not done to honor Derketo. (Part 2:ch14 )

1 Mermaids in fiction

Mermaids are present in many books and films, becoming one of the most popular creatures of pop culture. The first time a mermaid was envisioned within her own culture was apparently the one in The Little MermaidThe Little Mermaid is a fairy tale about a young mermaid by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. It was first published in 1836. In 1989 it was made into an animated movie by The Walt Disney Company; for the film see The Little Mermaid (movie . of Hans Christian AndersenHans Christian Andersen ( April 2 1805 August 4 1875) was a Danish author and poet famous for his fairy tales. Upbringing Andersen was born in Odense, Denmark, on the April 2 1805. He was the son of a sickly young shoemaker of twenty-two and his several y, which was embodied in a bronze sculpture in CopenhagenCopenhagen Kobenhavn in Danish) is the capital of Denmark. The contemporary Danish name for the city is a corruption of the original designation for the city Kobmandshavn meaning Merchants' Harbour. The English name Copenhagen is derived from the German n harbor and much later was turned into a DisneyAlternate meanings: Disney (disambiguation The Walt Disney Company (also known as Disney Enterprises, Inc. or simply Disney was founded in 1923 by Walt Disney and is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. It is the number tw movie of the same name. Other popular movies to feature a mermaid were Miranda, starring Glynis Johns and Splash, starring Daryl Hannah. L. Frank Baum (creator of Oz) wrote a novel about merfolk, The Sea Fairies. Mermaids and Mermen (called Merpeople) are present in the Harry Potter series, specifically in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. For many years, The comic book hero Superman had a romantic love interest with a mermaid woman called Lori Lemaris (one of Superman's "LL" connections: Lex Luthor, Lana Lang, Lois Lane, Lori Lemaris). The name Lori Lemaris was probably drawn from Lorelei rock in the Rhine added to maris from the Latin mare meaning ocean. Advertising characters who were ever shown on any of the television commercials such as Chicken of the Sea Mermaid who was the cartoon mascot.