Gryphon

The gryphons of Scythia had the body of a lion, the head and wings of an eagle, and a territorial instinct that centred on gold. They nested in the mountains of Central Asia — the Altai range, most likely — where the earth was veined with gold deposits. They guarded this gold with absolute ferocity, not because they valued it but because it was theirs.

The Arimaspi, a one-eyed race of horsemen from the northern steppes, waged perpetual war against the gryphons to steal the gold. Aristeas of Proconnesus described this conflict in his lost poem the Arimaspea, and Herodotus repeated the account. The war had no resolution. The Arimaspi attacked, the gryphons defended, and the gold changed hands endlessly.

Aeschylus called the gryphons "the sharp-beaked hounds of Zeus." Ctesias described them as four-legged birds with lion's claws. Aelian added that their feathers were red and black, and that they were powerful enough to carry off oxen and horses. Young gryphons could not fly until maturity — their wings grew in gradually, like a raptor's adult plumage.

The gryphon may have a fossil origin. Protoceratops skulls, abundant in the Gobi Desert gold-bearing regions, have beaked heads and four-legged bodies that could suggest a lion-eagle hybrid to anyone unfamiliar with dinosaur anatomy. The folklorist Adrienne Mayor has argued persuasively that Scythian gold-miners encountering these fossils created the gryphon legend.

From Scythia the gryphon spread everywhere — heraldry, architecture, fantasy literature. It remains the most successful mythological export the steppes ever produced.