Siphonophorae Archimboldo Painting

Every culture, it seems, has monstrous mash-ups in their folklore and religion. Composite creatures appear in our earliest literature and turn up in Upper Paleolithic cave paintings. The sphinx in Giza, half-human and half-lion, is at least 4,500 years old. In the Epic of Gilgamesh (2100 B.C.), heroes Gilgamesh and Enkidu battle a hybrid monster named Humbaba, described as having a lion’s head and hands, but a scaly body. Vishnu, in India, manifests as a fierce lion-man monster, Narasimha, in several Hindu texts. Ganesha, son of Shiva, is humanoid with an elephant head. The many Greek hybrid creatures—centaurs, satyrs, mermaids, Pegasus, Hydra, griffins, chimeras—are constantly resurrected in Hollywood. Literature over the last two millennia, from Beowulf to Tolkien to Rowling, has added countless composite creatures and shape-shifters.