The legend of the mermaid | News from Al-Gomhoria Now newspaper

Today I will tell you about the origin of a myth that has caused a lot of controversy, some believe that it exists and even confirm that they have seen it and some may affirm that a love story happened between them, since this myth was famous in science fiction films and cartoons.

Books / Ahmad Al-Rifai

The legend of the mermaid of the sea

It is a mythical being of great beauty and was mentioned for the first time in Greek civilization as an auxiliary to the Greek goddess, both male and female, since it was not immortal, and its existence on earth, according to Greek mythology, ended for destroying the building he represented or for cutting down the tree that embodies his soul.

Greek myths spoke of the existence of various types of nymphs, some of which lived in the sea, others lived on the high seas, and some had wings.

The marine nymph is a type of nymph that used to live in the seas, and has the shape of half human and half fish so its upper half has all the human potential, while its lower body consists of a fish tail covered in scales and has fins that help it swim and dive as it is able to live and breathe underwater with ease. ..

Mermaids are mentioned in Arabic literature on behalf of the daughter of the sea, the bride of the sea, the daughter of the water, or two horses, and all of these names are for a marine organism, which is mostly a female whose upper half It is human while it has a fish tail that is very beautiful, and the daughter of the sea was mentioned in the mythical novels of The Arabian Nights. ..

What her legend says is that she appears at night in the seas, to fishermen and those who pass by in boats and boats, she dazzles them with her beauty and her sweet voice that refreshes hearts, so whoever sees her begins to feel like he’s anesthetized in a way he’s never seen before.

She begins to talk to him and bewitches him with her words and voice that comes out of her like a bird singing with the most beautiful melodies, and jumps into the sea and no one can stop him, that is why she pushes him into its depths so that he is always with her and she hold her body.

I also wish that there is an evil type of her who pretends to be beautiful and tricks everyone who sees her until they own her, so that her form changes to an ugly one that disgusts him, and then that poor thing becomes his food.

The origin of the myth.

The appearance of the nymph was not limited to the civilization of the Greeks. There is a story about an Assyrian goddess named Atagaris who fell in love with a person, but she killed him by mistake. And as punishment for herself she decided to become a fish, but This transformation was not complete, so his upper half remained human while the lower half became a fishtail …

The pharaohs and other nations left many traces that indicate their belief in the existence of a mermaid or a fish man. Pharaonic drawings of mermaids and some bronze sculptures of mermaids were found in the Levant and Iraq, and the age of some of these sculptures was estimated at more than three thousand years. .

In some ancient European cultures, folk tales and stories about an evil mermaid deceive sailors and then kidnap them and appear as a hideous monster, as it appears in some Italian folk stories, as well as some English stories.

As for the French folk tale, a French fisherman caught a nymph with his nets at the beginning of the 20th century, and because of her beauty, he married her and hid her from the eyes of the people and gave birth to seven children of her, but his extreme jealousy and fear of being caught by another hunter led him to kill her and hide his body, and of course. No one could find the body, just as the story did not mention the shape of the children, and whether or not they had the characteristics of their mother.

There is a story about a girl named Serena who lived with her mother on the island of Guam, which lies off the Australian coast in the mid-16th century, and popular history on that island says that Sirena became a nymph after being cursed by her mother because she spent her time playing games and refusing. Helping her mother with her daily household chores, and the residents believe that Serena’s house is still located on the banks of a river on the island and is as it was when this strange story happened.

The truth about mermaids.

The old hypothesis, which came completely out of the Greek fantasy world, that nymphs are a help to the goddess, cannot be believed in any way. Likewise, the story of curses that some humans or witches cast on people that can lead them to become mermaids freely is also pure imagination whose validity has not been proven. The hypotheses closest to reality are of two types. The first are those that link the development of marine and human organisms. Scientists defending this hypothesis believe that there is an intermediate organism between humans and some marine creatures, which may have existed thousands of years ago and then became extinct due to evolution, prompting the ancients to describe the existence of this creature. found in their temples and they consider it part of their beliefs, but the entire theory of evolution has been the subject of controversy among scientists since its first creators spoke of it.

The second type of hypothesis links the imagination of sailors who used to spend several months at sea far from land and with some human-like creatures such as seals and dolphins, and it seems that by depriving men for several months of accompanying women , have built in their imagination pictures and stories of beautiful women who found in mermaids What they wanted …

It seems that the imagination of the sailors is what made the mermaids live to this day, so we still hear the stories of the mysterious nymphs and see strange images that provide supposed evidence of the existence of the corpses or skeletons of the mermaids. whose owners claim to have found lying on the beach, and it seems that what inspired the Greeks to invent the personality of women. The beautiful assistants of the gods are not the same reason why a group of people believe that there is a woman with a fish tail or a group of these beings living somewhere in this world.

And if to this day they are not able to prove the validity of their claims, even those supported by images and videos, then everyone who believes in the existence of nymphs today certainly does not believe in the existence of Greek gods, but They believe that these are sea creatures that have lived hidden from human eyes for tens of thousands of years and some appear at all times as a result of the arrival of humans to Their habitats are in some seas, or the sea throws the creatures dead of them.

But there is another story that can prove the existence of these creatures, but with another name that follows the day of the limit.