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A cynocephalus. From the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493).




Ancient Greece and Egypt[edit]


Reports of dog-headed races can also be traced back to Greek antiquity. In the fifth century BC, the Greek physician Ctesias wrote a detailed report on the existence of cynocephali in India, known as Indica.[2] Similarly, the Greek traveller Megasthenes claimed to know about dog-headed people in India who lived in the mountains, communicated through barking, wore the skins of wild animals and lived by hunting.[3] Herodotus reports claims by ancient Libyans that such creatures inhabit the east of their lands, as well as headless men and various other anomalies.[4]

As George Alexandrou has pointed out, "in this northeast region of Pakistan, and we know that there were peoples in this area who slashed their cheeks from mouth to ear, so that all the teeth showed. Marco Polo saw this tribe, whom he called the Cynocefaloi. He said that they looked like mastiffs; that is, they didn’t have elongated heads like German shepherds with the long nose, but like mastiffs. You can imagine – a mastiff has a round, flat face shaped more like that of a human. They cut the cheeks, filed the teeth, cropped the ears, and reshaped the skulls of their babies so that they would grow into a very ferocious aspect. All of this was to protect themselves from the constant invasions of the area....These people were ferocious in looks, but not ferocious in their ways. They were simply a primitive people who needed to protect themselves."[5]

Late Antiquity[edit]


Medieval East[edit]


Saint Christopher[edit]

Cynocephalus St. Christopher



There are some rare icons that depict this martyr with the head of a dog. Such images may carry echoes of the Egyptian dog-headed god, Anubis; and Christopher pictured with a dog's head is not generally supported by the Orthodox Church.

Medieval West[edit]

Cynocephali illustrated in the Kievan psalter, 1397


The Nowell Codex, perhaps more commonly known as the manuscript containing the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, also contains references to Cynocephali. One such reference can be found in the part of the manuscript known as The Wonders of the East, in which they are called "healfhundingas" or "half-dogs." Also, in Anglo-Saxon England, the Old English word wulfes heafod ("wolf's head") was a technical term for an outlaw, who could be killed as if he were a wolf. The so-called Leges Edwardi Confessoris, written around 1140, however, offered a somewhat literal interpretation: “[6.2a] For from the day of his outlawry he bears a wolf's head, which is called wluesheued by the English. [6.2b] And this sentence is the same for all outlaws.”[13] Cynocephali appear in the Old Welsh poem Pa Gur? as cinbin (dogheads). Here they are enemies of King Arthur's retinue; Arthur's men fight them in the mountains of Eidyn (Edinburgh), and hundreds of them fall at the hand of Arthur's warrior Bedwyr (later known as Bedivere).[14] The next lines of the poem also mention a fight with a character named Garwlwyd (Rough-Gray); a Gwrgi Garwlwyd (Man-Dog Rough-Gray) appears in one of the Welsh Triads, where he is described in such a way that scholars have discussed him as a werewolf.[15][16]

High and late medieval travel literature[edit]





Modern appearances[edit]


Other dog-headed creatures in legend[edit]

See also[edit]

Related phenomena


  4. ^ Herodotus. The Histories. translated by A. D. Godley. 4.191. 
  5. ^ Quoted in Road to Emmaus Vol. V, No. 4 (#19) 24-25.
  7. ^ L. Ross, Medieval Art: A Topical Dictionary (Westport, 1996). p. 50. 
  8. ^ Walter of Speyer, Vita et passio sancti Christopher martyris, 75.
  10. ^ Notker, Life of Charlemagne, Book II §3.
  11. ^ Patrologia Latina 121: 1153-56.
  12. ^ Vincent, Speculum naturale, 31:126.
  14. ^ Green, p. 84-85.
  15. ^ Bromwich, p. 73–74
  16. ^ Bromwich p. 385



External links[edit]