Reptile or the fantastic, as in the monster movies of the 1950s and 1960s. The snake or serpent has played a powerful symbolic role in different cultures. In Egyptian history, the Nile cobra adorned the crown of the pharaoh. It was worshipped as one of the gods and was also used for sinister purposes: murder of an adversary and ritual suicide (Cleopatra). In Greek mythology snakes are associated with deadly antagonists, as a chthonic symbol, roughly translated as "earthbound". The nine-headed Lernaean Hydra that Hercules defeated and the three Gorgon sisters are children of Gaia, the earth. Medusa was one of
Greek mythology in popular culture of Greek mythology to disguise his commentaries calling for reform within the German Democratic Republic. The 2012 play "The Architects", by the London-based Shunts, is based on the myth of the Minotaur and is about a "return to when Greece was the cradle of civilisation and not about riots on the streets". The 2016 stage musical Hadestown, a production with music by Anais Mitchell, follows the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice as well as Hades and Persephone. The show premiered Off-Broadway in 2016, ran at the National Theatre in London in 2018, and is scheduled to have a Broadway run