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
Nine maidens (mythology) the tradition of the Gallicenae; the Nine Maidens who lived on the Isle du Sein, latterly known as the Isle of the Druidesses. In Greek mythology, the Muses were originally thought to have been a whole series of different groups who, like their counterparts in Scotland, are associated with mountains and wells. Robert Graves in "The Greek Myths" drew attention to a similarity between groups of ecstatic Maenads and the cave painting form El Cogul Roca Dels Moros near Lerida in Catalonia which has nine women dancing round a spectacularly priapic male. In Kenya, the Kikuyu people claim descent from