WHAT LURKS BENEATH? Mythical of the Creatures Undersea

THE CTHULHU

They were the blasphemous fish-frogs of the nameless design – living and horrible. – The Shadow Over Innsmouth, H.P. Lovecraft

From the Loch Ness monster of Scotland to the kraken of Scandinavian folklore, we have all heard versions of mythological creatures that lurk in the deep sea. H.P. Lovecraft introduced Cthulhu, a bizarre tentacled monster of unknown origin resting on the bottom of the sea in his 1926 short story The Call of Cthulhu, where he describes it as “a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.›

In fact, in April 2019, an exceptionally preserved fossil of a 430 million-year-old tentacled sea creature reminded an international team of palaeontologists so much of the description given by the American science-fiction and horror author of his creature Cthulhu, that they named the new species they described in a recently published scientific article as Sollasina cthulhu!

This goes to show that the folk tales, stories, and mythologies, all deriving from different cultures and communities, are etched into our minds and passed down generations, and these larger-than-life characters close to our hearts seem that they did once exist, as if they are real.

THE MERMAID

Mermaids have fascinated many with their prominence in folklore and the mystery that surrounds them. This water spirit features the face and upper body of a female human, and the tail of a fish. They can be associated with good or evil – in perilous events such as floods, storms, shipwrecks and drownings, or even known to be benevolent or beneficent, bestowing blessings or falling in love with humans.

Mesopotamian mythology and culture is filled with anthropomorphic beings, represented in reliefs, stories and coins. One of the first creatures with both human and fish characteristics is the Sumerian water god, Enki, who came to be known as Ea in Babylon and was later called Oannes by Greeks. He took the form of an amphibian human and was portrayed in several different ways.

However, the figure that most interests us is Atargatis, the mermaid goddess. This amphibian figure begins to appear around 1,000 BC and possesses diverse representations: fish from the waist down and woman from the waist up; a fish’s body with the head of a woman; a woman body with the tail of a fish. As a goddess of fertility and protection, she had many sanctuaries built in her honour, usually with pools filled with carp – a sacred fish that, in many cases,