![]() The post-medieval map of Guillaume Le Testu (pictured above) illustrates the headless and the dog-headed cynocephali north beyond the Himalayan mountains. 1448) did continue to locate the headless in Ethiopia. But other maps of the period such as the Andreas Walsperger's map (ca. Alexander romances īy the Late Middle Ages, world maps began to appear that located the headless people further east, in Asia, such as the Andrea Bianco map (1436) that depicted people who "all do not have heads ( omines qui non abent capites)" in India, on the same peninsula as the terrestrial paradise. ![]() This form derives from "epiphagos" in a modified recension of the Letter of Pharasmenes known as the Letter of Premonis to Trajan ( Epistola Premonis Regis ad Trajanum). Epiphagi ("epifugi") is the name of the headless in Liber Monstrorum. No name is given to the headless islanders, eight feet tall in the Wonders of the East. The catalogue of strange peoples from Letter occur in the Anglo-Saxon Wonders of the East (translation of Mirabilia) and the Liber Monstrorum recensions of both these works are bound in the Beowulf manuscript. 1211) which describes a "people without heads" (" Des hommes sanz testes") of a golden colour, measuring 12 feet tall and 7 feet wide, living on an isle in the River Brisone (in Ethiopia). The Latin text in the recension known as the Fermes Letter was translated verbatim in Gervase of Tilbury's Otia Imperialia (ca. This included De Rebus in Oriente mirabilibus (also known as Mirabilia), its Anglo-Saxon translation, Gervase of Tilbury's treatise, and the Alexander legend attributed to Leo Archipresbyter. Middle Ages īy the 7th or 8th century, there had been composed a Letter of Pharasmenes to Hadrian, whose accounts of marvels such as bearded women (and headless men) became incorporated into later texts. He is cursed to remain in this form until released by Rāma. In the Indian epic Ramayana, the demon Kabandha is a headless creature with one eye in the middle of his stomach and with extra-long arms. This is because he got decapitated in a battle against Huangdi. In the Chinese classic text Classic of Mountains and Seas, the god Xingtian is described as having no head, and with his nipples as eyes and his belly button as a mouth. Futhemore the blemmyes are called breast-eyed ( sternophthalmi) in Strabo's Geography. Breast-eyed races ( war-čašmān) are also recurents in the middle persian literature: Bundahishn, Jamasp Namag and Drakht-i Asurig. Headless men also appear in the Persian, Chinese and Indian legends. The term acephalous ( akephaloi) was applied to people without heads whose facial parts such as eyes and mouth have relocated to other parts of the body, and the Blemmyes as described by Pliny or Solinus conform with this appellation. Solinus adds they are believed to be born with their head part dismembered, their mouth and eyes deposited on the breast. Modern commentators on Pliny have suggested the notion of headlessness among Blemmyes may be due to their combat tactic of keeping their heads pressed close to the chest, while half-squatting with one knee to the ground. Pliny situates the Blemmyae somewhere in Aethiopia (in, or in the neighbouring lands to Nubia). In a similar vein, Pliny the Elder in the Natural History reports the Blemmyae tribe of North Africa as " no heads, their mouths and eyes being seated in their breasts". Mela was the first to name the "Blemyae" of Africa as being headless with their face buried in their chest. The headless akephaloi, the dog-headed cynocephali, "and the wild men and women, besides many other creatures not fabulous" dwelled in the eastern edge of ancient Libya, according to Herodotus's Libyan sources. The first indirect reference to the Blemmyes occurs in Herodotus, Histories, where he calls them the akephaloi ( Greek: ἀκέφαλοι "without a head"). Although this theory had long been neglected, this etymology has come into acceptance, alongside the identification of the Beja people as true descendants of the Blemmyes of yore. Leo Reinisch in 1895 proposed that it derived from bálami "desert people" in the Bedauye tongue ( Beja language). Wolfgang Helck claimed a Coptic word "blind" for its etymology. ![]() A Greek derivation from blemma ( Greek: βλέμμα) "look, glance" and muō ( Greek: μύω) "close the eyes" has also been suggested. Samuel Bochart of the 17th century derived the word Blemmyes from the Hebrew bly ( בלי) "without" and moach ( מוח) "brain", implying that the Blemmyes were people without brains (although not necessarily without heads). In antiquity, the actual tribe known as the Blemmyes were said to be named eponymously after King Blemys (Βλέμυς), according to Nonnus's 5th century epic Dionysiaca, but no lore about headlessness is attached to the people in this work. Various etymologies had been proposed for the origins of the name "Blemmyes", and the question is considered unsettled. ![]()
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