Theriocephaly

Theriocephaly studies

"Theriocephaly" (from Greek θηρίον therion 'beast' and κεφαλή kefalí 'head') is the anthropomorphic condition or quality of having the head of an animal with a body either mostly or entirely looking human – the term being commonly used to refer the depiction of deities or otherwise specially able individuals. An entity with such qualities is said to be "theriomorphous". Many of the gods and goddesses worshipped by the ancient Egyptians, for example, were commonly depicted as being theriocephalic. This phenomenon partly represented an intermediate step in a longer process of anthropomorphization of former animal deities (e.g. the goddess Hathor in her earliest form was depicted as a cow and in her latest manifestation as a woman with cows ears and sometimes a hairstyle resembling cows horns). But the form of depiction sometimes depended also on the aspects of a deity an artist wanted to accentuate (e.g. Ba, the aspect of personality of a human soul, was depicted as a bird with a human's head). This can also be seen in the different hieroglyphs that could be used to write the name of a single deity.