The Headless God

In the description and name1 of this headless demon Phonos Murder, the French biographer of the akephalos headless god, Arm. Delatte, seeks to recognize traces and remnants of the ancient Egyptian-Greek Seth-Typhon, whom he considers the ancestor of this late arrival, attributing to him an astrological or solar origin. However, such an origin for the demon Phonos seems questionable already from the fact that, according to the description in the Testament of Solomon, he does not belong to the class of the true "headless ones" at all, but rather to the chest-faced ones, stethokephaloi chest-headed ones: he has a mouth to devour the heads of his victims, and he peers through his nipples. The true headless one possesses neither mouth nor eyes; he looks like a decapitated person. The murder demon of Pseudo-Solomon resembles more that monster which the scribe of the Oslo Papyrus preserved with his second illustration in the image (see Plate III 1)2.

The Headless God on Gems

A gem engraved stone in the Musée Numismatique in Athens (No. 615) shows the stout-limbed, naked figure of a decapitated person without sexual characteristics, who plants his shackled arms on his hips3. He is striding forward, right leg leading. That the act of decapitation did not take place long ago is likely shown clearly by the three signs protruding as blood fountains from the neckless torso, "de minuscules dessins triangulaires" original: "tiny triangular drawings", above the base of the neck4. Behind this living corpse lies an animal-

1 Delatte reads "Phonos" according to the manuscript Athen. bibl. Ser. 55 (16th century); in his view, this name could be considered a corruption of "Typhonos" (p. 239).
2 Cf. below p. 46 regarding other stethokephaloi chest-headed ones.
3 Delatte, Fig. 1 p. 189; also in Musée Belge 18, 1914, Plate 2, 1st image.
4 Similar in the image of the Akephalos preserved in P II. The "little flags" protruding from his neck, comparable to small snake heads, signify the spurting blood of the decapitated. Medieval depictions of the decapitated, as they are often found in miniatures of old passion manuscripts, also portray blood in this way. F. Philippi, Kulturgesch. Atlas, provides on Plate 24 the drawing of a manuscript of the Berlin State Library (cod. germ. fol. 282, Eneit of H. v. Veldecke, fol. 106 ob.), in which Turnus has beheaded a woman in a ship: head and neck show the flowing blood like the Athenian gem and the Berlin Akephalos. The same little blood-flames flicker from the neck of the torso of decapitated martyrs in miniatures and other depictions of the passion works of the Middle Ages; cf. Alb. Boeckler, Das Stuttgarter Passionale, Augsburg 1923, in many images. Different, conversely, is the mosaic of the Villa Ro-