Who are the Cynocephaly?
I was listening to a podcast, and it mentioned a race of dog-headed men, known as the Cynocephali or Cynocephaly.
I’ve been curious ever since that podcast, and I have been looking around for information. What I’ve found is in these previous posts about werewolf type creatures.
The Cynocephali, however, have been noted by several explorers in the ancient world. Marco Polo mentions them on his travels in the Andaman Islands. They were noted as a barbarian race that grew spices.
Hui Sheng, a Buddhist missionary, claimed that there lived a large population of them on an Eastern island. A physician named Ctesias said he saw them in India during his lifetime in the fifth century. They
The picture I have there is of St. Christopher, and this is really what got me searching. Why would anyone paint a saint like that? I’ve read stories that St. Christopher was a Canaanite and someone misinterpreted it as canine-nite (hilarious…), but why is he painted like that? I couldn’t find an answer to that question.
The location of the cynocephaly is also debatable. Most explorers place them continents apart. The Romans site them in Africa. Marco Polo on the Andaman Islands. They were spotted in Europe and India, and speaking of India it seemed like the Indian king and the Cynocephaly people had a mutual agreement, according to Ctesias:
“They also rear numbers of sheep, goats, and asses, drinking the milk of the sheep and whey made from it. They eat the fruit of the Siptachora, whence amber is procured, since it is sweet. They also dry it and keep it in baskets, as the Greeks keep their dried grapes. They make rafts which they load with this fruit together with well-cleaned purple flowers and 260 talents of amber, with the same quantity of the purple dye, and 1000 additional talents of amber, which they send annually to the king of India. They exchange the rest for bread, flour, and cotton stuffs with the Indians, from whom they also buy swords for hunting wild beasts, bows, and arrows, being very skillful in drawing the bow and hurling the spear. They cannot be defeated in war, since they inhabit lofty and inaccessible mountains. Every five years the king sends them a present of 300,000 bows, as many spears, 120,000 shields, and 50,000 swords.”— Ctesias, Indica\
They seem to live in caves, perhaps that’s where they have gone, far into the earth…
This wraps up the whole series. If you are a Cynocephali and would like to give me more information on your race, please contact me in the comments below!
For more information, check out this site: Cynocephalus. I was searching forever and then one day this site popped up. I find it strange, but oh well.
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