Talk:Griffin

Semi-protected edit request on 14 April 2024

Reference # 54 is mangled. It looks like there is a malformed {{Refn}} in the "Mesopotamia" section.

I think that the text:

{{Refn|Frankfort classed it as a "winged, tailed, and taloned dragon which spat fire".</ref>

should be:

{{Refn|Frankfort classed it as a "winged, tailed, and taloned dragon which spat fire".}}

There may be something more complicated going on that I can't see. Thanks 76.14.122.5 (talk) 22:04, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

I think I fixed the problem. There was also an issue with the Goldman (1960) citation; there probably should've been ref tags around it, since the inline use of Template:harvp was deprecated. The original editor probably intended to have a footnote about Frankfort's classification, with a citation to Frankfort (1936-1937) inside the footnote, but got the brackets and the ref tags from the previous Goldman citation mixed up. Liu1126 (talk) 22:30, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

That looks right. Much better than my suggestion! Thanks 76.14.122.5 (talk) 23:05, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

Addition of other examples of the gryphon in modern art

The gryphon is depicted by twentieth-century French artist, writer, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau in his 1957 lithograph “Le griffon” as an eagle-headed, winged, male dancer with a human rather than a lion’s body as if for a costume design for the ballet, although the exact reference remains unclear. Gascogne2127 (talk) 04:50, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

References

Wiki Education assignment: Technical and Professional Editing

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 13 January 2025 and 6 May 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): 123faithhopecharity (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Dr.ozkul (talk) 20:40, 11 February 2025 (UTC)

Editing plan

Hello! I'm starting to work on editing this article as part of a Technical Editing class at Texas A&M University. I wanted to share my editing plan before making any major changes.

• Improving the article's messy organization.
• Eliminating repetitive information.
• Condensing the "Theories of origin" section.
• Performing any necessary copy editing.

I plan to make most of my changes in a sandbox first and slowly add them back into the article. 123faithhopecharity (talk) 19:20, 19 February 2025 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 31 May 2025

Please delete the unused (and unnamed) list-based reference:

{{citation|author=Pliny the Elder |author-link=Pliny the Elder |others=translated by [[John Bostock (physician)|John Bostock]]; [[Henry Thomas Riley]] |title=The Natural History of Pliny |publisher=H. G. Bohn |year=1855 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H72JEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA130 |page=130 |isbn=9781948488884<!--1948488884-->}}</ref>

The unused reference is causing a false positive at https://checkwiki.toolforge.org/cgi-bin/checkwiki.cgi?project=enwiki&view=only&id=94 (Reference tags without correct match)

I have moved the citation to {{refideas}} on the talk page so that it is not lost.

Thank you. 176.108.139.1 (talk) 06:18, 31 May 2025 (UTC)

 Done Day Creature (talk) 05:43, 1 June 2025 (UTC)

Hybrids

• mergriffin: merman/mermaid/fishtailed griffin (Greek: [ο] γοργονόγρυπας masculine noun)

see:

Semi-protected edit request on 8 August 2025

In the Modern Culture section, the page states that the symbol of Gryffindor house in Harry Potter is a griffin. This reference should be removed as it's incorrect. The symbol of Gryffindor house is a lion. ShirleyBird79 (talk) 15:51, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

 Done I removed it as it is unsourced. Day Creature (talk) 17:30, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

Please Add this image to the article

Hello, The part speaking about "griffin in Iran" lacks a proper image. please consider adding this image for that part "Persepolis 24.11.2009 11-18-45 cropped.jpg" Thank you

Mokarapedia Mokarapedia 05:25, 18 August 2025 (UTC)

top image and rating

Achaemenid griffin at the Louvre

Byzantine

11th-century mosaic

Shouldn't the top image be a more typical griffin? The current one doesn't even have wings, and the Minoans aren't the culture primarily associated with griffins. The wealth of illustrative material for the topic on Commons seems underutilized. Why not an Iranian griffin, like this one from the Louvre? Greek vase painting is a rich source for Greek griffins, and yet we have not a single example as an illustration.

Overall, I don't see a B rating for this article. The "overview" section is no such thing, as it's occupied by summaries of primary sources from the Greek and Roman encyclopedic/legendary tradition. And then later we get a much longer additional section on Classical accounts. Why are these separate? There's too much reliance on primary source testimony. In fact we don't get a general introduction to the development of the griffin in myth, heraldry and numismatic uses, and art history. The lede itself is too short to show the scope of the article. It seems fairly clear that griffins were adopted by Greek-speaking peoples from the older Middle Eastern cultures, but the chronology bounces around too much for that narrative to emerge.

The section on Christian symbolism starts with three substantial paragraphs NOT about Christian symbolism. A tiny portion references Christianity and doesn't explain how or why the griffin came to be used in Christian iconography. It seems strange and interesting that a monster would become somehow symbolic of Jesus Christ.

What about those requests for citations? There's a whole section flagged as having no citations at all. That alone argues against B status.

The etymology section is substantial (but what's with the bold type?) but tonally different and disproportionate to other sections. Some sections, like the physical description of a griffin, are chopped into small underdeveloped bits that don't really come together in a comparison/contrast way with appropriate illustrations. "Warts" has only three sentences and no image to illustrate what is meant, and yet it has its own heading. A quick look through the griffin subcats at Commons shows that this article lacks some of the most high-quality, significant, or famous depictions of griffins while including others that may or may not relate to the accompanying text. (The heraldry section does a better job, though with gaps.) The gallery is random, nor do the images seem to have been chosen for artistic value. The range of media depicting griffins on offer here is not very broad. Coinage is represented by a drawing, not even a real coin.

The section on theories of origin (plural) is solely the dinosaur theory, is it not?

The logos and mascots section is just a list with no narrative or explanation. In fact, much if not most of the second half of the article is more or less list content in sentence form.

So there are serious narrative, structural, developmental, and coverage issues, along with inadequate secondary sources (the number of sources is good; it's how they're used, apparently as sources for quoting or summarizing ancient texts and not for interpretive ideas or to provide a cohesive historical frame). Please feel free to defend, but I don't see this article as rating more than a C. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:58, 10 May 2026 (UTC)

"Shouldn't the top image be a more typical griffin?"

No, absolutely not. I agree the article is a mess but precisely one of the main reasons why it's been frequently cited elsewhere as an example of a bad and inconsistent Wikipedia article is because of the insistence of including lion-faced griffins as "examples of griffins" and not even making a point for their relatedness, confusing the hell out of the reader. If we include such creatures we might also depict stuff like the lamassu or the manticore...

Additionally, the Aegean griffins seem to be independent and anatomically distinct from the, say, Elamite and Mesopotamian griffin. There is no consensus on the idea of the griffin originating only in the East and then spreading West. In fact, it would seem that even the "Aegean griffin" was a popular image around areas of the Near East (and notably in Avaris, Egypt, with other Minoan-style remains) where trade with Bronze Age Greece was close. ~2026-28269-20 (talk) 06:23, 11 May 2026 (UTC)

The most common griffin has wings, as any survey of the images shows. And I find efforts to show "true origins" generally depressing and useless, so when I say "it seems pretty clear" that one precedes the other, I mean that chronologically. Chronology can be a useful way to organize a topic neutrally. I would propose that this is more of an art historical topic than of mythology. The wings are interesting because of a parallel with the depiction of Pegasus, or rather pegasoi. The earlier images have his wings curving forward, as with the earlier winged griffins, and the later images have the wings with the more aerodynamic bird-like form. That is an art historical detail. But believe me, any devolution into laying claim to origins is not what I'd want. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:11, 16 May 2026 (UTC)