LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Mermaids: Waters
built 235 days ago
Mermaids have been the chosen subjects of artists as diverse as Munch, Waterhouse, Beardsley, Pyle, Rubens, and Bosch. Even Magritte could not resist a version of the mermaid--though he switched ends placing a fish's head on a woman's body.
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Tales of mermaids are nearly universal. The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria, ca. 1000 BC. Atargatis, the mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, was a goddess who loved a mortal shepherd and in the process killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake to take the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid — human above the waist, fish below — though the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as being a fish with a human head and legs, similar to the Babylonian Ea. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo, where she was often conflated with Aphrodite.
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Like European mermaids, and the African mermaid water spirit Mami Wata, Lasirèn holds a mirror to admire herself and a comb for her long, straight hair. Lasirèn's underwater world is known as "the back of the mirror," and her mirror is a symbol of the boundary between the two worlds. Followers of Lasirèn say she takes them below the water to her world, and they return with new powers. Some women become Vodou priestesses this way.
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