Manticore

thumb|Manticore or "Martigora" ― [[Johannes Jonston (1652), Historiae Naturalis<br />Copperplate engraving by Matthäus Merian.]]

The manticore or mantichore (Latin: mantichorās; reconstructed Old Persian: ; Modern ) is a legendary creature from ancient Persian mythology, similar to the Egyptian sphinx that proliferated in Western European medieval art as well. It has the face of a human, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion or a tail covered in venomous spines similar to porcupine quills. There are some accounts that the spines can be launched like arrows. It eats its victims whole, using its three rows of teeth, and leaves no bones behind.

Etymology

The English-language term manticore comes via Latin mantichorās from Ancient Greek (martikhórās). This in turn is a transliteration of an Old Persian compound word consisting of martīya 'man' and x^uar- stem, 'to eat' (modern ; mard + ; ḫordan);

a Greek physician of the 5th century BC who worked at the Persian court during the Achaemenid dynasty. Ctesias based his report on the testimonies of his Persian-speaking informants who had travelled to India. He recorded the Persian-language name of the beast as martichora (), which translated into Greek as androphagon having relied on a faulty copy of Aristotle's natural history that contained the misspelling ("martikhoras"). the mantichora of Aethiopia also mimicked human speech, on authority of Juba II,