Editing Chimera (mythology) (section)

==Similar creatures==
[[Image:Pegasus reel Louvre Bj1887.jpg|thumb|upright|Gold reel, possibly an ear-stud, with a [[Pegasus|winged Pegasus]] (outer band) and the Chimera (inner band), [[Magna Graecia]] or [[Etruria]], fourth century BC ([[Louvre]])]]

A fire-breathing lioness was one of the earliest solar and war deities in [[Ancient Egypt]] (representations from 3000 years prior to the Greeks), and influences are feasible. The lioness represented the war goddess and protector of both cultures that would unite as Ancient Egypt. [[Sekhmet]] was one of the dominant deities in upper Egypt and [[Bastet|Bast]] in lower Egypt. As the [[Mother goddess|divine mother]], and more especially as protector, for Lower Egypt, Bast became strongly associated with [[Wadjet]], the patron goddess of Lower Egypt.{{citation needed|date=April 2021}}

In the [[Etruscan civilization]], the Chimera appears in the [[Orientalizing period]] that precedes Etruscan Archaic art. The Chimera appears in Etruscan wall paintings of the fourth century BC.{{citation needed|date=April 2021}}

In the [[Indus Valley Civilisation]], the Chimera is depicted in many seals. There are different kinds of Chimera composed of animals from the [[Indian subcontinent]]. It is not known what the Indus people called the Chimera. {{Citation needed|date=December 2022}}

Although the Chimera of antiquity was forgotten in Medieval art, chimerical figures appear as embodiments of the deceptive, even [[satan]]ic, forces of raw nature. They were depicted with a human face and a scaly tail, as in [[Dante Alighieri|Dante]]'s vision of [[Geryon]] in ''[[Divine Comedy|Inferno]]'' xvii.7–17, 25–27, hybrid monsters, more akin to the [[Manticore]] of [[Natural History (Pliny)|Pliny's ''Natural History'']] (viii.90), provided iconic representations of hypocrisy and fraud well into the seventeenth century through a symbolic representation in [[Cesare Ripa]]'s ''Iconological''.<ref>John F. Moffitt, "An Exemplary Humanist Hybrid: Vasari's 'Fraude' with Reference to Bronzino's 'Sphinx'" ''Renaissance Quarterly'' '''49'''.2 (Summer  1996), pp. 303–333, traces the chimeric image of Fraud backward from [[Bronzino]].</ref>