Merhorses

Merhorses are creatures of mythology or bestiaries that are considered to have a top half exactly as or resembling a horse and a bottom half that of a fish's tail or dolphin's tail. They are a combination between the words "mermaid" and "horse". Merhorses are also called seahorses, but for the sake of separating the two due to confusion, I have opted to call them merhorses.

## Ancient depictions

In Ancient Greek mythology merhorses are called hippokampus, which translates to "horse sea-monster". They are sacred to Poseidon. Sometimes they are pure horse on top, other times there are distorted features.

Somewhere likely along the Jezreel and Lower Galilee area of Israel, once Phoenicia and around 425 to 394 BC, coins had been unearthed showing the god Melqart riding a winged (pegasus) hippokampus with a baby dolphin swimming underneath. This proves that for these people, the merpegasus was definitely not a mistake from observing dolphins but its own entity, or at least was a fictional beast long-since derived from the mistake (like how we say mermaids were derived from mistaken drunk sailors observing dewgongs) .

The ancient Etruscans had depictions of merhorses depicted in tombs. Sometimes they had wings. They lived in both rivers and sea.

In ancient Rome they associated these aquatic water animals with a bath theme. Bathhouses were sometimes decorated with mosaics of merhorses.

The Pictish Beast carved in Scotland is more like a seahorse with four legs rather than a merhorse, however due to the word association some people bring the two together anyways. It's also considered a dragon or a kelpie. It's probably a source of inspiration for Neopets, see modern depictions.Noticeably one is depicted underneath a regular horse.

In medieval times the merhorse was used in heraldry. Interestingly the term "hippocampus" and "seahorse" are said to be reversed in this instance. Thus the animal we now call seahorses were called hippocampus during this time, and seahorses referred to the hippocampus-merhorse. I'm not sure if this information is true or not, and if it is, it may help solve my dilemma with the seahorse calque as described on their wiki page.

## Modern Depictions

As mentioned previously, the Pictish Beast may beast may have inspired the creation of both the Gelert, a dog with long strings on their ears and tails, and the Peophin, a true merhorse. Within the realm of Neopets Peophins can be quite important, having been featured in many stories on the Neopean Times and in canon specials such as the revive of Maraqua. Peophins were somewhat popular, ranking in 24th out of 55 pets.

The planet Neptune also has a moon called Hippocamp It was discovered in 2013 by Mark Showalter and named for its association with Neptune in mythology (obviously).

## References

1. ↑ https://www.google.com/books/edition/Seahorses/zMlDDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA10&printsec=frontcover
2. ↑ https://www.coinarchives.com/a/results.php?search=melqart
3. ↑ https://neopets.fandom.com/wiki/Peophin
4. ↑ https://www.neopets.com/topneopets.phtml?type=percentage\_table
5. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hippocampus\_(mythology)&oldid=1089407286
6. ↑ https://esahubble.org/news/heic1904/