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In the myth and folklore of the Near East and Europe, Abyzou is the name of a female demon. Abyzou was blamed for miscarriages and infant mortality and was said to be motivated by envy, as she herself was infertile. In the Coptic Egypt she is identified with Alabasandria, and in Byzantine culture with Gylou, but in various texts surviving from the syncretic magical practice of antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, she is said to have many or virtually innumerable names.[1]
Abyzou (also spelled Abizou, Obizu, Obizuth, Obyzouth, Byzou etc.) is pictured on amulets with fish- or serpent-like attributes. Her fullest literary depiction is the compendium of demonology known as the Testament of Solomon, dated variously by scholars from as early as the 1st century AD to as late as the 4th.[2]
- ^ Mary Margaret Fulgum, "Coins Used as Amulets in Late Antiquity", in Between Magic and Religion: Interdisciplinary Studies in Ancient Mediterranean Religion and Society (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), p. 142
- ^ A.A. Barb, "Antaura. The Mermaid and the Devil's Grandmother: A Lecture", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 29 (1966), p. 5; "at least to the 2nd century", Sara Iles Johnston, Religions of the Ancient World (Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 122; "probably dates to the third century", James H. Charlesworth, "Jewish Interest in Astrology", Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 20.2 (1987) pp. 935–936 et al.