Эмпуса: Демоница с медной ногой в греческой мифологии

Legendary figure in Greek mythology

Empusa or Empousa (/ɛ//m//'//p//j//uː//s//ə/; Ἔμπουσα; plural: Ἔμπουσαι Empousai) is a shape shifting female being in Greek mythology, said to possess a single leg of copper, commanded by Hecate, whose precise nature is obscure. In Late Antiquity, the empousae have been described as a category of phantoms or spectres, equated with the lamiai and mormolykeia, thought to seduce and feed on young men.

The primary sources for the empousa in Antiquity are Aristophanes's plays (The Frogs and Ecclesiazusae) and Philostratus's Life of Apollonius of Tyana. A folk etymology construes the name to mean "one footed" (from Greek *έμπούς, *empous: en , one + pous, foot). In a different passage of the same work, when Apollonius was journeying from Persia to India, he encountered an empousa, hurling insults at it, coaxing his fellow travellers to join him, whereby it ran and hid, uttering high pitched screams. An empousa was also known to others as lamia or mormolyke. Schmidt only speculated that oral lore of empousa might survive somewhere locally. A field study (Charles Stewart, 1985) finds that empousa is a term that is rarely used in oral tradition, compared to other terms such as gello which has a similar meaning.

According to Robert Graves, Empusa was a demigoddess, the beautiful daughter of the goddess Hecate and the spirit Mormo. She feasted on blood by seducing young men as they slept (see sleep paralysis), before drinking their blood and eating their flesh. When she spotted a man sleeping on the road, she attacked him, little knowing he was Zeus, king of the gods. Zeus woke and visited his wrath on her and Empusa was killed.

Empusa is referenced in Rudyard Kipling's narrative poem "Tomlinson". Empusa is a character in Faust, Part Two by Goethe. She appears during the Classical Walpurgis Night as Mephisto is being lured by the Lamiae. She refers to herself as cousin to Mephisto because she has a donkey's foot and he has a horse's. Empusa is the name of the ship used by Count Orlok to travel to Wisborg in F. W. Murnau's film Nosferatu (1922). Empusa is a main antagonist turned heroine in the novel Grecian Rune by James Matthew Byers. They may look like humans at first. In Primal, Empusa is among the Wraith Aristocrates, a fast travelling race of demons, and the wife of the main antagonist in the third world. In Wicked Wings by Keri Arthur, the villains are three empusae who are eating the flesh of their prey. They use the form of a young woman to lure the men to their deaths.

In the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series, the Empousai first appear in The Battle of the Labyrinth as servants of Hecate who had, by that time, joined the Titan Army. Empusa (along with Lamia and Mormo) is one of the three witches in the film Stardust (dir. Matthew Vaughn). She is played by Sarah Alexander. In Neil Gaiman's novel Stardust the witches are not given individual names. Empusa makes a minor appearance in Fate/Grand Order combined with Huyan Zhuo from Water Margin, resulting in a Chinese warrior woman with one or both of her human legs replaced with greenish donkey legs.

The song "Empusa, Queen of the Damned" by the English deathcore band Infant Annihilator is inspired by the themes of the Greek myth.