Abyzou
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.
The primeval sea was originally an androgyne or asexual, later dividing into the male Abzu (fresh water) and the female Tiamat (seawater, appearing as the Tehom in the Book of Genesis).
The word also appears in the Christian New Testament, occurring six times in the Book of Revelation, where it is conventionally translated not as "the deep" but as "the bottomless pit" of Hell.
[5] In the late antique Testament of Solomon,[6] Abyzou (as Obizuth) is described as having a "greenish gleaming face with dishevelled serpent-like hair"; the rest of her body is covered by darkness.
[7] The speaker ("King Solomon") encounters a series of demons, binds and tortures each in turn, and inquires into their activities; then he metes out punishment or controls them as he sees fit.
The writer of the Testament appears to have been thinking of the gorgoneion, or the icon of the Medusa's head, which often adorned Greek temples and occasionally Jewish synagogues in late antiquity.
In one Greek tale set in the time of "Trajan the King", Gyllou under torture reveals her "twelve and a half names": My first and special name is called Gyllou; the second Amorphous; the third Abyzou; the fourth Karkhous; the fifth Brianê; the sixth Bardellous; the seventh Aigyptianê; the eighth Barna; the ninth Kharkhanistrea; the tenth Adikia; ...[21] the twelfth Myia; the half Petomene.
In the inscription, she is confronted by the Ephesian Artemis, who plays the role assigned to the male figures Solomon, Arlaph, and Sisinnios in Jewish and Christian texts.
[26] At the monastery of St. Apollo in Bawit, Egypt, a wall painting depicts the childbirth demon under the name Alabasandria (or Alabasdria) as she is trampled under the hooves of a horse.
[1] This central image is surrounded by other figures, including a centaur, the piercing of the evil eye, and the demon's daughter, winged and reptile-tailed, identified by an inscription.
