Keratin, just like everyone else’s.

At least until she had a run in with the gods, one of whom (Athena) who cursed her with snakes to replace her hair, for the offense of having sex with Poseidon within one of her temples. As it happened, this turned her into a figure of pity, so Athena cursed her again, so that she would so horrify any who looked into her eyes that they would turn to stone. At least as the myth had developed by the time of Pindar’s Metamorphoses; before that, the important part was that she could turn people into stone, not her backstory.

BTW, before she was transformed, she was apparently the daughter of two primordial deities, and thus sort of a cousin of the Titans. Thanks, Wikipedia.

According to myths, Medusa was a dazzlingly beautiful woman.

She had an affair with Poseidon in Athena’s temple. The infuriated Athena gave her a curse, turning her gorgeous face into a twisted form so hideous as to turn any who gazed upon it to stone. The curse was due to Athena’s jealousy of her beauty, so the possibility of her leg hair turning into snakes is slim.

Now there are two main interpretations of her curse. In the first one, her hair turns to snakes, and her lower body is that of a snake. The snake body solves the problem of her leg hair since snakes have neither legs nor the hair on them.

In the second interpretation, she’s still human. Now her most famous and common artistic depiction is Caravaggio’s Medusa.

In this artistic masterpiece, it’s quite evident that her eyebrows are just hair and not snakes.

The most substantial evidence and the oldest depiction of Medusa is the carving of the Gorgon at Artemis temple in Corfu.

Notice her legs. No snakey leg hairs at all. The myths would’ve certainly specified it if any other hairs were to turn into snakes.

If you’re into Greek mythology, you’ll know that it’s all about the strange things. If Medusa did have any other body hairs as snakes, I’m sure there would be quite interesting stories about it.

In Greek mythology, Medusa was a monster with snakes for hair, whose gaze could turn people into stone. She was once a beautiful woman, but after being raped by the god Poseidon in the temple of Athena, the goddess cursed her and transformed her into a monster.

In some versions of the myth, Medusa was slain by the hero Perseus, who used a mirrored shield to avoid her gaze and then beheaded her. In other versions, she was slain by the hero Theseus or turned to stone by the hero Heracles.

Medusa has become a popular figure in popular culture, appearing in movies, video games, and other forms of media. She is often depicted as a fierce and powerful villain, with her snake-like hair and petrifying gaze being her most iconic features.

It’s a very interesting question and I happen to have a theory on the matter.

Even if I’ll try to support it with evidence, at the end of the day it’s just my guess. No need to come at me with pitchforks if you think it’s not historically accurate.

Feel free to let me know if it’s plausible, tough, I’m curios 😝

BRIEF RECAP

For those of you who are not familiar with the myth of Medusa, there are two main versions of it:

1. Medusa is one of the Gorgons, monstrous sisters with snakes instead of hairs and the ability to petrify anyone who dared to look them in the eyes. This is the more ancient version, which in turn has some variants according to who you ask: some authors say the Gorgons were monsters with golden wings and fangs, others say that they were gorgeous girls; for some they lived in the Ocean, for others in Libia. For Homer there was only one Gorgon, whose head had been put on the shield of Athena (and later this Gorgon is identified with Medusa).
2. Medusa is a girl who happens to attract Poseidon; trying to escape the rape, she takes shelter in Athena’s temple, asking for protection. The virgin goddess, outraged at the idea of sex being consumed in her sacred place, curses her. Other versions say that Medusa willingly slept with Poseidon in Athena’s temple or that Medusa dared to compete with the goddess in beauty.

EDIT: it’s worth noticing that the second version was written by Ovid, a Roman author who had an agenda of his own: due to his troubles with the first Roman Emperor, Augustus, he had a pretty fierce antiauthoritarian stance in his works. This is not the only myth he rewrote in which gods appear to be unjust and cruel without a consistent reason.

Anyway, the end is the same: Medusa meets her demise at the hands of Perseus, who beheads her while she sleeps. She also gives birth to a bunch of creatures with her blood: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Crisaor (sons of Poseidon), a two-headed snake (amphesiben) and, since some drops of blood fall on some algae and petrifies them, the coral.

The first and more recognizable characteristic of Medusa is that she has a freaking nest of venomous snakes on her head. Pretty creative, right?

Well, not so much. Before the classical authors, before Ovid, Hesiod and even before Homer there was already a famous woman associated with snakes all around the Mediterranean Sea.

Only, she wasn’t a monster.

She was a goddess.

Meet the Snake Goddess, who was worshipped in the Minoian religion from around 3000 to 1200 BC. She was in herself goddess of fertility and life as well as goddess of the underworld, but she’s also believed to be only one of the many forms of the Great Mother, also called Pótnia Theron (Mistress of animals) or Mother Goddess. She’s clearly a chthonic deity and shares many characteristics with other “mother goddesses” in ancient civilizations.

Chthonic deities are the ones linked with the earth, the duality life/death, the cicle of seasons… It’s not a surprise they’re (almost) all women, since the “female” literally embodies the process of giving life. And it is also understandable why this kind of religion spread through the Mediterranean shores in the Neolithic age: these populations relied on agricolture and inhabited their lands on a permanent basis. The earth was what kept them alive.

Now compare this to the nomad populations who inhabited the “North” (I mean central and east Europe and Asia). These people lived mostly off hunting and herding and moved around a lot, so their religious system was centered around the stars and constellations that guided them in their travels. An example is the symbol of the Greek pantheon, Zeus. He’s an indoeuropean god whose name derives from the root *dyeu which means “light”, and so, by extension, sky, heaven… Even thunder, if you want, but Zeus in origin was simply the Father God of the daytime sky.

So, how it is that the Ancient Greeks worshipped Zeus&Co, and not the Mother Goddesses and her companions, when she’s more ancient and grounded in the Mediterranean area? And how is this linked to Medusa?

We’ll come to that in a bit.

Now we have to jump in time to around 1100 BC. Minoic civilizations declined, partly because of raids and pillaging operated by the People of the Sea. Ancient Greece enters the period called “Hellenic Middle Age” during which:

• writing is abandoned and re-discovered much later;
• weapons are made of iron instead of bronze;
• some nomadic populations invade the mainland Greece, bringing their gods with them.

There is a huge clash between two opposite ideologies and cultures and, in the end, sky gods win. It’s not a coincidence that the most ancient temples we know of started to be built around this time. The Goddesses are replaced by a more male-centered pantheon — but they’re not forgotten (think of Artemis, for example: one of her epithets was “potnia Theron”).

So, back to Medusa. I think it’s plausible that some distant echo of the ancient Minoan cult was poured into this myth: she’s a woman with beastly characteristics (at least at the beginning) and, more importantly, has a direct connection with snakes. She’s always perceived as dangerous — maybe a nod to the distant past, when the matriarchal Minoan society clashed with the patriarchal “Greek” one? After all, (hi)stories are written by the winners.

Moreover, in the Minoan religion snakes are symbols of death.

The second most prominent characteristic in Medusa is her terrible power.

And yet, in Ancient Greek and in Rome too, Medusa’s representations were used as guardians for temples and amulets for soldiers (probably because of her close connection with Athena/Minerva). So the ability to petrify people is not a weapon, but a defense. She’s a protector who scares away evil with an equal, brutal force.

She’s not the only monster of this kind in the ancient mythologies: there is the Sumerian Humbaba, whose face is made of guts and is the guardian of a cedar forest on the “mountain that gives life” (cedar was an important resource for Sumerians). She also bears some similarities to the Irish Balor who exterminates entire armies with the petrifying power of his right eye and whose myth also shares some characteristics with the one of her killer, Perseus.

That’s to say that Medusa wasn’t meant as a scary monster per se, but because she has a cultural function to perform, similar to the much more recent gargoyles on churches roofs.

On a side note Athena, who sports Medusa’s head on her shield, in the Iliad is said to shout flames from her eyes when enraged — something that led some authors to consider Medusa as a form Athena could assume when wrath took over reason in battle. After all, Athena is also the “goddess who never blinks” and in addition to the well-known owl is linked — you guessed it — to snakes.

We could go on and on talking about Medusa symbology and what is the hidden meaning of her myth, but this answer is already too long, so I’ll just stop here 😂

Medusa was not a goddess she was a gorgon. One of 3 monstrously ugly sisters, she of which was not immortal. In the Greek mythology she it was simply a hideous woman who had snakes for hair which of course the so called hero Perseus snuck into her cave and killed. In the Roman mythology which came later she was actually a beautiful maiden who was raped by Poseidon who is also called Neptune in the temple of Athena. Oddly enough she was more angry with Medusa than Neptune who was her Uncle. The goddess cursed her with the hideous venomous hair. After that again a so called hero was given a mirrored shield by Athena and sent to cut her head off. In all instances he succeeded and in some he winds up attaching her head to his shield so that he could continue to utilize the stone cursing power.

In an interesting twist the mythology's end was shifted. There was a great sculpture named Medusa by Luciano Garbati in 2008 which shows the head of Perseus in the hand of Medusa. Some people think she got a bad rap and that Perseus who sneaks into her lair was actually trying to do something else. In this case he got what he deserved.

According to Percy Jackson, they were in a weird dormant state that they couldn’t be awakened from until Medusa’s sunglasses were taken off even though her eyes were open.

Erm…

So maybe the snakes are triggered by light entering Medusa’s retinas.

We’ll never know.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

According to Greek mythology, Medusa was once a beautiful woman; Poseidon, god of the sea, fell in love with her, but she didn’t return his love. Poseidon turned her and her sisters into monsters, called Gorgons, who had live snakes covering their heads. Whoever looked on Medusa’s still beautiful face was turned into stone.

After the Greek hero Perseus cut off Medusa’s head, two creatures appeared from the drops of her blood: Pegasus, a winged horse, and Chrysaor, a giant or winged boar. According to myth, these were Medusa’s children with Poseidon.

Although Medusa was dead, her head still had the power to turn the living into stone. Perseus used Medusa’s head as a weapon on many occasions. In one of them, he came across the Titan Atlas, who was condemned to carry the heavens on his shoulders. To release him from his pain, Perseus turned him into stone using Medusa’s head so that he would no longer feel the weight of his burden.

Perseus also used Medusa’s head to free the princess Andromeda as she was being sacrificed to a sea monster. Perseus and Andromeda married and became ancestors to great kings and heroes of Greek myth, including Hercules.

A comprehensive account of the myth of Perseus and Medusa can be found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. There is an interesting analysis of the Medusa myth here: Medusa : Analysis

Medusa features in Rick Riordon’s The Lightning Thief; she is played by Uma Thurman in the film of the book. The myth of Perseus and Medusa has been filmed several times, including both versions of Clash of the Titans Clash of the Titans (1981 film) | Clash of the Titans (2010 film).

The Legend of Medusa and the Gorgons

Medusa

The myth of Perseus and Medusa

As others have noted, she’s a fictional character, and one with a wide variety of different stories, not all of which involve snake-hair. The question is further complicated by the fact that ancient Greek has essentially no words for colors (that’s why Homer talks about the “wine-dark sea” and “rosy-fingered Dawn.”) But let’s see what we do know:

On Greek vases, Medusa always has black hair, like most characters on Greek vases.

Perseus & Medusa

Perseus & Athena with the head of Medusa

Hesiod doesn’t mention a hair color: “Medusa who suffered a woeful fate: she was mortal, but the two were undying and grew not old. With her lay the Dark-haired One1in a soft meadow amid spring flowers. [280] And when Perseus cut off her head, there sprang forth great Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus”

Neither does Homer: “the chilling, horrifying and monstrous Gorgon’s head”

Ovid doesn’t either: “She was once most beautiful, and the jealous aspiration of many suitors. Of all her beauties none was more admired than her hair: I came across a man who recalled having seen her. They say that Neptune, lord of the seas, violated her in the temple of Minerva. Jupiter’s daughter turned away, and hid her chaste eyes behind her aegis. So that it might not go unpunished, she changed the Gorgon’s hair to foul snakes.”

I’d have to go with “black” then. Unless you mean the comic-book Medusa; she has red hair.

I’m not sure I can help you. As she was a beautiful woman, she probably was constantly coloring her hair. I never know what my wife will look like from day to day sometimes. :)

On a more serious note, I cannot think of a classical source that actually identifies the color of her hair. Ovid notes that she had gorgeous hair, and lists her among other women who were “golden haired.” But that designation was for the other women and may contribute to the assigning of golden hair to Medusa. Further, her image is sometimes mentioned as being made of gold (such as on Athena’s shield), but again this is not her mortal hair but something else.

So, if I were you, I would pick a color for your fiction and go with it.

Medusa was simply her name, likely given to her at birth by her parents, whoever we accept her parents to have been. The type of creature is called a gorgon.

As for how she became that way, there are basically two versions of the story.

The oldest ones is that she was born that way, as one of the three daughters daughters of Phorcys; one of the primordial sea gods and his sister Ceto. As such, the sisters were born monsters.

This version is likely a volcano myth: lava flowing from a mountain has in many mythologies been compared to hair and the sound that makes to the hissing of snakes. When she was decapitated (the top of a mountain explodes), two things sprung from her neck. One was a golden sword named Chrysaor (a lava fountain, similarly in norse mythology the “fire giant” Surtr, is said to carry a golden sword). The other was Pegasus (an ash cloud. Also note that since the name is derived from that of a Hittite storm god, this is likely a reference to a volcanic storm. Ash clouds tend to carry lots of electric charge making lightnings frequent in them).
Furthermore, note that getting caught by a volcanic eruption will basically “turn you to stone”

It should also be noted here in support of the volcano theories, that early depictions show her with a cauldron for a head (as shown on the image a bellow) - a detail that only makes sense with the volcanic origin.

The other version, that you can find in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is, that Medusa was once a beautiful priestess of Athena, that was raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. Then Athena punished her for it by turning her into a monster. And finally since that monster turned out to be a nuisance helped Perseus kill it.

I’m not a fan of that version. It seems to have been written after the original volcanic origins of the myth have been long forgotten to give Perseus’s villain a bit more of a backstory. This version still mentions her two sisters, but doesn’t really offer a single word of explanation on how they got that way.

You might find versions saying that Medusa was consensually having sex with Poseidon in Athena’s temple, thus giving her some of the blame, but those versions all seem to be of modern origin, trying to show Athena in a bit more positive light.

But the reality is, that the view that Medusa was deservedly punished for being raped (and by the goddess of wisdom) was in fact the view of whoever wrote this version and is clearly echoed in Ovid’s metamorphosis. While that view should rightfully horrify us, it also probably shouldn’t surprise as all that much, since even today some cultures (looking at Saudi Arabia here) will in fact blame the woman for being raped. That version of the story just shows that kind of misogyny is actually quite old.

Thank you ever so much for the question!!

Well, yes: her two siblings, Euryale and Stheno, who made up the other two-thirds of the Gorgon Trio, each had serpentine hair not unlike Medusa’s. However, whereas Medusa was mortal, and thus could succumb to her injuries (which she did against Perseus), the two lesser-known sisters were immortal (and, worryingly, more ferocious, according to many accounts).

The monster Echidna, who would become Typhon’s partner, was known to be a “half-woman, half-snake”, although what exact body parts were snakelike, and what were human remained unclear.

Scylla also had snake like projections from her body, although they were in place of her lower body/torso, rather than her hair.

Medusa was a Gorgon: creatures of Greek mythology, and we can choose to subscribe to the legend that she was a winged human with living venomous snakes in place of hair, and anyone who looked at her turned to stone. We can accept that, or we can question. Going to the hair salon with her must have been a nightmare with all those mirrors…

As a sci-fi writer, I have to propose probabilities (and create paradoxes):

As a scientific atheist, I believe that religion and science can co-exist in open, unconditioned fora. I believe, for example, that the Christian bible and other ancient religious texts, could be recordings of actual events, made by the scholars of the time using tools and languages available to them: Show a biblical scribe a tablet computer, and might they describe a magic mirror? Might flaming chariots and fire-breathing beasts have been spacecraft? If they’d had smart phones to record events, we’d have more evidence and there’d be less religious debate.

I don't deny myths any more than I do religious scripture, but I question and

prefer socialist debate over fascist confrontation or dismissal.

I subscribe to ancient alien theories, so what some refer to as God, I don't deny in anything but that deity's creation in man's mind. Just because I reject God in man's image, doesn't mean I deny a creator or designer of some kind, and believe that ancient man might have been visited (or brought here) by a superior intelligence, perhaps extraterrestrial.

In paintings on cave walls, and in ancient scripts and glyphs, we see fantastical creatures, many part-human or hybrid (Egyptian cat people, for example). Medusa could have been one of those.

The snakes might have been organic or technological protrusions, perhaps from a protective head covering, helmet, or space suit (look at Predator in the eponymous film). They may have been for breathing, or some sort of neural periscopes. Medusa could also have been a naked alien, with tentacles or cranial protrusions, long, slender forelimbs, and protruding scapula. She could have quite possibly been a deformed human, a freak.

Having never seen any of those before, the writers of the time said what they saw: a person with wings, and with snakes for hair. And if the myth were literally true, and Medusa really was a human with all those appendages, making such a being – whether organic or technological hybrid – would require knowledge far beyond our own.

If there were snakes on Medusa's head, it could have been just a crown. The snakes would most likely be asps, a modern derivation of aspis, which referred to many venomous snake species of the Nile region. It's generally accepted that asp refers to what is now known as the Egyptian cobra. If you got a bite from one of those, you'd probably rather turn to stone. The wings could perhaps have been an elaborate cloak. But unless the whole garb was worn by someone or some entity which had superhuman powers, that all seems rather pedestrian for the stuff of legend. I think Medusa, the Gorgons and many other tales have a grounding somewhere, even if that's just humanity's need to believe there's more out there.

What type of snakes were on Medusa's head? I don’t think they were the snakes we know, but described as such by observers who wouldn’t recognise technology or extraterrestrials.

Good answers here. I will chime in because Medusa is one of my faves from classical mythology. In addition to the other answers, some traditions delve further into her origins. One story tells us that Medusa was once a beautiful maiden. She was raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. As often the case in mythology, Athena blamed Medusa for the incident and turned her into a Gorgon. Of the three Gorgons (the others were named Stheno and Euryale), she alone was mortal and eventually met her end at the hands of the hero Perseus.(1) So you could add a layer of tragedy to the list.

That being said, she was mostly scary because of her hideous form. Warriors wore the image of Gorgons on their shields and armor for protection. Check out this piece of the Alexander Mosaic from the 1st century BCE. You can see the Gorgon on his armor. Very cool.

(1) I took this telling from a good book on the subject Oh My Gods: A Modern Retelling of Greek and Roman Myths By Philip Freeman

Most modern origin story for Medusa comes from the Ovid's Metamorphoses where Poseidon raped the beautiful Medusa in the temple of Athena. Supposedly in retaliation for being beaten when the citizen of Athens chose Athena as their patron deity. Athena, angered for her temple being disrespected can't exactly take revenge against Poseidon so she punished Medusa instead and two other priestess by turning them into the gorgons. Medusa cursed with snakes as hair and eyes that can turn living things into stone. She was beheaded by the hreek hero Perseus and from her severed neck sprung out pegasus the winged horse and chrysaor.

However according to the older sources of greek mythology from Hesiod's theogony Medusa and her two sisters, Euryale and Stheno have always been born a gorgon. Between the three of them, only Medusa is mortal.

There are a couple of legends that explains how Medusa got snakes for hair. However the most comprehensive account can be found in Ovid's work titled Metamorphoses. In this account, Ovid describes Medusa as originally being a beautiful maiden. Her beauty caught the eye of the great sea god Poseidon who desired her and proceeded to ravage her in the shrine of Athena. When Athena discovered that her shrine had been desecrated, she sought vengeance by transforming Medusa's hair into snakes. Ovid aptly describes it in his work Metamorphoses:

Medusa once had charms; to gain her love

A rival crowd of envious lovers strove.

They, who have seen her, own, they ne'er did trace

More moving features in a sweeter face

Yet above her, her length of hair they own

In a golden ringlets wav'd, and graceful shone.

Thanks for the question!!

Medusa has been utilised as a character by Ancient Greek and Roman writers in several different ways, and thus has several conflicting origin stories, purposes, and roles (etcetera), none of which are as a deity.

However, she was indeed a representation of many important concepts in Ancient Greek culture, such as: chaos, villainy and pain, brought on by her reputation as the leader of her equally terrifying sisters, the Gorgons; snakes, and serpentine attributes such as cunning, slyness, and toxicity; and victimhood, a side of Medusa that the Roman poet Ovid introduced in her origin story, where she was described as a beautiful priestess who was raped and subsequently abandoned by Poseidon (before Athena, the niece of the Oceanic god, reluctantly transformed her into a hideous monster in order to punish her for her involvement in a sexual act in a religious temple, which also added an element of injustice and misjudgement to the character’s personality).

Vipers.

Vipers were considered to be the most venomous and feared snakes of the ancient Greece. Almost every feared and hideous monsters the Greek mythology had, were viper containing monsters, like kampe and many others.

Always humanoid. The earliest depictions -until the 4th century BC-were of bearded, tusked, winged, humanoids with protruding tongues and gigantic eyes.

Later on, more realistic art displaced stylization, and she became more human

With Ovid’s Metamorphoses adding a tragic version of her backstory, depictions showed beauty mixed with hideousness

Cellini added pathos and duality to the depiction, making Medusa resemble Perseus https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Perseus_Cellini_Loggia_dei_Lanzi_2005_09_13.jpg

Modern fictional depictions vary: more alien, monstrous forms add terror to the character in the “Mind Robber” episode of Dr. Who

and Ray Harryhausen’s more serpentlike depiction in Clash of the Titans

Or more subtly hideous depictions like in Hammer Picture’s The Gorgon

More recently, with modern culture’s obsession with beauty, the monster has again been turned more comely to contrast the hideous serpent nature with human beauty such as in the film depiction of Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief

And the 2010 remake of Clash of the Titans

What will Medusa look like next? It all depends on the angle of her creators

Medusa character was broadly used in the context similar to the function of an “evil eye" to ward of evil substances or negative energy to stay at bay .

According to Greek mythology written at various ancient texts and hieroglyphics medusa was one among the Gorgon sisters whose parents were keto and phorkys(who were assumed to be primitive sea gods) .

But unfortunately among the three medusa was mortal being while the other two stheno and Euryale were immortal beings .This was a blow to medusa from the very beginning above the point that she has hair made up of snakes that already made her the uggliest being to look at during her period .She was so dreadful that even a look at her face made people into stones or petrified by themselves.

So the story goes like this , that a weird and dishonourable king the Greek kingdom demanded a very peculiar thing from the Greek hero Perseus to bring him the ugly head of medusa as a souvenir .

With blessings and celestial tools presented to him by gods he mounted on the endeavour to get medusa's to the king by an army .They attacked fiercely and he used a steel shield to not look at medusas petrifying look directly to get trapped and die and Ultimately he was able to kill and behead the head of medusa .

But this violent act resulted in the birth of medusas children , the flying horse Pegasus and the giant chrysaor .The last one jumped out of her neck though.

But the immortal sisters persued Perseus to kill him all thorough the road but he managed to escape death by using Hermes's winged boots and hood and the power of invisibility .To prevent getting dead himself he closed medusa's head inside a strong bad cause it was still active even after getting beheaded .

He used her head to kill his enemies and rescued princess Andromeda from a deadly sea monster by petrifying that creature and gifted the head to Athena ultimately.

Thank you

As far as I can discover, no specific answer exists or has ever existed to this question. Assuming however that Medusa was a mythical (rather than a real) being, that is not surprising. Given however the fact that the snakes were venomous, and can be assumed to occur in Greece, we can make some intelligent guesses.

I find (using Google) that “The snakes someone might meet in Crete is the Balkan whip snake, the dice-snake, the cat snake and the leopard snake. Among them, only the cat snake has venom, but it is very weak and actually harmless. ... In Crete, it is called ochentri, which means viper, which is incorrect as the snake is completely harmless.” So either we go with the cat snake/ochentri or else we look further afield. And I am afraid that my knowledge of Medusan myth is insufficient to know what other areas to consider.

Medusa's beautiful hair was turned into venomous snakes And her gorgeous face into a twisted form so hideous as to turn any who gazed upon it to stone. ... Most notably because her hair is snakes to invert her beauty into something horrible, she was noted to have beautiful hair, and it was distorted and twisted.

Medusa, in Greek mythology, the most famous of the monster figures known as Gorgons. She was usually represented as a winged female creature having a head of hair consisting of snakes; unlike the Gorgons, she was sometimes represented as very beautiful.

In Greek mythology, Medusa was a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as a winged human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. ... Her hair of snakes and reptilian skin is symbolic of the natural cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.

When Medusa had an affair with the sea god Poseidon, Athena punished her. She turned Medusa into a hideous hag, making her hair into writhing snakes and her skin was turned a greenish hue. ... The hero Perseus was sent on a quest to kill Medusa.

In later myths (mainly in Ovid) Medusa was the only Gorgon to possess snake locks because they were a punishment from Athena. Accordingly, Ovid relates that the once beautiful mortal was punished by Athena with a hideous appearance and loathsome snakes for hair for having been raped in Athena's temple by Poseidon.

Medusa = 🇦🇱 Me Hardhuca 🇦🇱 = With Lizards