With Halloween so close, I start to think about classic monsters. Frankenstein, the Mummy, Zombies; there are so many. Two of the most iconic are Vampires and Werewolves. In pop culture, they are known to have an ancient rivalry, the two species constantly battling each other. This got me thinking: When did this rivalry start?
Through research, I discovered that werewolves and vampires have different origins in different cultures. The earliest depictions of vampires I could find dates back to Ancient Mesopotamia, around 3000 BCE. These were vengeful spirits of the undead that were denied proper burial rites and now roam the living, draining them of their life force.Â
Then in Egypt, around 1500 BCE, the Goddess Sekhmet was depicted as drinking blood to lower her appetite for war. After that, we have various different folklore from around the world referring to creatures of the dead that rise to drain the living of their lives, similar to the Mesopotamian creatures. However, the term “Vampire” hadn’t been used yet, with the creatures being referred to as demonic entities until the early 1700s. In 1819, Lord Byron wrote The Vampyre, the first example of the monster in literature. After that, Bram Stoker’s famous Dracula was released in 1897, solidifying vampires as a horror staple.
Werewolves have a different origin. They have roots dating back to The Epic of Gilgamesh in 2100 BCE, where a shepherd is transformed into a wolf by a goddess after Gilgamesh upsets her. Greek Mythology has a few different tales of men turning into wolves, with the most well known being a myth that tells the story of King Lycaon, who was also transformed into a wolf after insulting Zeus.Â
As the years went on, werewolves became associated with an assortment of different things; punishment for wrong doings, helpers of Gods, and products of witches and Satan. There were many different versions with very different backgrounds and underlying themes, but all of these werewolves were humans that turned into wolves.
With different origins, that leaves the question: How did vampires and werewolves become mortal enemies? During the Classic Universal Monster area of the 1930s and 1940s, Dracula and the Wolf-Man appeared together on screen, one film having the two on opposing sides. In the 1970s, the soap opera Dark Shadows added werewolves to their vampire centred story, Vampire: The Masquerade in 1991 added to the conflict, and finally in 2003, The Underworld had an all-out war between werewolves and vampires, complete with lore made up for the film explaining their rivalry.Â
While The Underworld may perhaps be not as well known to the public today, The Twilight Saga solidified the hatred between vampires and werewolves with the release of its second book, New Moon, in 2006, with the help of Van Helsing in 2004. Ever since then, the two creatures are frequently depicted as being arch-enemies whenever the two are shown on screen together.
It’s funny to think that what the public thinks is a centuries long rivalry, has only truly existed for just over 20 years. Maybe we will see a movie with the two creatures as allies, maybe they are now doomed to be enemies, all because of a pop culture misconception. No matter what, there are always interesting stories to be told with the vampires and werewolves.
Sources
Vampires, werewolves and the undead: the ancient origins of horror creatures – Nexus Newsfeed