Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Hypnos.
The gallery
Sleep and His Half-Brother Death
John William Waterhouse, 1874
An early oil painting by John William Waterhouse depicting Hypnos and his brother Thanatos, Sleep and Death, resting side by side in a dim chamber. Sleep, in the lamplight, holds poppies in his lap, while Death lies in shadow behind him; their near-identical faces draw out the ancient kinship between the two brothers.
Hypnos and Thanatos Carry Sarpedon (Euphronios Krater)
Euphronios, c. 515 BC
An Attic red-figure calyx-krater painted by Euphronios and potted by Euxitheos, counted among the masterpieces of Greek vase painting. The principal scene, drawn from Homer's Iliad, shows the winged brothers Hypnos and Thanatos lifting the body of the slain hero Sarpedon from the Trojan battlefield under the direction of Hermes. Long displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the krater was repatriated to Italy in 2008 and is now shown at Cerveteri, near the necropolis from which it was looted.
Bronze Head of Hypnos
Roman copy after a Hellenistic original, 1st–2nd century AD
A bronze head of Hypnos with a wing springing from his temple, the god's distinguishing attribute, his downcast features evoking the gentle onset of sleep. It is a Roman copy after a lost Hellenistic original; the celebrated bronze it reproduces is held in the British Museum, and the photograph shows a cast moulded from that head.
In play
Hypnosis
English hypnosis and hypnotic descend from Hypnos — the gentle god of sleep whose name still names the induced trance.
Hades
Supergiant Games
Supergiant's underworld keeps Hypnos as the drowsy clerk of the House of Hades — Sleep napping on the job while shades check in.