The Siren

The earliest mermaid legends come from Syria around 1000BC, when goddess Atargatis dove into a lake and took on the form of a fish, but the gods would not allow her to lose her divine beauty, so only her bottom half became a fish and she kept her top half as a human. Since then there have been more and more legends of mermaids, sometimes they are helpful sea allies and often times legend has them luring sea men and sailors to their deaths.