Chronos

KHRONOS (Chronos) was the primordial god of time. In the Orphic cosmogony he emerged self-formed at the dawn of creation. Khronos was envisaged as an incorporeal god, serpentine in form, with three heads--that of a man, a bull, and a lion. He and his consort, the serpentine goddess Ananke (Inevitability), enveloped the primordial world-egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky. After this act of creation the couple circled the cosmos driving the rotation of heaven and the eternal passage of time.

The figure of Khronos was essentially a cosmological double of the Titan Kronos (Cronus) ("Father Time"). The Orphics sometimes merged Khronos with the creator-god Phanes, and also equated him with the Titan Ophion. His equivalent in the Phoenician cosmogony was probably Olam (Eternal Time) whose name is written Oulomos in Greek transcripts.

Khronos was depicted in Greco-Roman mosaic as Aion (Aeon), eternity personified. He holds a wheel inscribed with the signs of the zodiac and Gaia (Mother Earth) usually reclines at his feet. The poet Nonnus describes Aion as an old man with long, white hair and a beard but mosaic-art presents a youthful figure.