Chronos was the primeval god of time, a divinity who emerged self-formed at the beginning of creation in the Orphic cosmogonies. Chronos was imagined as an incorporeal god, serpentine in form, with three heads--that of a man, a bull, and a lion. He and his consort, serpentine Ananke (Inevitability), circled the primal world-egg in their coils and split it apart to form the ordered universe of earth, sea and sky. Chronos and Ananke continued to circle the cosmos after creation-their passage driving the circling of heaven and the eternal passage of time.
