page_title: Serpents in the Bible
section_title: Serpents in Mesopotamian mythology
hierarchical_section_title: Serpents in the Bible / Serpents in Mesopotamian mythology
caption_attribution_description: A scan from a 35mm transparency which I took at the exquisite Romanesque church of Saint Mary and Saint David in Kilpeck, Herefordshire, England in 1989. It shows a detail of the carvings on the arch above the south door, depicting five linked serpents swallowing each other's tails, a dragon swallowing its own tail, and part of the linked outer border of lion heads above it. The motif inside the ring is a curious "lion-bird", apparently a damaged winged lion's body repaired with a bird's head taken from elsewhere. Carved during the mid 12th century AD (late Norman period) by an unknown sculptor of the "Herfordshire School".
context_page_description: Serpents are referred to in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The symbol of a serpent or snake played important roles in religious and cultural life of ancient Egypt, Canaan, Mesopotamia and Greece. The serpent was a symbol of evil power and chaos from the underworld as well as a symbol of fertility, life and healing. נחש Nāḥāš, Hebrew for "snake", is also associated with divination, including the verb form meaning "to practice divination or fortune-telling". In the Hebrew Bible, Nāḥāš occurs in the Torah to identify the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, it is also used in conjunction with seraph to describe vicious serpents in the wilderness. The tannin, a dragon monster, also occurs throughout the Hebrew Bible. In the Book of Exodus, the staffs of Moses and Aaron are turned into serpents, a nāḥāš for Moses, a tannin for Aaron. In the New Testament, the Book of Revelation makes use of ancient serpent and the Dragon several times to identify Satan or the devil. The serpent is most often identified with the hubristic Satan, and sometimes with Lilith.
context_section_description: In one of the oldest stories ever written, the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh loses the power of immortality, stolen by a snake. The serpent was a widespread figure in the mythology of the Ancient Near East. Ouroboros is an ancient symbol of a serpent eating its own tail that represents the perpetual cyclic renewal of life, the eternal return, and the cycle of life, death and rebirth, leading to immortality.
  Archaeologists have uncovered serpent cult objects in Bronze Age strata at several pre-Israelite cities in Canaan: two at Tel Megiddo, one at Gezer, one in the sanctum sanctorum of the Area H temple at Hazor, and two at Shechem. In the surrounding region, a late Bronze Age Hittite shrine in northern Syria contained a bronze statue of a god holding a serpent in one hand and a staff in the other. In sixth-century Babylon, a pair of bronze serpents flanked each of the four doorways of the temple of Esagila. At the Babylonian New Year festival, the priest was to commission from a woodworker, a metalworker and a goldsmith two images one of which "shall hold in its left hand a snake of cedar, raising its right [hand] to the god Nabu". At the tell of Tepe Gawra, at least seventeen Early Bronze Age Assyrian bronze serpents were recovered. The Sumerian fertility god Ningizzida was sometimes depicted as a serpent with a human head, eventually becoming a god of healing and magic.
caption: Ouroboros, single and in pairs at SS Mary and David's Church, England
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