2014/09/10 by Robert D. Miller · 3 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Ancient Near East History #Ancient history #Arabic #Archaeology #Classics #Eurasian Exchange Networks #History #Hittite language #Honour #Linguistics and language evolution #Mesopotamia #Middle East #Mythology #Philosophy #Semitic languages #Sumerian
paper · open access · doi:10.47979/aror.j.82.2.437-458
published in Archiv orientální 82(2), 437-458 (Oriental Institute, ASCR)
openalex publication_date 2014/09/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02
Calvert Watkins definitively illustrated the connections between the Vedics laying of the dragon Vr̥tra by the thunder-god Indra and the storm-god dragon slaying myths of the both ancient Iran (Aži Dahāka) and Indo-European Hittites (Illuyanka). But there are actually two Hittite dragon-slaying myths – the other, Hurrian in origin, concerning the storm god Teshub – and the relationship between the two remains unclear. The Hurrian-Hittite myth clearly underlies the Canaanite storm-god dragon slaying, but the connection of the latter to an independent Semitic dragon-slaying myth is also unclear. Is there a separate Semitic myth at all, or does the dissemination of these mythological motifs all go back to Indo-European Hittites and Indo-Europeans among the Hurrians? And if there is a Semitic myth, did it disseminate from the Levant southeastward to Mesopotamia with the spread of the Amorites in the early 2nd millennium or was there an originally-Sumerian dragon-slaying myth already in Southern Mesopotamia? And what are we to do when specificmotifsoftheearliest Mesopotamian form reappear in the late Iranian Shahname? This essay tracks the dragon across the ancient Near East, as similar myths fed into each other, their elements interweaving and combining in new forms.