Lotan

Lotan, properly Litan, is the seven-headed sea serpent of Canaanite myth known from the clay tablets of Ugarit, defeated by the storm god Baal and his sister Anat, and the forerunner of the biblical Leviathan.

The Story

Lotan is known from only a few lines of poetry, but they are some of the most important lines in the history of dragons. They come from the Baal Cycle, a group of myths about the storm god Baal written in cuneiform on clay tablets at Ugarit, a wealthy trading city on the coast of what is now Syria.

In one passage, Mot, the god of death, reminds Baal of an earlier victory: "When you struck Litan, the fleeing serpent, finished off the twisting serpent, the mighty one with seven heads..." In another, Baal's sister Anat, the warrior goddess, boasts of her own triumphs: she has crushed Yam, the sea god, destroyed the dragon (tunnanu), and finished off the twisting serpent with seven heads. The two passages suggest that the defeat of the many-headed sea serpent was a well-known story, credited to both deities, even though no full telling of it has survived.

Appearance and Powers

The texts tell us only that Lotan was a serpent, that it "fled" and "twisted," that it was mighty, and that it had seven heads. It belongs to the world of Yam, the sea, and stands for the dangerous, untamed waters that the storm god must master to bring order and rain. The vowels of the name are uncertain because Ugaritic writing omits most of them. "Lotan" is the traditional reading; most scholars now prefer "Litan."

Origins and Sources

Ugarit was rediscovered in 1928, when a farmer struck an ancient tomb near Ras Shamra, and French excavations led by Claude Schaeffer began the next year. The Baal tablets date to the 14th or 13th century BCE, and many were copied by a scribe named Ilimilku. Older images show that the idea of a seven-headed serpent killed by gods goes back even further: a cylinder seal of the third millennium BCE from Tell Asmar in Iraq shows two figures attacking a seven-headed serpent.

Legacy

Lotan's greatest importance is its connection to the Bible. Isaiah 27:1 promises that God will punish "Leviathan the fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent" and slay "the dragon that is in the sea." The wording matches the Ugaritic lines so closely that scholars agree the Hebrew writers knew the older Canaanite tradition, and that Lotan and Leviathan are the same name. Psalm 74 speaks of the "heads" of Leviathan, and the seven heads return in the dragon of Revelation. For the full story, see Leviathan and Dragons in the Bible.

Related

• Leviathan: Leviathan is the great sea monster of the Hebrew Bible, a fire-breathing, scale-armored serpent of the deep that only God can tame, descended from the Canaanite sea serpent Lotan.
• Rahab: Rahab is a primeval sea monster named in the Hebrew Bible, a symbol of the raging, arrogant sea that God crushed at creation, and later a poetic nickname for Egypt.
• Tiamat: Tiamat is the primordial salt-water sea goddess of the Babylonian creation epic Enūma Eliš, who raised an army of monsters against the gods and was split in two by Marduk to make heaven and earth.
• Great Red Dragon of Revelation: The Great Red Dragon is the seven-headed, ten-horned dragon of the Book of Revelation, identified as Satan, who wars against heaven, is cast down by the archangel Michael, and is finally thrown into the lake of fire.
• Lernaean Hydra: The Lernaean Hydra is a many-headed water serpent of Greek myth that grew new heads when one was cut off, killed by Heracles and Iolaus as his second labor.
• Leviathan
• Dragons in the Bible
• The History of Dragons

Sources and Further Reading

• Simon B. Parker, ed., Ugaritic Narrative Poetry (Scholars Press, 1997)
• Mark S. Smith and Wayne T. Pitard, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, Volume II: Introduction with Text, Translation and Commentary of KTU/CAT 1.3–1.4 (Brill, 2009)
• John Day, God's Conflict with the Dragon and the Sea: Echoes of a Canaanite Myth in the Old Testament (Cambridge University Press, 1985)
• Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, eds., Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed. (Brill/Eerdmans, 1999), s.v. "Leviathan"

Cite this entry: “Lotan,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/lotan.