Mušḫuššu
The mušḫuššu is the scaly, horned dragon of ancient Mesopotamia, with a serpent's head, lion forelegs, and eagle talons, best known as the sacred beast of Marduk on Babylon's Ishtar Gate.
| Also known as | Mushhushshu, Mushussu, Sirrush, Dragon of Marduk, Dragon of Babylon |
|---|---|
| Type | hybrid |
| Tradition | Mesopotamian (Akkadian, Babylonian) |
| Category | Myth |
| Associated with | Ishtar Gate, Babylon (Iraq) |
| Earliest source | Akkadian-period cylinder seals and images of the god Ninazu's beast, c. 2300–2150 BCE |
| Wings | No |
| Breathes fire | No |
| Guards treasure | No |
| Nature | Ambivalent |
The Story
The mušḫuššu is less a character with its own adventures than a divine animal that belonged, in turn, to several Mesopotamian gods. Its name is Akkadian, borrowed from a Sumerian phrase usually translated "furious snake" or "reddish snake." Like many monsters of Mesopotamian myth, it seems to have started as a dangerous creature that a god defeated and then kept as a servant and symbol.
In the Enūma Eliš, the Babylonian creation epic, the mušḫuššu is one of the eleven monsters that the sea goddess Tiamat creates to fight the gods. After Marduk defeats Tiamat, the dragon becomes his. From then on it appears at Marduk's feet in Babylonian art, and later also with his son Nabu, god of writing.
Appearance and Powers
Artists drew the mušḫuššu with remarkable consistency for more than 1,500 years. It has a long, slender, scaly body and neck; a snake's head with a forked tongue and a horn, or a pair of horns, curling back from the top; front legs like a lion's; hind legs with the talons of a bird of prey; and a long tail, sometimes ending in a scorpion-like sting. It has no wings and does not breathe fire. It carries no particular story of hoarding or speech.
Origins and Sources
The creature first appears in the Akkadian period, in the late third millennium BCE, as the beast of Ninazu, a god of the underworld and healing. It then passed to Tishpak, the god of the city of Eshnunna. When Hammurabi's Babylon absorbed Eshnunna in the 18th century BCE, the dragon was taken over by Marduk. Its history shows how symbols moved with political power: after the Assyrian king Sennacherib sacked Babylon in 689 BCE, the mušḫuššu was shown with the Assyrian god Ashur as well.
Its most famous images are on the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, built under Nebuchadnezzar II around 575 BCE. Rows of molded, glazed-brick mušḫuššu alternate with wild bulls on the walls of the gate, while lions line the Processional Way. German archaeologists led by Robert Koldewey excavated the site between 1899 and 1917, and the gate was rebuilt in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Koldewey, struck by how consistent the images were, even wondered whether the Babylonians had seen a real animal. The once-popular name "sirrush" comes from an early misreading of the cuneiform signs.
Legacy
The mušḫuššu is one of the oldest dragons with a stable, recognizable body, and it is often cited as an ancestor of the four-legged dragons of later Near Eastern and European art. Some writers have linked it to the dragon in the story of Daniel in Babylon, though there is no evidence that a living animal was ever kept in a temple. See also Draconika's species entry and dragons of the ancient Near East.
Related
- 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.
- Dragon of Bel and the Dragon: The dragon of Bel and the Dragon is a great serpent worshipped as a living god in Babylon, which the prophet Daniel kills by feeding it cakes of pitch, fat, and hair until it bursts.
- 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.
- Basilisk: The basilisk is a legendary "king of serpents" from Roman natural history and medieval bestiaries, a small crowned snake so venomous that its glance, breath, or touch could kill.
- Dragon Species
- The History of Dragons
- Tannin and the Prophet Daniel
Sources and Further Reading
- Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary (British Museum Press, 1992)
- F. A. M. Wiggermann, Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts (Styx, 1992)
- Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford World's Classics, 1989)
- Robert Koldewey, The Excavations at Babylon, trans. Agnes S. Johns (Macmillan, 1914)
Cite this entry: “Mušḫuššu,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/mushhushshu.