Dragons of the Ishtar Gate

Some folks say that dragons never existed. They claim that stories about dragons are either totally fictional fantasies or symbols and allegories for epic struggles (such as, good against evil or Christianity against paganism). If we are going to dismiss the stories with dragons, what can we say about the ancient images?
In 1902, German archaeologist Robert Koldewey achieved great acclaim for excavating historic sites in Iraq including the walls of the ancient city of Babylon, the original “Tower of Babel,” the palace of King Nebuchadnezzar and the foundations of what Koldewey thought was the Hanging Gardens (one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World). As Koldewey unearthed the walls around the great city, he uncovered a spectacular gateway covered with blue glazed tiles and a broad processional roadway leading through the gate and into the heart of the city. Parts of this impressive ancient gate and road, dating back to approximately 600 BC, have been reconstructed in Berlin using many materials from the archaeological excavation while a smaller reproduction of the gate was reconstructed in Iraq (but has been damaged by the war).

The beautiful blue gate and the processional have relief carvings of three animals; lions along the road, with aurochs (a species of now-extinct cattle) and some unidentified animals on the gate. These animals are currently believed to be sirrush (or dragons), in part because of the region’s connection with Marduk. See “Tiamat: Babylonian Dragon of Creation.”
The patron builder of these mighty works was the same King Nebuchadnezzar from the Book of Daniel in the King James Version of the Bible. In other texts not included in the King James Version of the Bible, there are additional stories of Daniel and the King of Babylon from this same time frame. In the apocryphal story, “Bel and the Dragon,” the King of Babylon owned a dragon which the people revered. The king confronted Daniel regarding the dragon, asking why Daniel would not also worship this dragon. Daniel never denied that the dragon was real but refuted the claim that the dragon was a deity to be worshipped. Daniel fed the dragon barley cakes with pitch (tar) that burst open upon consumption and kills the dragon. This act may have been what led to Daniel’s famous punishment of being thrown into the lion’s den, from which he emerged unharmed through miraculous intervention of Daniel’s Hebrew God.
It seems remarkable that there can be these references to an ancient animal that never existed alongside animals that obviously do (or did) exist, as is the case with the Ishtar Gate. The confrontation with Daniel and the King of Babylon never debates the physical presence of a dragon, only the question of the extent of its power. Perhaps dragons once existed and have since been hunted to extinction, like the aurochs.
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Sea-Monsters in Greek Mythology

SOME FOLKS SAY that we know very little about what lies within the depths of the ocean, and that our oceans remain one of the great frontiers for exploration. Mariners have told tales of many fantastic creatures from the deep. The giant squid, for instance, has only been scientifically documented within the 21st century. Who knows what else may yet lurk beneath the waves?

In the Ancient Greek tales, there were various references to sea monsters which appear to resemble dragons.
To modern star-gazers, King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia may be best known as two of the constellations in the northern sky. In Greek mythology, the pair ruled over Ethiopia. Queen Cassiopeia bragged on herself about her beauty, until she ultimately brought the wrath of the gods onto her lands and her people. This vengeance came in the form of a dreadful sea-monster, named Cetus, who devoured both humans and animals. To placate the gods and the sea-monster, King Cepheus chained his daughter Andromeda to a rock on the shore as a sacrifice.

It was at this propitious moment that our hero, Perseus, entered the story.

Perseus was on his way home from an encounter with the Gorgon, Medussa. Freeing Andromeda and vanquishing the monster, Perseus claimed the maiden for his wife. Andromeda, however, was promised to another. Of course, that turns into a messy fight later on, but that is another story.

Hercules also battled with a sea-monster. In this story, Hercules (like Perseus) was on his way home from a previous adventure, an expedition against the Amazon warriors. Similarly, he found a princess chained to a rock as an appeasement to the sea-monster. This damsel in distress was Princess Hesione, daughter of King Laomedon of Troy. Hercules bargained with King Laomedon that he would rescue the princess and slay the dreaded beast in exchange for some wonderful horses that had been given to the King by Zeus. The King agreed and Hercules engaged the sea-monster in horrible combat. The beast swallowed Hercules but, in proper heroic form, Hercules continued slashing at the beast from the inside until he emerged victorious from the belly of the monster.

With the crisis past, however, King Laomedon reneged on his bargain and refused to give Hercules his prize. This act was not only without honor, but clearly showed a serious lack of any understanding of the consequences of double-crossing a hero. Hercules returned with an army and sacked the city of Troy, killing King Laomedon. Rather than keep the princess for himself, Hercules gave Princess Hesione as a prize to his friend Prince Telamon, who may have been among the war party.

If you think you may have heard some of these themes before, consider this interesting connection: The sea-monster that Perseus confronted was named "Cetus," or sometimes "ketos" (which means "huge fish") and is very closely related to the term used in the Hebrew texts of the Biblical story of Jonah.

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The Curious History of Chang Lung

SOME FOLKS SAY that dragons are fire-breathing calamities. But the Oriental dragon is most often a benevolent guardian usually associated with waters and rain.

During the reign of the fourth T'ang emperor, Chung Tsung, around the year 684 AD, there lived an honorable man named Chang Lung. He was beloved by his wife and two sons, and highly respected by all the townspeople who knew him. Although he was a judge in the local court, Chang Lung enjoyed spending time in the temple. As time went on, the man spent more and more time at the temple after work, often staying all night.

One morning, Chang Lung's family was shocked to see him come home dripping wet. As astonishing as his wet appearance was, his tale was even more amazing. As his surprised family questioned him, Chang Lung explained that he had begun metamorphosing into a dragon. In his dragon form, he had become the guardian and protector of his village. But now he was being challenged by another dragon and needed his sons to help him defeat his foe.

The two sons agreed to fight alongside their father and returned with him the following evening to the temple, armed with bows and arrows. Their father tied a red ribbon to himself so they could recognize him in his dragon form. In front of their incredulous eyes, Chang Lung turned into his dragon form and was immediately confronted by another dragon. Seeing the red ribbon that marked their honored father, the sons shot their arrows into the rival dragon and killed it.

From that time, Chang Lung remained at the temple as protector of the village. The temple was enlarged in 894 AD and again in 1091 AD by a grateful community in honor of their guardian benefactor.

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GWIBER & Y DDRAIG GOCH, a tale of two dragons

SOME FOLKS SAY that the red dragon on the Welsh flag is a depiction of the dragon Y Draig Goch from this popular local legend. In the folklore of Wales, there are two versions of this story of two great dragons, Gwiber and Y Ddraig Goch. This one is the later, more popular, version dating from 1147 in the "Historia Regnum Britanniae" by Geoffrey of Monmouth.

During the fifth century AD, the pagan tyrant Vortigern and his Saxon hordes were fervent about conquering and claiming the whole of the British Isles. Upon arriving in Snowdonia in the Welsh mountains, Vortigern decided to build a castle fortress on a hill overlooking the Llyn Dinas River. But every morning, the stones that had been erected the day before were knocked down. Again, Vortigern would order his men to lay the foundations to build the fortress. Daily, the men would work hard to erect the proposed towers. Yet every morning, their work would lie in rubble.

Merlin, the sorcerer of King Arthur legends, then just a young boy, told Vortigern that the difficulty came from the two dragons that dwelt in a pool of water hidden within a cave beneath the site. Vortigern's men dug and found the cave with a pool, exactly as Merlin had said, and two dragons locked in combat within. One dragon, named Gwiber, was a white dragon and the other was a red dragon, named Y Ddraig Goch. As the men watched, the red dragon defeated the white dragon and drove him from the cavern through the hole that had just been broken into the underground cave.

According to Merlin, the white dragon represented the invading forces of Vortigern and the Saxons, and the red dragon symbolized the guardian of Wales and the cave itself corresponded to the British Isles. The prophecy of the dragons was that the invading Saxons would ultimately be defeated and driven from Britain (which never happened). It is not a great stretch of the imagination to understand why the Red Dragon of Wales, Y Ddraig Goch, would become the guardian symbol of Wales, popular in the local folklore and prominently displayed on the Welsh flag.

Interestingly, archeological excavations in the region during the mid-1950s found a castle fortress as described in the Historia Regnum Britanniae, including a pool inside a cave within the thick walls of the mighty stone structure.

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TIAMAT: Babylonian Dragon of Creation

SOME FOLKS SAY that the serpent in the Garden of Eden is a thinly veiled reference to Tiamat. It's unknowable, of course, but it makes some sense that it might be so - since there are two competing creation stories from the Middle East.

In the creation mythology of ancient Babylon, as told in the Enuma Elish tablets, the world was created by Apsu and Tiamat. Apsu was the male spirit of fresh water and emptiness, and Tiamat was the female spirit of salt water and chaos, embodied in a great serpentine dragon. Between them were the heavens and earth created and all the living things conceived, including the gods.

Some of the god-children were rowdy and unruly, causing a great clamor. Apsu and Tiamat were disturbed by their commotion. Apsu suggested that they should kill some of their rowdy children, but Tiamat indulged her boisterous children and rejected the plan. One of their god-children, Ea, had the power to foresee the future. So Ea could foresee that Apsu intended to kill him and so, to save himself, he rose up and killed Apsu.

This enraged Tiamat who swore to avenge Apsu's death. But Ea could foresee that, too, so he enlisted the aid of Marduk, the most powerful of the gods, to help him defend against Tiamat's fury. Tiamat created a horde of great monsters, dragons, and demons to fight Ea, but in the end the ultimate conflict came down to mortal combat between Tiamat and Marduk.

Marduk rode into the conflict in a chariot pulled by four fierce horses, accompanied by the four winds. He brought with him a bow that shot arrows of lightning. When Tiamat opened her great jaws to swallow Marduk whole, Marduk threw one of the winds down her throat, blasting her mouth wide open. He then shot one of his lightning arrows down her open throat directly into her heart.

Mortally wounded, Tiamat cried great tears as she fell; tears of grief for her fallen Apsu and sorrow for herself, slain at the hands of her own children. Marduk crushed her skull and dismembered Tiamat's body, using part of it to roof up the sky thus forming the Milky Way. Her crying eyes became the source waters for the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. And so it has been ever since.

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YOFUNE-NUSHI

SOME FOLKS SAY that Yofune-Nushi was a dragon; others insist that this is a tale about a sea serpent. Some stories call this a local demi-god. Perhaps this is a sea serpent that could come up onto the land, or a demi-god with the ability to affect the weather and cause storms to stir the seas. Whichever it was, and it seems a senseless debate, this Japanese legend tells a story of a dreaded dragon-like creature with a taste for human flesh, especially for young females ...

Yofune-Nushi lived in a cave by the sea along the coast of the Oki Islands, volcanic islands in the southwestern region of the Sea of Japan. From his seaside cave, Yofune-Nushi stirred up storms and made the seas unsafe for fishing boats. For the islanders, this was a great distress as much of their food and livelihoods depended on the sea. An arrangement was made that a young maiden should be sacrificed to Yofune-Nushi every year, on the thirteenth of June. It's not clear if the dragon spoke Japanese, or exactly how this bargain was struck originally, but the legend holds that Yofune-Nushi would fly into a fit of temper, bringing a devastating storm that would sink the entire village's fishing fleet, if the sacrifice was not made on the specified date.

One year, sometime around 1320 A.D., a beautiful young maiden named Tokoyo came to the island. She was searching for her father, a powerful samurai named Oribe Shima. Oribe Shima had offended the great warlord, Hojo Takatoki, and had been banished to these distant islands. His eighteen-year-old daughter Tokoyo, weeping for her beloved father, had left their family home in the Shima Province by the sea. Raised beside the sea among the pearl divers of Shima Province, Tokoyo was a skilled swimmer since childhood. She was also brave and fearless. Many weeks she travelled to the Oki Islands and there she searched everywhere among the islands for any sign of her father.

One evening, Tokoyo found a peaceful spot and lay down to sleep. Presently, she was awakened to the sound of sobbing girl. Tokoyo saw a young maiden, about fifteen years old, accompanied by a priest. Both were dressed in white robes. She stepped boldly forward, inquiring why the girl was in such distress. The priest explained that it was his unfortunate duty to cast the young girl into the sea, as part of an important sacrificial ceremony to Yorfune-Nushi that Tokoyo had interrupted. Boldly, Tokoyo took the ceremonial robe off the young girl and put it on herself.

"I see there is much sorrow in this part of the world," she declared to the priest. "But no one is as grieved as my poor broken heart. I am the sorrowing daughter of a great samurai. I have been searching for my father, exiled to this place, and have spent all my money without finding any trace of my dearest father. I have nothing left to live for, and I can no longer go on. Let me take this girl's place. My death can save so many people, and perhaps death will extinguish all my sorrows, so I will gladly offer myself in her place. But pray, good priest, all I ask is that you should take this letter which is addressed to my father and try to deliver it to him wherever he may be found." If either the girl or the priest would have protested, no one will ever know for Tokoyo turned and dove off the rocks into the sea below.

In the moonlight, she swam expertly through the clear waters, just as she had learned from childhood. She headed towards a partly submerged cave. Looking inside, she thought she saw a man sitting just inside the mouth of the cave. Thinking that this was the true form of the evil Yofune-Nushi, she pulled a dagger from her belt and swam bravely forward, determined to kill him and put a stop to this annual horror. But as she drew close to the form, dagger drawn, ready to fight, she saw that it was neither man nor dragon. Instead, she found a wooden statue of Hojo Takatoki, the wicked warlord who had banished her father.

At first, Tokoyo was angry and thought to thrust her dagger at the wooden statue, but she realized that would serve no purpose. Then she puzzled over the statue for a while, wondering who had made it, why it was here in this sea-cave, and what to do with her find. Presently, she decided to take it to back to the priest on the cliffs above to ask him these questions. She pulled off her corded belt and tied it around the statue. It was waterlogged and heavy, but she was sure she could bring it back to the shore.

Tokoyo had made her way back outside the cave when Yofune-Nushi came forth from the depths of his home. Sure that this was his annual tribute, Yofune-Nushi charged hungrily towards Tokoyo. But Tokoyo stood firm, gripping her dagger tightly. As the dragon's advance came within a few feet of her, she stepped aside suddenly. The dragon's momentum sent his massive figure hurtling past her. She stabbed fiercely at his head and her blade sank deep into the dragon's right eye.

The dragon bellowed in pain, and turned to retreat back into the darkness of its cave. But Tokoyo blocked his retreat, slashing again and again with her dagger, killing the monstrous creature. She stood looking at the lifeless, bloody form of the dragon and she knew she needed to bring it to show to the priest if she was to stop this dreadful annual ceremony. She tied one end of her sash around the dragon's body and the other to the strange wooden statue that she had found, and slowly she swam back to the foot of the cliff with these items dragging out behind her. Although Tokoyo had been in the sea for nearly a half-hour, the priest and the young girl were still on the top of the cliff, staring down into the sea when Toyoko came up out of the water. The girl cried out that it was Tokoyo, not Yofune-Nushi, who had broken the water's surface below them. "Look! She still has my white robe! And it appears that she has a man and a large fish with her. Whatever can this mean?" But the priest did not hear the girl's question for he was scrambling down the rocks to the water's edge to help Tokoyo and her cargo.

The warlord Hojo Takatoki had been suffering with some malady that the doctors of this time could not diagnose or cure. When he heard the news of Tokoyo's adventure in the dragon's cave, he was sure that his illness had been the result of some evil dragon's curse. In gratitude, Hojo Takatoki ordered the immediate release of Oribe Shima from his prison cell. Father and daughter were joyously reunited and returned to their home in Shima Province.

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Dobrynya and the dragon

Some folks say that Dobrynya Nikitich was more than merely a mythical character, that he was an historic warlord and a leader of the army under Sviatoslav the Great, famous warrior prince of the late 10th century. Although the historic people in this folktale are recognizable among the factual histories of the region known today as Russia and the Ukraine, the dragon (and therefore this story) is still considered mythical.


The area’s ancient oral stories, called the Byliny, began the tale with Dobrynya’s mother warning him not to go to the Sorochinsk Mountains and not to bathe in the Puchai River. Of course, ignoring his mother’s words, Dobrynya Nikitich did both of these things.


While Dobrynya was bathing in the Puchai River, the dragon Zmaj Gorynych appeared and challenged him. Zmaj Gorynych was a great, green fire-breathing dragon who had made her nest in a cavern near that part of the Sorochinsk Mountains. Unarmed, Dobrynya was sure that he was doomed. But the story told that Dobrynya swam for the far shore where, miraculously, he found a wizard’s cap on the river bank. Snatching up the hat, Dobrynya turned back to Zmaj Gorynych and turned to used it to slice the dragon’s head off. In desperation, Zmaj Gorynych pleaded with Dobrynya to allow her to live, vowing never to terrorize the humans of the region again. Dobrynya relented and spared her life, negotiating something of a nonaggression pact between the two of them. The dragon flew off, while Dobrynya Nikitich returned to Kiev. There he was acclaimed a hero and made a “bogatyr” or Holy Knight of the Realm.

The dragon Zmaj Gorynych abducted the lovely princess Zabava, niece of Prince Vladimir. When Prince Vladimir heard of Dobrynya Nikitich’s earlier encounter with the dragon, he summoned the bogatyr and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse -- rescue the Princess Zabava or forfeit his life.


Dobrynya returned to his mother’s house. There she gave him a silken whip. She told him to take the old mare and, when it grew weary, he was to draw the silken whip across the horse’s flanks. So Dobrynya rode off on the old mare to the Puchai River in the Sorochinsk Mountains to confront the dragon once more.


Once Dobrynya had reached the lair of Zmaj Gornynych, the bogatyr found a brood of many young dragons inside the cavern. He had slaughtered many of the offspring when an angry Zmaj Gornynych confronted him. The battle raged for three days between these two old foes. Every time the old mare would grow weary, Dobrynya would pull the silken whip across the horse’s flanks and the horse would be miraculously revitalized to continue the fight.


At the end of the third day, Zmaj Gornynych lay dead on the ground in a vast pool of her own blood. But the dragon’s blood would not seep into the ground and Dobrynya and his horse found themselves stuck in the muddy pool of blood. Dobrynya plunged his spear into the earth and boldly commanded the earth to absorb the dragon’s blood. With that, the blood was swallowed by the earth. Dobrynya rescued the fair princess Zabava and returned to Kiev to a great hero’s welcome.


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