Mastering the Seven-Headed Serpent: A Stamp Seal from Hazor Provides a Missing Link between Cuneiform and Biblical Mythology

The Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant (SSSL) project is based on a comprehensive corpus, big data, and complex historical scenarios. Sometimes, though, an individual artifact stands out as a highlight in its own right. Such is the case with a stamp seal discovered recently at Tel Hazor. It is unu...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Uehlinger, Christoph 1958- (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: University of Chicago Press 2024
In: Near Eastern archaeology
Year: 2024, Volume: 87, Issue: 1, Pages: 14-19
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Seal / Stamp / Levant (Süd) / Levant / Hazor / Mythology / Hero / Serpents (Motif) / Fight (Motif) / Ugarit / Mesopotamia
IxTheo Classification:HB Old Testament
KBL Near East and North Africa
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:The Stamp Seals from the Southern Levant (SSSL) project is based on a comprehensive corpus, big data, and complex historical scenarios. Sometimes, though, an individual artifact stands out as a highlight in its own right. Such is the case with a stamp seal discovered recently at Tel Hazor. It is unusual in several respects, but mainly because of its spectacular base engraving. The main scene represents a hero fighting a coiled, seven-headed serpent; it is enhanced by a series of mixed creatures and secondary motifs. This article offers a description and analysis of the object, situating its iconography in the long history of combat myths spanning from mid-third-millennium southern Mesopotamia through second-millennium northern Syria to first-millennium Phoenicia and Israel. Most significant for a historian of Near Eastern mythology, the seal provides a visual missing link in the main motif’s literary transition from Late Bronze Age Ugarit to the Hebrew Bible.
ISSN:2325-5404
Contains:Enthalten in: Near Eastern archaeology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1086/727582