COURTESY MANUEL CIMADEVILLA / THE SEL Z FOUNDATION
HAZOR EXCAVATIONS IN MEMORY OF YIGAEL YADIN
A stamp seal excavated in 2022 by the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in northern Israel, under the direction of Igor Kreimerman and the late Amnon Ben-Tor, offers a tantalizing glimpse of a widespread mythological theme: the battle between a hero and a seven-headed serpent. This motif is attested throughout the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean, with reverberations in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament.
Barely 1.5 inches wide and dating to the eighth century BCE, the seal bears a depiction of a seven-headed serpent on the far right, where it is held at bay by a hero who grasps one of its branching necks in one hand and brandishes a spear with the other. At the hero’s feet are an ankh symbol and a monkey, and at his back are other mythological images: a griffin, a winged scarab, a winged cobra, and another monkey.
According to biblical scholar Christoph Uehlinger, who recently published the seal, the defeat of the seven-headed serpent is an act attributed to various divine figures across the region, from third-millennium Mesopotamia to second-millennium Ugarit on the Levantine coast.1 In the Hebrew Bible, the Israelite God Yahweh is credited with this victory (Psalm 74:13–14). Although this account does not describe the creature as seven-headed, it names it Tannin and Leviathan, which correspond to the names attested at Ugarit. The seven-headed serpent emerges yet again in the New Testament (Revelation 12:3), as well as in ancient Greek and postbiblical Jewish sources.
A stamp seal excavated in 2022 by the Selz Foundation Hazor Excavations in northern Israel, under the direction of Igor Kreimerman and the late Amnon Ben-Tor, offers a tantalizing glimpse of a widespread mythological theme: the battle between a hero and a seven-headed serpent. This motif is attested throughout the ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean, with reverberations in both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. Barely 1.5 inches wide and dating to the eighth century BCE, the seal bears a depiction of a seven-headed serpent on the far right, where it is held at bay by a hero who […]
