Dragon Lore

By Tala Bar

Many known animals have been connected with ancient myths. Among them we can find some domesticated animals like cows, goats and horses; and wild animals like deer, bears, frogs, spiders, and various birds. Some mythological animals, like the unicorn and the griffin, have nothing to do with the natural world; but perhaps none are as popular as dragons. Some say, however, that the stories of the dragons came into being (and this could have taken place thousands of years ago) after finding dinosaur bones, which belonged to animals no one had ever seen in real life. Only the idea of fantasy beings like dragons could account for those, before there was any scientific evidence of their existence. This article deals not with the physical validity of dragons, but with their existence in ancient myths and in modern literature.

The connection between dragons and dinosaurs is based most of all on both being reptiles of some kind; the dragons, though, being the creatures of fantasy, have various additions to their bodies, like wings, horns, different kinds of tails, and the ability to affect the atmosphere with their powerful breath, emitting fire, ice, or poison; many dragons would be called "monsters," both for their shape and for their behavior. In myth, many dragons were connected with the weather, or other elements of that kind.

One such dragon was the ancient Babylonian Tiamat, who was a Water, Mother goddess, though it was told that the Earth itself was created from her body. In modern pictures, Tiamat is portrayed as an enormous sea snake; however, the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology presents her as having the body and head of a lion, the wings and claws of an eagle, with horns on her head. This portrayal may equate this ancient Mother goddess with the Greek Chimera, who is said in the World Mythology to have been of divine origin and had the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a snake; the Chimera is a word used in modern English to denote "monster."

Such dragons, representing in ancient Europe and the Middle East a figure of the Mother goddess, are known to have been killed by young, male figures. Tiamat was killed by her own son Mardukh; the Chimera by Belerophon on his winged horse Pegasus; and in Christian legends it was the hero St. George who killed his own dragon.

Dragon myths exist all over the world. In ancient Babylon, there were other, similar beings, drawn in white glazing on blue clay; one such animal had the head and horns of a deer, the front legs of a lion, a snake's body and tail, and the hind legs of an eagle. In Egypt, the dragon was related to the crocodile, and in India there are dragons whose basic body is that of an elephant; in Iceland, the god Loki was connected with a female dragon; and in Britain, dragons dwelled in caves and lakes. In Hawaii, all dragons were descendents of the Mother Dragon goddess; and Vietnam's city of Hanoi was known as Dragon city.

Not all dragons had the same character, but it is significant to note that many of them were considered female deities; as such, they were the enemy of any new male order, from ancient Babylon where the young Mardukh had deposed his mother, to Medieval Europe, where Christianity was replacing ancient paganism with the new all-male monotheism. That was how the dragon had become a symbol of evil and wickedness, while earlier it had represented the powerful protection of the divine. The European dragon had a reptilian scaly body with four clawed legs, a snake's tail, a bat's wings, and a monstrous head spitting fire. The fire, connected by the ancients with the beneficial sun, had turned into a symbol of destruction; the dragon, to which virgins were sacrificed, used fire to burn villages and to kill their inhabitants. In the Grimm Brothers' tale "The Devil and his Grandmother," the dragon represents the Devil.