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The Dragon of the Babylon Gate
by John Meszaros
Babylon. City of legend. Rising from humble origins over
four thousand years ago as a small Akkadian town upon the Euphrates River-
bisected into equal halves by the life-bringing waters- it became one of the
largest cities of the ancient world. The owners of the great city would change
many times as empires rose and fell across the Fertile Crescent. But regardless
of who ruled, Babylon would remain a major hub of culture and trade throughout
its existence. Its most powerful, and certainly one of its most famous, kings
was Nebuchadnezzar II, who surround the city with high, thick walls both to
demonstrate the power of his rule and to deter attacks from invaders who
coveted Babylon’s riches. Entry to the city was via eight gates, the most
famous of which was dedicated to Ishtar the goddess of love, fertility, war and
political power. The Ishtar gate was constructed of fired bricks painted a deep
blue that must have glowed to match the cloudless desert sky.
Bas-reliefs of sacred
beasts picked out in yellow enamel strode against this rich backdrop. The
procession leading up to the gate was flanked by lions, while the great arch
itself was decorated with the aurochs- a massive ancient breed of cattle that
was associated with Hadad, the god of storms- and with a much stranger beast
called the mushussu (pronounced mush-hush-shu). This beast, sacred to the city’s
patron deity, Marduk, was a hybrid with the scaled body of a dragon, the head and
forked tongue of a serpent, front paws of a lion, back paws of an eagle, and a
long tail tipped by a scorpion’s sting. It’s serpentine head was also topped by
a pair of long, straight horns on the snout and what appears to be a pair of
curving, ram-like horns at the back.
Although mushussu may initially seem like purely
mythological animals in the vein of griffons, qilin, manticores and other
chimerical beasts, some researchers have wondered if they may have been real
animals. Robert Koldewey, the German archaeologist who rediscovered the ruins
of the Ishtar Gate in 1902, was the first to propose this idea. He argued that
the appearance of the beast in Babylonian art had remained largely consistent
over several hundred years, in contrast to the changing depictions of other
beasts that were known by the people of Babylon to be purely mythological. He
also pointed out that Marduk’s dragon was depicted alongside real-life aurochs
and lions, indicating that it was a real animal the Babylonians were familiar
with.
Another hint at the mushussu’s possible existence comes from
the biblical Book of Daniel. In the Roman, Greek and Eastern Orthodox Catholic
versions of the Old Testament, chapter 14 of Daniel briefly mentions a dragon
worshipped by the Babylonians as a living god which the titular hero slays by
feeding it cakes made of pitch, fat and hair. It’s quite possible that the
writer of this tale misinterpreted the Babylonians’ respect for the mushusu’s
sacredness to Marduk as outright worship of the animal itself as a deity.
Creatures similar to the mushussu have appeared in the
mythology of other cultures. According to the legends of the Apatani people of
the Ziro valley at the base of the eastern Himalayas, a species of large,
semi-aquatic reptiles known as buru once inhabited the marshes around their
villages. These creatures were said to have long necks, short, robust legs with
mole-like claws, and long, powerful tails. Aside from the short legs, this
description bears a fair resemblance to the mushussu. Though there is no
mention of the buru bearing the iconic snout-horns or the fleshy curls at the
back of the head. Unfortunately, these giant lizards were apparently driven to
extinction when the Apatani drained the animals’ wetland home and no physical
evidence of them remains. If they were ever truly real in the first place.
In his book The Marsh Arabs, explorer Wilfred Thesiger made
mention of the belief among the river-dwelling Arabic tribes of Iraq in the
afa, a large semi-aquatic reptile that resembled a snake with legs. Though the
account is extremely brief, the reference to an unknown large serpentine reptile
in the lands around ancient Babylon is intriguing.
Ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian art often depicted strange
creatures that resembled leopard with long, serpentine necks. The ancient names
for these creatures are unknown, thus archeologists have given them the
portmanteau name “serpopards”. Although the creatures are more feline than
reptilian, it is possible they are another interpretation of the long-necked
beast that inspired the dragon of Babylon, though in this case with more
exaggerated mammalian features.
Yet another mushussu-like creature is the Questing Beast, or
Beste Glatisant, of Arthurian legend. The monster is the quarry of several
knights including King Pellinore, Sir Percival and King Arthur himself. The
appearance of the Questing Beast varies depending on the text, but one version describes
it as having a serpent’s head, a leopard’s body, and a stag’s feet. Though this
description might simply be a case of another fanciful chimera so common to
folklore and mythology, it’s interesting to wonder if the author who first came
up with this depiction was not basing it off a real animal he had seen, or at
least read about.
If the mushussu was a real animal, what was it though?
Koldewey himself initially proposed that it was a surviving dinosaur, perhaps a
relative of Iguanodon, which was one of the most well-known prehistoric beasts
at the time. A glance at a modern reconstruction of Iguanodon, however, will
show a heavyset, stiff-tailed, beaked saurian quite unlike the agile, almost
mammalian-looking mushussu.
Perhaps the mushussu was another type of dinosaur?
Cryptozoologist Willy Levy compared the serpentine appearance of the mushussu
to accounts of the Mokele-mbembe, a long-necked monster reported to inhabit the
swamps and rivers of Central Africa. European investigators have frequently
suggested that the mokele-mbembe is a surviving sauropod similar to Apatosaurus.
When this connection was initially made in the 1950s, it was believed that
sauropods had to spend their lives half-submerged in water to support their
great weight. Thus the idea of a surviving long-necked dinosaur living in
swamps in a relatively unexplored (by white scientists, anyway) region of
Africa made some sense to cryptozoologists. In the 1970s, however, changing
ideas in paleontology showed that sauropods could indeed support their own
weight on land and thus did not need to rely on an amphibious existence. Even
so, given millions of years of evolution, it would not be impossible for a
sauropod to adapt to an aquatic lifestyle like a capybara or a hippopotamus. Dinosaurs
have, of course, survived into the modern day in the form of birds. So it is
not completely out of the realm of possibility that a non-avian dinosaur such
as a sauropod may also have survived into the age of humans. Although the lack
of any sauropod fossils after the Mesozoic extinction makes this a highly
unlikely proposal.
What else could the mushussu have been, then? Several
researchers have suggested that it may have been a species of giant, unknown
monitor lizard even bigger than the Komodo dragon- an identity that has also
been proposed for the afa of the Marsh Arabs and the Himalayan Buru. A monitor lizard explanation is not all that
far-fetched, considering that smaller species of these reptiles actually do
inhabit the Arabian peninsula. There is even precedence for other giant
monitors aside from the Komodo dragon in the form of a 16-foot long monitor
called Megalania that roamed Australia thousands of years ago.
What of the long, paired horns on the mushussu’s snout? Or
the supposed “ram’s horns” on the back of its head? While no living monitor has
horns or other head ornamentation, the aforementioned Megalania did have a
small crest between its eyes. Perhaps Marduk’s sacred beast had similar, but
more pronounced and paired crests on its snout. Regarding the curling horns on
the back of the head, it’s worth noting that these features were not present on
many other depictions of the animal. It’s possible they were simply an artistic
embellishment of a fleshy fringe or neck flap on the real animal.
Did a large horned reptile roam the lands of Babylon and
Central Asia, serving as a sacred beast to some and a nuisance to others? There
is, unfortunately, no scientific evidence just yet. No preserved skins or bones.
No fossils. But perhaps one day some explorer will unearth some remains lying
forgotten in a temple under the sands or buried in the peat of an ancient bog.
And the world will see get to marvel at Marduk’s dragon once again.
