The Malatya serpent in the light of newly published sealing from the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

The paper provides analysis of dragon-slaying motifs from Anatolia in the 2nd millennium BC represented at the Malatya Relief H, sealing from the Pushkin Museum I 2 б 1591 and in Hittite myths of Illuyanka and Hedammu. The scholars often regarded Malatya Relief H as depicting the plot of Illuyanka myth, but the discovery of dragon-slaying scene on the sealing from the Pushkin Museum gives grounds for re-analyzing them, including the depictions of heroes, of the serpents and of the battle in each of these four monuments. The iconographical monuments in contrast to the literary ones depict the hero acting alone; most of Anatolian dragons have front paws. The iconography depicts the decisive fight as the close combat while in the narratives the close combat gives more advantages to the serpent. We have shown the similarity of composition in general as well as the concrete details of the artifacts that allow to trace the development of the dragon-slaying myth and to solve some problems of interpretation for the Malatya Relief H (the number of dragon-slaying heroes, the functions of weapons). Despite all distinctions between the images of heroes that we could explain by the changes in the Anatolian pantheon through the emergency, development and collapse of the Hittite kingdom, we can state that the dragon-slaying motif as depicted at the orthostat AMM 12250 roots back at least to the 18th century BC when it was first reflected at the Old Assyrian sealing from the Pushkin Museum I 2 б 1591

Ancient history · Art · Art history · Battle · HERO · Hittite language · Iconography · Literature · Mythology · Terracotta · Ancient Near East History · History