4 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol. 6T 



but the true God of Israel quelled and put to silence the evil 

 dragon. Thus Isaiah LI, 9 : "Art thou not it that cut Rahab and 

 AYOunded the dragon.'' Raluib, Ayhich means raging, insolence, 

 tumultuousness, is not unsuitable as a title of the chaos dragon, com- 

 pare Isaiah XXX, 7. Psalm LXXXIX, 10 : " Thou hast broken 

 Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain." Job XXVI, 12: "He stilleth 

 the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smiteth through 

 Rahab,'' compare Job IX, 13. In all these passages Rahab is evi- 

 dently an alternatiA-e for the Babylonian Tiamat and at the same 

 time an emblematic synonym for Egj^pt. Isaiah XXVII, 2 : "In 

 that day the Lord with his sore (properly, hard) and great and 

 strong sword shall j)unish leviathan the piercing (Revised Ver- 

 sion, the swift, and margin, gliding or fleeing) serpent, and 

 leviathan the crooked (Revised Version, margin, winding) serpent, 

 and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea." The three monsters 

 in this passage are not unplausibly interpreted by some com- 

 mentators (so, for instance, by Franz Delitzsch) as designating 

 the three rivers, the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile, and symbolic of 

 Assyria, Babylonia, and Egypt, respectively, the three hostile powers 

 of the world which were situated on these rivers. The " swift " 

 or " fleeing leviathan " (compare the description of the Tiamat cylin- 

 der seal above) is a fit designation of the Tigris with its swiftly 

 running course and rapids, whence its name, which is derived from 

 old-Persian tigra,, pointed, and tigri^ arroAV, characterizing it as 

 darting or shooting forth like an arrow, compare Horace Odes IV, 

 14, 46: rapidus Tigris. Its Hebrew name, hiddekel, means sharp. 

 The " crooked " or " winding leviathan " may well describe the 

 Euphrates w^ith its many windings and bendings; while the dragon, 

 Hebrew, tannin., originally a personification of the sea or the floods, 

 was subsequently applied to Egypt, compare Isaiah LI, 9; Ezekiel 

 XXIX, 3. 



An instance in which a deity personifies the fructifying river 

 Euphrates and is on this account denominated a serpent is found 

 in an early Babylonian liturgy. Ninlil (also called Nintu and Nin 

 Kharsag), spouse of Enlil, the supreme god of Nippur, who repre- 

 sents or symbolizes the female element of reproducing nature, is 

 called serpent (Assyrian, 'Sir),'^ and the Euphrates itself was called 

 the "■ river of the snake.'' 



Finally, the symbol of representing the world under the form of 

 a serpent biting its tail is explained from the fact that in the 

 cosmogony of Egypt. Babylonia, Greece, and India, the earth Avas 

 believed to be circumscribed by an ocean or " celestial river," whose 

 circular course is compared to a serpent. 



* George A. Barton, Miscellaneous Babylonian Inscriptions, 1918, pp. 16, 41, 43, and 

 4G, compare. J. P. Peters, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 41, pp. 131 and 

 following, especially pp. 142 and following. 



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