- The Dragon is a mythological creature that appears or has appeared in the culture of many civilisations around the world, but with great variations.
In Medieval Western Culture
- The Dragon has four legs, horns, bird wings and a tail and can breath fire.
In Eastern Culture
- The Dragon has four legs, no wings and the body and tail of a snake, and is highly intelligent.
Mesopotamia: (2,334 – 539 BCE)
- The Dragon is depicted as a lion dragon:
- With the head (mouth open) and forelegs of a Lion, and the rear legs, wings and tail of a bird.
- Or with the horns, neck and body of a snake, and the forelegs of a lion, and the rear legs of a bird.
Ancient Egypt
- Apep:
- A Giant Serpent who lives in the Egyptian Underworld, Duat, and is coiled around the body of Ra.
- Nehebkau:
- Another Giant Serpent who also guards Duat, the Underworld, but helped Ra defeat Apep. He was so massive the world balanced on his coils.
- Denwen:
- Yet another Huge Serpent who had a body of made of Fire, mentioned in the Pyramid Texts, and who started a Fire which very nearly destroyed all the Egyptian Gods.
- ‘Ouroboros’:
- This is a drawing of a Dragon or Serpent in a coil swallowing it’s own tail.
- Found in the Tomb of Tutankhamun. It then became the symbol pf the early Gnostic Christian Church during the first few centuries CE.
Ancient Greece
- There were many dragons in Greek Mythology:
- Typhon, Ladon, Pytho, the Lernaean Hydra, the Colchian dragon, the Ismenian dragon, Helios’ chariot was drawn by dragons, the Scythian Dracaena, and the Gigantomachian dragon.
Ancient Rome
- The Draco (meaning Dragon or serpent)
- This was the military standard of the Roman Cavalry, and was carried by the Draconarius.
- Arrian described it as being Scythian in origin, and that it inflated and whistled when the horse was running. It was adopted from the Dacians after the Dacian Wars (101-106 CE).
Ugarit (c. 6,000 – c. 1,200 BCE)
- Lotanu:
- A Sea Dragon, described as a powerful twisting Serpent with seven heads, is defeated and killed by Baal.
Hebrew Bible:
- Leviathan:
- Psalms 74. lines 13-14. The Sea Dragon called Leviathan (the word is a derivative of Lotanu) is defeated and killed by Yahweh.
England
- English mythology features the Legend of St. George and the Dragon, along with Griffins (half eagle, half lion) and Wyverns (two legged dragons).
France
- In the Legend of Gargouille (Gargoyle), the Bishop of Rouen, St. Romanus (631-641 CE), saved the region around Rouen from a dragon called La Gargouille.
Other countries featuring Dragons in their culture:
- Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Roumania, India, Tibet and Bhutan, China, Korea, Japan, and Vietnam.
Egypt