The Oldest Dragon
The dragons as ancient as the history of mankind. They are in many mythologies in different places and/or with different names. However when and where did the earliest known myth of “dragons” originate?
Taking on the form of a massive sea dragon, Tiamat is the first dragon in written sources who also formed an army of dragons to avenge her husband’s death. In the Babylonian Creation Myth Enuma Elish, composed probably in the 18. century B.C., Tiamat is the goddess of the chaos and defeated by Marduk.
However, being famous for its dragons, Chinese culture has the oldest dragons in the world history. The discovery in 1987 at the Xishuipo excavation site in Puyang, about 400 km south of Beijing, shows that the occurrence of dragons was much earlier than Tiamat. In one of the burials in the excavation site a dragon pattern formed from mussel shells, which was determined to date back to more than 6,400 years ago, was recorded as the oldest known dragon. Although the dragon does not have a specific name, it is referred to as “The first dragon of China”.
I am gonna write the etymology of “Dragon” in Chinese on the next post.
- The Dragon in Ancient China, LThe World History Encyclopedia
- Mušḫuššu, Wikipedia
- What is the earliest known dragon myth?, stackexchange.com