page_title: Proto-Indo-European mythology
section_title: Serpent-slaying myth
hierarchical_section_title: Proto-Indo-European mythology / Myths / Serpent-slaying myth
caption_attribution_description: Depiction of the myth of the Sky God killing the dragon Illuyankas&#160;; Neo-Hittites; 850-800 BC; Limestone orthostat at the Lions Gate at Malitiya (Arslantepe, 38° 22' 53" N 38° 21' 36" E), now at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, Turkey.. Malitiya (near modern Malatya) became a major site as a Late Hittite city state and retained Hittite traditions long after the fall of the Empire. hittitemonuments.com
context_page_description: Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. Although the mythological motifs are not directly attested – since Proto-Indo-European speakers lived in prehistoric societies – scholars of comparative mythology have reconstructed details from inherited similarities found among Indo-European languages, based on the assumption that parts of the Proto-Indo-Europeans' original belief systems survived in the daughter traditions.
  The Proto-Indo-European pantheon includes a number of securely reconstructed deities such as *Dyḗws Ph₂tḗr, the daylight-sky god; his consort *Dʰéǵʰōm, the earth mother; his daughter *H₂éwsōs, the dawn goddess; his sons the Divine Twins; and *Seh₂ul, a solar goddess. Some deities, like the weather god *Perkʷunos or the herding-god *Péh₂usōn, are only attested in a limited number of traditions–Western and Graeco-Aryan, respectively–and could therefore represent late additions that did not spread throughout the various Indo-European dialects.
context_section_description: One common myth found in nearly all Indo-European mythologies is a battle ending with a hero or god slaying a serpent or dragon of some sort. Although the details of the story often vary widely, several features remain remarkably the same in all iterations. The protagonist of the story is usually a thunder-god, or a hero somehow associated with thunder. His enemy the serpent is generally associated with water and depicted as multi-headed, or else "multiple" in some other way. Indo-European myths often describe the creature as a "blocker of waters", and his many heads get eventually smashed up by the thunder-god in an epic battle, releasing torrents of water that had previously been pent up. The original legend may have symbolized the Chaoskampf, a clash between forces of order and chaos. The dragon or serpent loses in every version of the story, although in some mythologies, such as the Norse Ragnarök myth, the hero or the god dies with his enemy during the confrontation. Historian Bruce Lincoln has proposed that the tale of the dragon-slaying and the creation myth of *Trito killing the serpent *Ngʷhi may actually belong to the same story. 
  
  Reflexes of the Proto-Indo-European dragon-slaying myth appear in most Indo-European poetic traditions, where the myth has left traces of the formulaic sentence *(h₁e) gʷʰent h₁ógʷʰim, meaning "[he] slew the serpent". In Hittite mythology, the storm god Tarhunt slays the giant serpent Illuyanka, as does the Vedic god Indra to the multi-headed serpent Vritra, which had been causing a drought by trapping the waters in his mountain lair. Several variations of the story are also found in Greek mythology. The original motif appears inherited in the legend of Zeus slaying the hundred-headed Typhon, as related by Hesiod in the Theogony, and possibly in the myth of Heracles slaying the nine-headed Lernaean Hydra and in the legend of Apollo slaying the earth-dragon Python. The story of Heracles's theft of the cattle of Geryon is probably also related. Although he is not usually thought of as a storm deity in the conventional sense, Heracles bears many attributes held by other Indo-European storm deities, including physical strength and a knack for violence and gluttony.
  The original motif is also reflected in Germanic mythology. The Norse god of thunder Thor slays the giant serpent Jörmungandr, which lived in the waters surrounding the realm of Midgard. In the Völsunga saga, Sigurd slays the dragon Fafnir and, in Beowulf, the eponymous hero slays a different dragon. The depiction of dragons hoarding a treasure (symbolizing the wealth of the community) in Germanic legends may also be a reflex of the original myth of the serpent holding waters.
  In Zoroastrianism and in Persian mythology, Fereydun (and later Garshasp) slays the serpent Zahhak. In Albanian mythology, the drangue, semi-human divine figures associated with thunders, slay the kulshedra, huge multi-headed fire-spitting serpents associated with water and storms. The Slavic god of storms Perun slays his enemy the dragon-god Veles, as does the bogatyr hero Dobrynya Nikitich to the three-headed dragon Zmey. A similar execution is performed by the Armenian god of thunders Vahagn to the dragon Vishap, by the Romanian knight hero Făt-Frumos to the fire-spitting monster Zmeu, and by the Celtic god of healing Dian Cecht to the serpent Meichi.
  In Shinto, where Indo-European influences through Vedic religion can be seen in mythology, the storm god Susanoo slays the eight-headed serpent Yamata no Orochi.
  
  The Genesis narrative of Judaism and Christianity can be interpreted as a more allegorical retelling of the serpent-slaying myth. The Deep or Abyss from or on top of which God is said to make the world is translated from the Biblical Hebrew Tehom (Hebrew: תְּהוֹם). Tehom is a cognate of the Akkadian word tamtu and Ugaritic t-h-m which have similar meaning. As such it was equated with the earlier Sumerian serpent Tiamat.
  Folklorist Andrew Lang suggests that the serpent-slaying myth morphed into a folktale motif of a frog or toad blocking the flo
caption: The Hittite god Tarhunt, followed by his son Sarruma, kills the dragon Illuyanka (Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, Ankara, Turkey).
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