When an answer is unfindable, ask another question

A recent post from a very unlikely source – ArtNet – cracked me up. The subject, the slaying of a 7-headed snake-like figure, is critically important for us mythology followers in the west – especially those who see truth in the Bible that has nothing to do w/ Christianity. This was a great example of posing a fabulous question – “what does this mean?”; but, then changing the question when the first could not be answered to “how did this motif transfer across cultures?”

Here’s the image – a ‘signature stamp’ that is <2″

Here’s what just cracked me up … the author makes the claim of how important this mythological symbolism is across the human aeons. The historical importance was emphasized

The motif of a hero fighting seven-headed snake dates back much farther, though, he writes, to the third millennium B.C.E. in Mesopotamia. It traveled to the north Syrian coast by around the mid-second millennium B.C.E, and then into the Hebrew Bible, where Yahweh fights a Leviathan. It later appears in the Christian Bible, in which a serpent beast does battle with an angel in the Book of Revelation.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/tiny-carving-serpent-2442676

Of course, nothing of historical importance in the west can be without a Greek connection.

Heracles and Iolaos fighting the Lernaean Hydra. Attic amphora, ca. 540-530 B.C.E. Musée du Louvre. Via Wikimedia Commons. – From, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/tiny-carving-serpent-2442676

Now, the punch line … rather than talk about what this motif, symbolism means across those millennia, the researcher, academic changes focus completely.

But why, scholars have long asked, does the same image appear across such long gulfs of time and region? The Hazor seal “provides a tangible link from Phoenicia to Israel,” Uehlinger told McClatchy News. “Phoenician scribes/scholars probably preserved and transmitted the tradition they may had inherited from Ugarit (an ancient city in Syria) since the Late Bronze age,” Uehlinger added.

He calls the find “spectacular” and says that it “occupies a special place in this long and largely unknown history of myth transmission.” It’s for future scholars, he said, to determine exactly how the image traveled west and became associated with the character of Hercules.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/tiny-carving-serpent-2442676

The way out of ‘not being able to know’ and admitting the limit of inquiry, the scientist changes the direction of the inquiry – from “What it really means”, to “how did it travel from one cultural area to another” – maybe that’s something that CAN be answered. I prefer that which cannot be … way more interesting!