Horned Serpent

thumb|The Horned Serpent design is a common theme on pottery from [[Casas Grandes (Paquimé)]]

The Horned Serpent appears in the mythologies of many cultures including Native American peoples, European, and Near Eastern mythology. Details vary among cultures, with many of the stories associating the mystical figure with water, rain, lightning, thunder, and rebirth. Horned Serpents were major components of the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex of North American prehistory.

In Native American cultures

thumb|A digital illustration of Horned Serpent by the artist Herb Roe. Based on an engraved shell cup in the Craig B style (designated Engraved shell cup number 229) from [[:en:Spiro Mounds|Spiro, Oklahoma.]]

Horned serpents appear in the oral history of numerous Native American cultures, especially in the Southeastern Woodlands and Great Lakes.

Muscogee Creek traditions include a Horned Serpent and a Tie-Snake, estakwvnayv in the Muscogee Creek language. These are sometimes interpreted as being the same creature and sometimes different—similar, but the Horned Serpent is larger than the Tie-Snake. To the Muscogee people, the Horned Serpent is a type of underwater serpent covered with iridescent, crystalline scales and a single, large crystal in its forehead. Both the scales and crystals are prized for their powers of divination. The horns, called chitto gab-by, were used in medicine. Jackson Lewis, a Muscogee Creek informant to John R. Swanton, said, "This snake lives in the water has horns like the stag. It is not a bad snake. ... It does not harm human beings but seems to have a magnetic power over game." In stories, the Horned Serpent enjoyed eating sumac, Rhus glabra.

Alabama people call the Horned Serpent tcinto såktco or "crawfish snake", which they divide into four classifications based on its horns' colors, which can be blue, red, white, or yellow.

Other known names

Sisiutl— Kwakwaka'wakw
Awanyu—Tewa
Djodi'kwado'—Iroquois
Misi-kinepikw ("great snake")—Cree
Msi-kinepikwa ("great snake")—Shawnee
Misi-ginebig ("great snake")—Oji-Cree
Mishi-ginebig ("great snake")—Ojibwe
Gitaskog ("great snake")—Abenaki
Sintishtahollo' ("sacred snake")—Chickasaw
Sinti Lapitta—Choctaw
Unktehi or Unktehila—Dakota
ʔU·lahkaha·p ("white snake")—Natchez
Uktena—Cherokee
mazacoatl - Nahuatl

Eurasia

In Europe

In Celtic iconography

thumb|The antlered deity of the [[Gundestrup cauldron, commonly identified with Cernunnos, holding a ram-horned serpent and a torc.]]

The ram-horned serpent was a cult image found in north-west Europe before and during the Roman period. It appears three times on the Gundestrup cauldron, and in Romano-Celtic Gaul was closely associated with the horned or antlered god Cernunnos, in whose company it is regularly depicted. This pairing is found as early as the fourth century BC in Northern Italy, where a huge antlered figure with torcs and a serpent was carved on the rocks in Val Camonica.

A bronze statuette called the God of Étang-sur-Arroux and a stone sculpture from Sommerécourt depict Cernunnos' body encircled by two horned snakes which feed from bowls of fruit and corn-mash balanced in the god's lap. Also at Sommerécourt is a sculpture of a goddess holding a cornucopia and a pomegranate, with a horned serpent eating from a bowl of food. At Yzeures-sur-Creuse a carved youth has a ram-horned snake twined around his legs, with its head at his stomach. In a relief at a museum in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, Cernunnos' legs are depicted as two ram-horned snakes which rear up on each side of his head and are eating fruit or corn. thumb|Relief of Cernunnos with two ram-horned snakes in the [[Corinium Museum.]]

According to Miranda Green, the snakes reflect the peaceful nature of the god, associated with nature and fruitfulness, and perhaps accentuate his association with regeneration. This latter characteristic is reminiscent of the basilisk.

Greek

The cerastes is a creature described in Greek mythology as a snake with either two large ram-like horns or four pairs of smaller horns. Isidore of Seville described it as hunting by burying itself in sand while leaving its horns visible, and attacking creatures that came to investigate them.

In Mesopotamia

In Mesopotamian mythology, Ningishzida is sometimes depicted as a serpent with horns. In other depictions, he is shown as human but is accompanied by bashmu, mushussu, and ushumgal (three horned snakes in Akkadian mythology). Ningishzida shares the epithet, ushumgal, "great serpent", with several other Mesopotamian gods.

In Africa

A horned serpent cave art is known from the La Belle France cave in South Africa, often conflated with the Dingonek. It may be based on dicynodont fossils.

Notes

References

Grantham, Bill. Creation Myths and Legends of the Creek Indians. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002. .
Willoughby, Charles C. (1936). "The Cincinnati Tablet: An Interpretation". The Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly Vol. 45:257–264.

External links

Horned serpent, feathered serpent.
Lakota creation myth involving Unktehi
The Uktena And The Ulûñsû'tï