of Vishnu. At other times this S ́es
̇
a supports the earth (MBh. 1. 32. 20–4; 3.- 10, 194. 9 f.; cf. 5. 101. 2 f.). The motif of a huge serpent in the waters
who encircles the earth recurs in other traditions. In Greek there is the
uncanonical myth of Ophion or Ophioneus, which so far as we can see first
appeared in the above-mentioned, eccentric cosmology of Pherecydes.
Ophion and his consort previously ruled in heaven, but Chronos (Kronos)
fought him and drove him into the waters of Ogenos (Oceanus), where he
remains.^28 In Nordic myth there is Io ̨ rmungand, the Miðgarð Serpent, who
was smitten on the head by Thor, as was Vr
̇
tra by Indra, and who lies in the
sea surrounding all lands (p. 259). The biblical Leviathan came to be
understood as a monster coiled round the earth, presumably by conflation
with a non-biblical myth of separate origin.^29
A less explicit but much earlier piece of Germanic evidence is provided
by a decorated bronze razor from near Roskilde, Denmark, dated to about
900 . In the left half of the field is the sun’s ship, facing right, and in the
right half, also facing right, an enormous serpent, its body in a series of coils,
within which are solar designs.^30 Is this meant to convey that the sun passes
through the monster’s body at night? This would be like the account in the
Egyptian funerary text Amduat, according to which ReU rides through the
underworld each night in his boat but also, in the Twelfth Hour, undergoes
rejuvenation by passing through the length of a serpent, emerging from its
mouth at sunrise.^31 Whether or not this interpretation of the scene on the
razor is close to the mark, the serpent clearly has cosmic status, and its
juxtaposition with the ship suggests that it is in the sea.
If the Indo-Europeans had a myth of a great serpent of the watery deeps,
we must confess that we do not know what it signified. In the first place we
cannot be sure whether it was located in a river or rivers, as is the Vedic Áhir
budhnyàh
̇
, or in a lake or the sea. In a river its purpose might have been to(^28) Pherecydes DK 7 A 11, B 4 = F 73, 78–80 Schibli; Call. fr. 177. 7 f.; Ap. Rhod. 1. 503–6; West
(1971), 20–3, cf. 40–50; H. S. Schibli (as n. 23), 78–103.
(^29) Ps.-Bede, De mundi constitutione, Patrol. Lat. cx. 884 alii dicunt Leviathan animal terram
complecti, tenetque caudam in ore suo; so in the Irish saga Togail bruidne Dá Derga 56,
‘the Leviathan that surrounds the globe and strikes with its tail to overturn the world’ (trs.
Koch–Carey (2000), 176). But Rabbinical lore also comes into the question, cf. Dillon (1948),
29 n. 30.
(^30) F. Kaul in Meller (2004), 61 (centre left), 63.
(^31) Erik Hornung, Ägyptische Unterweltsbücher (2nd edn., Zurich–Munich 1984), 185–8. The
serpent’s name is given as ‘DerKa dessen, der die Götter leben läßt’, but according to Hornung
it is certainly the same as the serpent ‘Weltumringler’ that made an appearance in previous
sections of the work (ibid. 149 and 178). In the illustrations of the Eleventh Hour (174 f. Abb.
13) this ‘World-encircler’ is shown held up by a row of twelve gods ahead of the solar boat, its
body in many coils. Apart from the presence of these gods, the arrangement of boat and coiling
serpent, both facing to the right, is extraordinarily similar to that on the Danish razor made
some two thousand years later. How to account for this I do not know.
348 9. Cosmos and Canon