Lotan

see footnote [1]
לוטן


See under LOT.

Genesis 36:20 names him as a son of Se'ir of the Beney Chor (Horites) and a chief of the Beney Edom.

Lotan is connected with Lev-Yatan (Leviathan) in Babylonian mythology (and with Moby-Dick in modern literature). There, and in the Tanach, he is often depicted as hydra-headed, as a fleeing serpent (Nachash Baria) or crooked serpent (Nachash Akalaton). This recalls the Ugaritic text: "If you smite Lotan the crooked serpent, the mighty one with seven heads, Ba'al will run you through with his spear, even as he struck Lotan the crooked serpent with seven heads".

The number seven here connects again to the Menorah, and to the seven deities in One who are the planets and the days of the week.

See notes to NACHASH.


¹ "The Egyptian myth of the hippopotamus associated with the crocodile (Dragon) is shown in several ancient zodiacal astronomical ceilings like the one of..." for the rest of this text, explaining the illustration, click here. But before you do - am I alone in thinking that this is Picasso's "Guernica"? The same form and strucure, the same positioning of the figures, the same mythological elements - and the Minotaur, Picasso's self-mythologisation, right there, the same posture that it has in "Guernica".





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