Winged Serpents of Arabia

The Winged Serpents of Arabia are an attested species of flying snakes located in Arabia most famously accounted by the Greek historian Herodotus in his Histories.

Accounts

Herodotus in his Histories first mentions of having traveled to a region in Arabia near the city of Buto (a town in ancient Egypt that was known for serpent veneration) and would be shown an innumerable number of bones of the winged serpents by the locals. The location of the bones Herodotus attests was in a narrow mountain pass that leads to a plain that is connected to Egypt and Arabia. A description of the serpents is also given, the serpents being said to make annual migrations from Arabia to Egypt but are preyed on by the native Egyptian Iblis population. In Arabia, the creatures reside in and guard trees that possess frankincense, the only thing being able to repel them being smoke from storax. Herodotus also mentions the serpent's abnormal mating habits, with the females killing their male spouses after mating but proceed to get eaten from the inside out by their young while they are still developing in the mother's womb. Despite this, the population of this creature remains plentiful.

Although not describing the winged serpents of Arabia, another account related to Herodotus's is that by Greek historian Megasthenes, who tells of a species of winged serpent in India. These serpents are said to be nocturnal and produce an acidic urine.

While generally unknown, there also was an Assyrian account of Arabian winged snakes in the Negev made two centuries before Herodotus by the king Esarhaddon on his military campaign throughout the region. The king describes the snakes as winged and are yellow in color, and to be heavily venomous. Mentions of winged serpents in the region are not mentioned elsewhere in Assyrian accounts, a later account two centuries later of the same region writing the snakes off instead as a local bird species.

Identification

Although the accounts of the serpents by Herodotus is often used to discredit the historian as an unreliable narrator who made up tales as he went, there has been some scholarly interest in finding the inspiration or identity of the winged snakes in his account. Locusts or the flying lizard Draco Volans (the latter of which is not found in Arabia but rather in the Malay) were the historical assumptions, however these are often dismissed for unreliability.

A photograph of a collection of clearly visible ammonite fossils on the surface of the Maktesh Ramon. The area would've been one frequently crossed for trade and could've been the inspiration for various myths.

Adreinne Mayor offers a paleontological origin based on Herodotus having seen skeletons of the snakes, assuming that Herodotus had actually seen fossils of the unidentified species. She suggests the fossils of Spinosaurus aegypticaus as inspiration, as fossils of that dinosaur species have been found in the same region. Karen Radner builds off the paleontological origin, and posits that the location of the skeletons attested by Herodotus, and would've been in the region where Esarhaddon had reported the serpents, was the Maktesh Ramon, a geological region in the Negev (or southern modern-day Isreal) surrounded by a crater of which the inside has rich fossil deposits that can be found on the surface across the region. This region was a major part of the ancient Frankincense Route (or Spice Route), and the fossils of which could be found mostly consist of aquatic creatures, notably amphibians such as long bodied salamander species, as well as frog species and their tadpole young, that could've been mistaken as the skeletons of limbed snakes. The fossils in the area also have a yellow coloring, matching Esarhaddon's description of the snakes having been yellow in color.

See Also

• Fiery Serpents
• Uraeus

References

• Theoi - WINGED SERPENT (Ophis Pterotos)