A sea serpent or sea dragon is a type of

dragon A dragon is a reptilian legendary creature that appears in the folklore of many cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but dragons in western cultures since the High Middle Ages have often been depicted a ...

sea monster Sea monsters are beings from folklore believed to dwell in the sea and often imagined to be of immense size. Marine monsters can take many forms, including sea dragons, sea serpents, or tentacled beasts. They can be slimy and scaly and are o ...

described in various mythologies, most notably Mesopotamian ( Tiamat), Judaeo-Christian ( Leviathan), Greek ( Cetus,

Echidna Echidnas (), sometimes known as spiny anteaters, are quill-covered monotremes (egg-laying mammals) belonging to the family Tachyglossidae . The four extant species of echidnas and the platypus are the only living mammals that lay eggs and the ...

, Hydra,

Scylla In Greek mythology, Scylla), is obsolete. ( ; grc-gre, Σκύλλα, Skúlla, ) is a legendary monster who lives on one side of a narrow channel of water, opposite her counterpart Charybdis. The two sides of the strait are within an arrow's ran ...

), and Norse ( Jörmungandr).

Mythology and folklore

Mediterranean and Western Asia

The mytheme, the chief god in the role of the hero slaying a sea serpent, is widespread both in the

ancient Near East The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran and northeastern Syria), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran ( Elam, ...

and in

Indo-European mythology Proto-Indo-European mythology is the body of myths and deities associated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans, the hypothetical speakers of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language. Although the mythological motifs are not directly atteste ...

, e.g. Lotan and

Hadad Hadad ( uga, ), Haddad, Adad (Akkadian: 𒀭𒅎 '' DIM'', pronounced as ''Adād''), or Iškur ( Sumerian) was the storm and rain god in the Canaanite and ancient Mesopotamian religions. He was attested in Ebla as "Hadda" in c. 2500 BCE. ...

, Leviathan and

Yahweh Yahweh *''Yahwe'', was the national god of ancient Israel and Judah. The origins of his worship reach at least to the early Iron Age, and likely to the Late Bronze Age if not somewhat earlier, and in the oldest biblical literature he po ...

, Tiamat and

Marduk Marduk (Cuneiform: dAMAR.UTU; Sumerian: ''amar utu.k'' "calf of the sun; solar calf"; ) was a god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon. When Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of ...

(see also Labbu, Bašmu, Mušḫuššu), Illuyanka and Tarhunt, Yammu and

Baal Baal (), or Baal,; phn, , baʿl; hbo, , baʿal, ). ( ''baʿal'') was a title and honorific meaning "owner", "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied t ...

in the Baal Cycle etc. The

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Tanninim mentioned in

Book of Genesis The Book of Genesis (from Greek ; Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית ''Bəreʾšīt'', "In hebeginning") is the first book of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament. Its Hebrew name is the same as its first word, ( "In the beginning" ...

1:21 and the "great serpent" of Amos 9:3. In the

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who fled the fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of ...

, a pair of sea serpents killed Laocoön and his sons when Laocoön argued against bringing the

Trojan Horse The Trojan Horse was a wooden horse said to have been used by the Greeks during the Trojan War to enter the city of Troy and win the war. The Trojan Horse is not mentioned in Homer's ''Iliad'', with the poem ending before the war is concluded, ...

into Troy. In antiquity and in the Bible, dragons were envisioned as huge serpentine monsters, with the image of a dragon with two or four legs and wings developing during the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

. Stories depicting sea-dwelling serpents may include the Babylonian myths of Tiamat, the myths of the Hydra, Scylla, Cetus, and Echidna in Greek mythology, and Christianity's Leviathan.

Northern Europe

In Nordic mythology, '' Jörmungandr'' (or '' Midgarðsormr'') was a sea serpent or

worm Worms are many different distantly related bilateral animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body, no limbs, and no eyes (though not always). Worms vary in size from microscopic to over in length for marine polychaete wor ...

so long that it encircled the entire world, Midgard. Sea serpents also appear frequently in later

Scandinavian folklore Nordic folklore is the folklore of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. It has common roots with, and has been mutually influenced by, folklore in England, Germany, the Low Countries, the Baltic countries, Finland an ...

, particularly in that of Norway, such as an account that in 1028 AD, Saint Olaf killed a sea serpent in Valldal in Norway, throwing its body onto the mountain Syltefjellet. Marks on the mountain are associated with the legend. In Swedish ecclesiastic and writer Olaus Magnus's '' Carta marina'', many marine monsters of varied form, including an immense sea serpent, appear. In his 1555 work ''History of the Northern Peoples'', Magnus gives the following description of a Norwegian sea serpent: Norwegian Bishop Erik Pontoppidan (1698–1764) is more cautious than the Archbishop of Upsala and does not believe that sea serpents would prey on ships. On the other hand, according to sailors of the time, serpents would destroy ships by wrapping the ship in coils of their body and pulling it underwater. Sailors threatened by a sea serpent were said to have thrown large objects such as paddles or shovels overboard in the path of the serpent, hoping that the serpent would take the object and leave without destroying the ship. Ráth-Végh István: ''A tengeri kígyó'', Móra Ferenc Ifjúsági Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1980, ISBN 963-11-2161-5

Reported sightings

An apparent eye-witness account is found in

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...

's ''Historia Animalium''.

Strabo Strabo''Strabo'' (meaning "squinty", as in strabismus) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. The father of Pompey was called " Pompeius Strabo". A native of Sicily so clear-sighted that he could s ...

makes reference to an eyewitness account of a dead sea creature sighted by Poseidonius on the coast of the northern Levant. He reports the following: "As for the plains, the first, beginning at the sea, is called Macras, or Macra-Plain. Here, as reported by Poseidonius, was seen the fallen dragon, the corpse of which was about a plethrum [] in length, and so bulky that horsemen standing by it on either side could not see one another, and its jaws were large enough to admit a man on horseback, and each flake of its horny scales exceeded an oblong shield in length." The creature was seen sometime between 130 and 51 BC.

Hans Egede Hans Poulsen Egede (31 January 1686 – 5 November 1758) was a Dano-Norwegian Lutheran missionary who launched mission efforts to Greenland, which led him to be styled the Apostle of Greenland. He established a successful mission among the Inui ...

, the national

saint In religious belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of holiness, likeness, or closeness to God. However, the use of the term ''saint'' depends on the context and denomination. In Catholic, Eastern Or ...

of Greenland, gives an 18th-century description of a sea serpent. On July 6, 1734, his ship sailed past the coast of Greenland when suddenly those on board "saw a most terrible creature, resembling nothing they saw before. The monster lifted its head so high that it seemed to be higher than the

crow's nest A crow's nest is a structure in the upper part of the main mast of a ship or a structure that is used as a lookout point. On ships, this position ensured the widest field of view for lookouts to spot approaching hazards, other ships, or land b ...

on the mainmast. The head was small and the body short and wrinkled. The unknown creature was using giant fins which propelled it through the water. Later the sailors saw its tail as well. The monster was longer than our whole ship", wrote Egede. In 1845, a 35 meter long skeleton claimed as belonging to an extinct sea serpent was put on a show in the

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

by Albert C. Koch. The claim was debunked by Prof. Jeffries Wyman, an anatomist who went to see the skeleton for himself. Wyman declared that the skull of the animal had to be mammalian in origin, and that the skeleton was composed of bones of several different animals, including an extinct species of whale. HMS Plumper sea serpent 1848

On 6 August 1848, Captain McQuhae of and several of his officers and crew (en route to

St Helena Saint Helena () is a British overseas territory located in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is a remote volcanic tropical island west of the coast of south-western Africa, and east of Rio de Janeiro in South America. It is one of three constitu ...

) saw a sea serpent which was subsequently reported (and debated) in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ( ...

''. The vessel sighted what they named as an enormous serpent between the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( af, Kaap die Goeie Hoop ) ;''Kaap'' in isolation: pt, Cabo da Boa Esperança is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is ...

and St Helena. The serpent was witnessed to have been swimming with of its head above the water and they believed that there was another of the creature in the sea. Captain McQuahoe also said that " he creaturepassed rapidly, but so close under our lee quarter, that had it been a man of my acquaintance I should have easily have recognized his features with the naked eye." According to seven members of the crew, it remained in view for around twenty minutes. Another officer wrote that the creature was more of a lizard than a serpent. Evolutionary biologist Gary J. Galbreath contends that what the crew of ''Daedalus'' saw was a

sei whale The sei whale ( , ; ''Balaenoptera borealis'') is a baleen whale, the third-largest rorqual after the blue whale and the fin whale. It inhabits most oceans and adjoining seas, and prefers deep offshore waters. It avoids polar and tropical w ...

. A report was published in the '' Illustrated London News'' on 14 April 1849 of a sighting of a sea serpent off the Portuguese coast by . :''"A giant snake appeared at once from the water - and the largest cetacean a boa constrictor way wrapped twice. (I note such a physeter It can grow to 20-30 meters long!) It lasted for about 15 minutes the deadly struggle, the sea was just foaming and crashing waves around us, finally the back of the whale stood out Out of the water, he sank head first into the deep where the snake must have killed him. A cold shiver ran through us a cet at the sight of his final struggle; so writhing poor in the monster's double ring, like a little bird between the claws of a falcon. View of the two rings, the snake. It could have been 160-170 feet long and 7-8 feet thick."''

Gallery

Soe Orm 1555.jpg, Olaus Magnus's Sea Orm, 1555 Sea serpent Cape Ann 1639.jpg, The first American sea serpent, reported from

Cape Ann Cape Ann is a rocky peninsula in northeastern Massachusetts, United States on the Atlantic Ocean. It is about northeast of Boston and marks the northern limit of Massachusetts Bay. Cape Ann includes the city of Gloucester and the towns o ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...

, in 1639 Sea serpent, Ama Temple, Macao.jpg, Sea serpents, Ama Temple,

Macao Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a po ...

Seljord komm.svg, A sea serpent depicted in the coat of arms of Seljord in Norway Hans Egede sea serpent 1734.jpg, Sea serpent reported by Hans Egede, Bishop of Greenland, in 1734. Henry Lee suggested the giant squid as an explanation. Hans Egede 1734 sea serpent.jpg, The "Great Sea Serpent" according to Hans Egede Maned sea serpent 1755.jpg, Maned sea serpent from Bishop Erik Pontoppidan's 1755 work ''Natural History of Norway'' 1817 Gloucester sea serpent.jpg, The Gloucester sea serpent of 1817 Sea serpent from Hart Nautical Collections.jpg, A hairy sea serpent Hydrarchos.jpg, Albert Koch's "Hydrarchos" fossil skeleton from 1845. It was found to be an assembled collection of bones from at least five fossil specimens of '' Basilosaurus''. HMS Plumper sea serpent 1848.jpg, "Supposed Appearance Of The Great Sea-Serpent, From H.M.S. Plumper, Sketched By An Officer On Board", Illustrated London News, 14 April 1849 Daedalus 1.jpg, The sea serpent spotted by the crew of HMS ''Daedalus'' in 1848 Daedalus sea serpent 1848.jpg, Another of the original illustrations of the HMS ''Daedalus'' encounter Giant oarfish bermuda beach 1860.jpg,

Oarfish Oarfish are huge, greatly elongated, pelagic lampriform fish belonging to the small family Regalecidae. Found in areas spanning from temperate ocean zones to tropical ones, yet rarely seen, the oarfish family contains three species in two gener ...

that washed ashore on a Bermuda beach in 1860. The animal was long and was originally described as a sea serpent. File:Lderry co arms.png, The arms of

County Londonderry County Londonderry ( Ulster-Scots: ''Coontie Lunnonderrie''), also known as County Derry ( ga, Contae Dhoire), is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the thirty two counties of Ireland and one of the nine counties of Ulster. ...

feature sea dragons as

supporters In heraldry, supporters, sometimes referred to as ''attendants'', are figures or objects usually placed on either side of the shield and depicted holding it up. Early forms of supporters are found in medieval seals. However, unlike the c ...

References

External links

{{Commons category
Video of the oarfish
a creature that possibly inspired the sea serpent mythology. * https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/great-sea-serpent/ * https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36677/36677-h/36677-h.htm Legendary serpents Dragons Greek legendary creatures Sea monsters Tiamat