dwollsadventures:Aw yeah it’s Mušḫuššu. The most popular Mesopotamian creature, perhaps only rivaled

dwollsadventures:Aw yeah it’s Mušḫuššu. The most popular Mesopotamian creature, perhaps only rivaled by lamassu*. Back in the 1930’s, when the Ishtar gate was rediscovered, it was one of the first ancient monsters brought to the light of the modern day. It’s been around so long that when it was initially described archaeologists mistranslated its name as Sirrush. The real name, mushussu, has been variously translated as “Reddish Serpent” or “Fierce Serpent”. It is the second snake dragon along with mushmahhu, this time without the multiple heads. Probably made up for the fact that it was given a higher degree of honor than its siblings, being a prominent symbol of the god Marduk and kings in general. Aside from the Ishtar Gate, depictions of mushussu are sometimes depicted in the serpopard pose, with necks intertwined. Others give mushussu a pair of wings in a much more lion dragon-like pose. Quite possibly the oldest representation of a dragon with four legs and two wings! But not the most popular, as the wingless are by and far the most common. Suck it dragon taxonomy gatekeepers. *the original draft of this falsely stated that Mushu from Mulan was named after mushussu, which is what I always thought, but apparently that’s not true. Mushu is named after moo shu pork. Weird coincidence I guess. Haha! You thought I was going to do it without wings didn’t you? You should know they call me Zig-zag-Gav! Ahem. My first draft was pretty much just a recreation of the mushussu from the Gate of Ishtar. But I wanted to do something different. There are dozens of pictures with a flat profile of him, I don’t need to add another to the pile. The second thing that gave me trouble was the color. Some translate its name as “reddish serpent”, so how do you parse that? Reconstructions of Ishtar’s gate give mushussu a gold hide with a red spot on his neck, so is that what they’re referring to? There are many iterations of the colors in my folders. In the end, this tropical one was the best of them all, in my opinion. On a flat background it looks like a lot, but I imagine in the hanging gardens of Babylon it would look like a resplendant, dangerous bird. A bird with the head of a snake and the forelimbs of a lion. The most unexpected bird of them all. I’m not entirely happy with it, in retrospect. The original design is already so good, how do I translate it into my style? At least I can say I didn’t do the unexpected. Next time, a snake dragon that is not a snake dragon. -- source link
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