The seven-headed beast and its antecedents in texts of the ancient culture

Abstract

This article analyzes the metaphor of the seven-headed beast and its intertextuality in the Apocalypse of John and ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian texts as well as with the Old Testament. It is based on the concepts of metaphor, according to Lakoff and Johnson; the concepts of texts of culture, intertextuality, and semiosphere, from Lotman’s Semiotics of Culture; and the monster as a symbolic representation of a grotesque alterity, according to Cohen. It starts from the assumption that some linguistic and conceptual elements, settled in the memory of cultures, allow the intertwining of texts of different times and places. In addition to the biblical text in which monstrous animals are used as representations of opposing powers, the metaphor of the beast is taken in its semiotic connections with ancient texts in which also is verified a building of seven-headed monsters, like the Palette of Narmer from 3100 B.C. and the Cylinder of Tell Asmar from 2200 B.C., among others. These connections indicate that the biblical apocalyptic text is not isolated from the cultures of its time. They also allow us to see the prophetic narratives of the Apocalypse as a text of culture which is able to dialogue with a network of other narratives.