The scorpion motif in Mesopotamian art
(Plus, the scorpion-people!)
About a month ago, I was looking through a book on art history and came across a tiny, enigmatic image. A group of women with long, flowy hair, their arms seemingly outstretched towards each other, all of them encircled by scorpions twice their size. It’s a drawing of the decorative design on a prehistoric bowl. Here it is, pic by me:
I just couldn’t get this image out of my head. It seemed more than merely decorative.. Since I’m already on a self-study journey of ancient Mesopotamia (with no end in sight), I took the opportunity to venture on a mini side-quest to learn more about the “meaning” of scorpions (and scorpion-people!) in Mesopotamian art. Here’s what I learned.
A note of caution: nothing below is definitive; all of it is educated conjecture.
Scorpions as reference to Sexuality, Fertility, and Ishara of Northern Syria
Scorpions - there are, apparently, many species, with almost triple as many sub-species. They are common critters to the entire Near East. Undoubtedly, the earliest Paleolithic settlers to this area encountered them (if nothing else, as unwelcome occasional guests in their homes.) They surely observed the scorpion’s menacing, dance-like courtship rituals, and how the resulting offspring could number to over 100 scorplings. It’s not farfetched to imagine the formation of a symbolic link between the observable behavior of this beguiling, dangerous (though rarely lethal) animal and concepts like sexuality and fertility in the minds of the ancients.
The fascinating Neolithic Samarra culture, which created pottery with distinctive designs, including the one that gripped me so, was the first (in Mesopotamia, that is) to visually attach the feminine to the scorpion in their designs. Of course, this is prehistory, we have no written records just yet, so we can’t know for sure what specifically they were evoking (or invoking) when they used scorpions/scorpions with women on their wares. But, it sounds entirely plausible to me that sexuality, fertility, and/or perhaps an associated deity (goddess?), or myth, were being referenced. If vessels with these types of designs were associated with ritual and ceremony, there are even more layers of meaning we might be missing out on.
There is actually a later precedent for references to a scorpion goddess. There’s the goddess Ishara (or Ishkhara). Apparently, there were two goddesses under this name. One was an Anatolian (modern day Turkey) deity and a goddess of the underworld, which is very cool, but a side-quest for another time. The Ishara that interests me was syncretized into the Mesopotamian pantheon during the Ur III Dynasty. The scorpion was her animal (she was also associated with snakes, which often appear alongside scorpions in art, actually), and was deemed a great goddess of Northern Syria. Depending on the time period/place, she was viewed as a mother goddess, goddess of marriage, love, war, and interestingly, a goddess of extispicy.
Suffice it to say, during certain time periods, visual depictions of the scorpion were most likely a direct reference to this goddess, specifically.
Scorpions as an astral reference in agriculture
Fertility, sexuality, the feminine, mother goddess…. Screams nature, no? Indeed, the scorpion has something to do with the agricultural cycle through its astral aspect.
The constellation Scorpius is bright enough to be observable - the ancient Mesopotamians definitely noted its movements across the night sky. When referring to the scorpion’s astral aspect visually, Mesopotamians placed it along the top of a scene (in the “heavenly chamber.”) It can be seen on so-called ploughing scenes from the Akkadian Period. During this time, here’s what the agricultural cycle roughly looked like for the Akkadian farmer:
Acquire and/or retool your farming equipment
Prepare the fields for seedling
Do the seeding
Go ham harvesting
It probably goes without saying, but the ancient farmer was much more in tune with nature than we are. Equinoxes mattered a whole lot. How does the constellation Scorpius fit in? Well, the ancient farmer (and astrologer!) correctly observed that the journey of the astral scorpion (especially its brightest star, Antares) coincided with the end of summer and the beginning of the rainy season. So, perhaps when the scorpion is evoked in those ploughing scenes, it’s referring to a specific time of year and/or part of the agricultural cycle. Almost a visual reminder to stay on schedule and ensure your field was ready by the time the rains arrived in September haha. The “original” layer of meaning related to fertility - abundance? - still very much tracks as well, since we’re talking agriculture.
Enter the scorpion-people: Power and Protection
Scorpions remained a common visual motif throughout Mesopotamia’s history. Though, as millennia pass, we can clock the symbol’s “meaning” expanding, changing, with different aspects being emphasized depending on when & where we are, and who is making or directing the depiction. This is normal, and seems due to the following (amongst other factors):
the exposure to other cultures, and their regional cult(s) and variations in style (in terms of visual representation)
military conquest, and the sometimes subsequent adoption and/or repurposing of the symbols of the conquered peoples’ “cannon”
the then-current, prescribed (aka court-approved) representational guidelines and style(s), mediums
(not to be coy, but) a king can never really tame his entire territory, so variation that doesn’t fit in with his preferred modes of representation is to be expected. We see this in records of magic rituals a lot (a whooooole other fascinating topic for another time); there’s a difference and a divide between institutional magic vs folk magic. Reminds me a bit of a sort of clash between urban vs rural. Scorpions e/invoked symbolically in magic and ritual as practiced by the latter was not the same as the first, especially since rural practitioners don’t seem to have drawn solely from the main “institutional” religion for their incantations and practices. So, maybe we can note the same animal/symbol being used, but it’s placed in a different context (use) and therefore may have a different meaning depending on the user. Hope that makes sense!
This is a very good time to bring up the symbolic association that eventually formed between scorpions and power and protection.
Not only because of the observed behavior of the animal and its intimidating stingy tail, but because — scorpion-people! To understand them in visual art, we need to briefly look at sacred literature.
The two notable cuneiform tablets we encounter scorpion-people in are the famous Enuma Elish and the Epic of Gilgamesh.
In the Enuma Elish, a scorpion-man makes a brief cameo as one of the 11 creatures (monsters) created by Tiamat, the big bad of the story (but also, a rather misunderstood (mother) figure imo). Along with its 10 siblings (and its mum), the fierce scorpion-man is defeated by Marduk, a major Babylonian deity and the hero of this particular creation myth.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the part-god, part-human hero Gilgamesh (& possibly a historical king) is on a desperate search for immortality when he encounters not one, but two scorpion-people. These scorpion people are guardians at the gate of Mount Mashu, the very place the sun (aka the sun god Shamash) rises each day. They’re a power couple, a husband and wife, so we get a scorpion-man and a scorpion-woman. The exhausted Gilgamesh is pretty shaken at their sight alone. It seems it is the female who has the greater sensitivity and insight to recognize the true (divine) nature of Gilgamesh. The male ends up giving the hero some directions, and all in all this scorpion pair is portrayed as mighty and fearsome, yes, but also as beneficent and helpful.
In terms of visual representations though, we have yet to discover any depictions of scorpion-women. Only scorpion-men remain, and when shown, they usually have a human head with a bearded face, the body and/or just the legs & talons of a bird, and a scorpion tail (always raised and ready to strike.) They wear a distinctive horned cap (a divinity symbol). Sometimes they also have wings. Iconographically, they’re usually found alongside certain other symbols, like the sun (a reference to Shamash), snakes (another fertility symbol), dogs (the goddess Gula), and more…
They sometimes appear on kudurrus (real estate records, essentially) - we might assume it is because they’re e/invoked as kind of enforcers of the contract, and/or punishers of those who may be tempted to alter or destroy these carved stone records.
Scorpion-men also appear on personal cylinder seals used to sign documents (basically, it’s like your personal signature for legal transactions.) Here, they may also sometimes be referring to lost myths - but we’re not sure. Due to their super custom nature (they’re very particular to the owner and their occupation, status in society, etc), as well as their apotropaic properties, I’m guessing there are facets of meaning we’ll never ever glean.
On the more fun side, we can note scorpion-men invoked in magic ritual practices AND we have remains of small scorpion-man figurines, which were undoubtedly used in such rituals. They were used in protective magic, so clearly, their association to the sun god Shamash and their perception as protector figures is at play in this context. Both male and female scorpion-people were invoked in spells and ritual, but we have yet to find any scorpion-woman figurines (boo.)
And that’s it for now. I hope you enjoyed this! I realize I didn’t use any images in this one, so if you’d like to see what some of these scorpions and scorpion-people look like in practice, check out this little video I put together for my instagram here.
Thanks for reading!
WAIT. WHAT JUST HAPPENED?
Hi there, my name is Marina and I’m an artist. I’m also a bigtime history nerd, currently in my Ancient Mesopotamia era. Welcome to my axis mundi!
About once a month, you’ll receive a dispatch from me on cool tidbits from Mesopotamian history which feed my mind, ignite my imagination and inspire my art. I’ll be sharing some of my art occasionally too.
I am not an academic or an expert by no means what so ever. The entire purpose of this publication is simply to share what I’m reading about at the moment - because I want to, because it helps me process what I’m learning and because I personally find these topics interesting and worthwhile. We’re not covering Mesopotamian history in a chronological or complete manner at all.
Necessary Disclaimer:
Please do not be tempted to quote me - check out what the experts aka my sources said, all and always listed at the end of these types of dispatches. Any hyperlinked names or phrases above and throughout are a courtesy to you to save you the googling. They were not necessarily used as reference material in the writing of.
I am not an Art Historian, an Assyriologist, or a Historian. I have a BA in Cultural Anthropology (cool, but unrelated), a lifetime of insatiable curiosity and reading of history books (+ open-source scholarly articles heh) on a variety of historical periods. Of course, I carry with me my limited understandings, interpretations, biases and opinions as I go on my little self-study treks. In short, I love learning about ancient history, but I am NOT an expert.
SOURCES:
Ancient Near Eastern Art (1995) by Dominique Collon
Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary (1992) by Jeremy Black and Anthony Green
From Earth to Heaven. The symbol of the scorpion and its astronomical association in Mesopotamia (2021) by Sara Pizzimenti
Symbols as Expression of Cultural Identity and Connectivity. The Case of Mitannian, Cassite and Middle-Assyrian Symbolic Heritages in Late Bronze Mesopotamia (2013) by Sara Pizzimenti
Goddesses in Context: On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources (2013) by Julia M Asher-Greve and Joan Goodnick Westenholz
Mesopotamian Magic: Textual, Historical, and Interpretative Perspectives (2000) by Tzvi Abusch and Karel van Der Toorn
Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh and Others (2009) by Stephanie Dalley
This is a fascinating piece! With the disclaimer that I too am no expert, I can totally buy your argument about scorpions and fertility
I so enjoyed this, Marina! I know very little about ancient history, but my curiosity bone has been tweaked :)