Serpents that heal

Did other ancient peoples use serpent images for healing or protection?

What the relationship labels mean

Possible historical contact: The cultures were in contact, so one tradition could have known the other.
Shared literary world: The stories appear to share older roots or a common cultural setting.
Similar human experience: Different peoples responding to similar realities, such as river floods.
Resemblance only: A real similarity worth noticing; no historical connection has been established.
Modern speculative theory: A modern interpretation, not an ancient source. Not supported by authenticated evidence.

Midianite (probably) · Timna, southern Arabah

The copper snake of the Timna shrine

Possible historical contact

Composed: 12th century BC
Earliest surviving copy: The object itself, from Beno Rothenberg's excavations

A copper snake about 12 cm long with a gilded head, found in the tent shrine that Midianites made from an Egyptian Hathor temple.

Similar

A metal serpent in a sanctuary
In the copper country of the Arabah
Associated with Midian

Different

Its purpose is unknown

Read it: B. Rothenberg, Timna (1972)

Egypt · Egypt

Snake-bite magic and the uraeus

Possible historical contact

Composed: 2nd millennium BC
Earliest surviving copy: Papyri (Brooklyn Papyrus 47.218.48 on snakes) and cippi of Horus

Egyptians treated snakebite with spells and remedies; healing stelae (cippi) showed the child Horus mastering snakes, and water poured over them was drunk for protection. The rearing cobra (uraeus) protected Pharaoh.

Similar

Images used to protect against snakes
Looking at or touching an image for healing

Different

Magic and many gods

Greek · Greece

The rod of Asclepius

Resemblance only

Composed: 5th century BC onward
Earliest surviving copy: Sanctuaries at Epidaurus and Kos

The healing god Asclepius carried a staff with a serpent; snakes lived in his sanctuaries, where the sick slept seeking healing. The rod remains the symbol of medicine.

Similar

A serpent on a staff as a symbol of healing

Different

Centuries later, a different god

Back to the story

The Bronze Serpent and the Songs of the Way →After a victory at Hormah, the people complain again, and "fiery serpents" bite them. Moses makes a bronze serpent on a pole; whoever looks at it lives. Then Israel marches north past Moab, quoting a lost "book of the wars of the LORD" and singing to a well. At Timna, in the copper country of the Arabah, archaeologists found a copper snake with a gilded head in a desert tent shrine.
Isaiah 6: Holy, Holy, Holy →"In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple" (6:1). Seraphim with six wings call to one another, "Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory" (vv. 2–3); the threshold shakes and the house fills with smoke (v. 4). Isaiah cries, "Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips" (v. 5). A seraph touches his mouth with a live coal from the altar: "thine iniquity is taken away" (vv. 6–7). God asks, "Whom shall I send?"; Isaiah answers, "Here am I; send me" (v. 8). His message: "Hear ye indeed, but understand not… Make the heart of this people fat… lest they… understand… and be healed" (vv. 9–10). "How long?" Until cities lie waste; a tenth will remain and be burned again, like a felled oak whose stump remains: "the holy seed shall be the substance thereof" (vv. 11–13).
Investigation: The Holy One and the Sea Monsters →Isaiah's God is "the Holy One of Israel," enthroned above seraphim (6), presiding over a heavenly court (6:8; 40:1–8), creator of everything including light and darkness (45:7), who once struck the sea dragon Rahab (51:9) and will slay Leviathan, "the piercing serpent… the crooked serpent" (27:1). Many of these images have close parallels in the literature and art of Israel's neighbors: winged serpents in Egyptian and Judahite art, divine assemblies at Ugarit, the Babylonian creation epic, and the Ugaritic Lotan, "the fleeing serpent, the twisting serpent." This investigation sets each Isaiah text beside its closest ancient comparison and asks what the comparison shows, and what it does not.