Jawnomicon

Lotan

Also called Litanu, LTN, The Fleeing Serpent, the Twisting Serpent, The Fleeting Serpent, Twisty Serpent, Potentate with Seven Heads.

Lotan is the seven-headed sea dragon of Canaanite myth, chaos's champion beside Yam and Mot against Baal, and the ancestor of the biblical Leviathan.

At a glance

Tradition
Canaanite and Ugaritic mythology
Region
Middle East (place of origin)
Trait family
The Hero-Slain
Symbols
Dragon

Near this figure

and 2 more

Symbols

Judged against the description by a model. Meanings are our own paraphrase.

Traits

Read from the figure's description, which a model wrote. Open "why" for the sentence a trait came from.

Form

  • Multi-headed body
    why

    Lotan is the great serpent of Canaanite mythology as the Ugaritic texts preserve it: a seven-headed aquatic dragon, the personification of chaos, written in the consonantal script as ltn.

Behaviour

  • Defeated by a god or hero restoring order
    why

    Baal defeated Mot, and to Lotan the storm god delivered the killing blow — the tradition adding that only a god had the power to destroy such a creature, though one strand of the scholarship keeps the uncertainty of the broken tablets about whether the serpent's slayer was Baal or his warrior sister.

Omens

  • Personifies cosmic chaos
    why

    Lotan is the great serpent of Canaanite mythology as the Ugaritic texts preserve it: a seven-headed aquatic dragon, the personification of chaos, written in the consonantal script as ltn.

Roles

Judged from the works' own entries, not from the description. Carries: the figure holds the role. Meets: the role is in its stories, held by something it meets.