In 1902, after extensive archaeological work, the gate of Queen Ishtar reappeared on the site of ancient Babylon (the ruins are located on the outskirts of the modern city of Al-Hillah, Iraq), hiding under the earth for many centuries. Partially destroyed, they nevertheless looked very impressive.
Ishtar Gate is a huge semicircular arch bounded on the sides by giant walls and opening onto a rather long path for processions, along which walls also stretched to the right and left. All this is built of bricks covered with bright blue, yellow, white and black glaze.
The Ishtar Gate was reconstructed in the 1930s. at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin from material found by archaeologist Robert Koldewey.
To heighten the splendor, the walls of the gate and the path are covered with bas-reliefs of extraordinary beauty, depicting animals in natural poses. Rows of gravely marching lions adorn the walls of the path. The gate is covered from top to bottom with alternating rows of images of two other animals.
One of them is a powerful and ferocious bull, the other … this is where the zoological puzzle begins.
This second animal is commonly referred to as the Babylonian dragon, and it is the same beast that appears under the same name in the Bible. Its Babylonian name, sirrush, is preserved in cuneiform inscriptions.
There are about 575 images of animals on the gate. The structure is impressive, and it is not surprising that King Nebuchadnezzar, who rebuilt the Ishtar gate, was very proud of them. When the work was completed, he drew up an inscription, which was made in cuneiform and put on public display. The text does not ignore the images of animals.
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"Ferocious bulls (originally called" rimi ") and gloomy dragons are inscribed on the courtyard of the gate (meaning the walls), by which I have given the gate an extraordinary and magnificent splendor, and the human race can look at them in amazement."
The human race really looked at them in amazement for many centuries. Of course, in those days nobody cared about zoological reliability. The lions on the walls of the path were lions, the rounds on the gates were rounds, even though they looked somewhat unusual; and the details with which the artisans of Nebuchadnezzar considered it necessary to decorate the monsters they depicted did not interfere with anyone.
Sirrush's bas-reliefs have a very clear outline and depict a narrow, scaled torso, a long and thin scaly tail, and an equally long and thin scaly neck with a snake head. The mouth is closed, but a long forked tongue protrudes from it. On the back of the head, leathery ears are visible, decorated with a straight horn - a good weapon. It is possible that there are two horns, since only one horn is visible in the image of the tur-rimi.
Sirrush
“It is very remarkable,” writes Koldewey, “that, despite the scales, the animal has wool. Near the ears, three spiral strands fall from the head, and on the neck, where the crest of the lizard should be, there is a long row of curly curls.
But the most remarkable detail is the paws. The front paws look like a feline (say, a panther), while the hind legs look like a bird's. They are very large, four-toed, covered with strong scales. And despite the combination of such different details, sirrush looks like living, in any case, just like the rimi depicted next to him, if not more natural.
If anyone had dug up the Ishtar Gate 100 years earlier, this combination of different paws could be considered sufficient proof that the magic snake is no more real animal than the winged bulls and birds with human heads from Assyrian and Babylonian mythology. But over a hundred years, Georges Cuvier managed to become the father of paleontology, Professor Marsh in America won the title of "father of dinosaurs", and the views on biological science themselves have undergone tremendous changes.
Paleontologists have discovered fossil dinosaurs with incredibly long necks and tails, a huge body and a small head or a snake head crowned with horns (or maybe they had forked tongues, although, alas, they are not preserved as fossils). There were even species that could not choose in any way which is better - to walk straight or on four limbs. They probably used one or the other way of transportation, depending on the circumstances.
Accordingly, sirrusha was suddenly perceived as something real and quite possible.
Modern science can easily determine the type of lizard to which the sirrush belonged, although it does not know the fossil remains of the exact same species, and the artist who portrayed him probably made several minor mistakes.
But where did it come from? According to some scholars, from … Central Africa. The only place where he could live without being noticed is Central Africa, the region of tropical rainforests and the Congo Basin. Therefore, all the rumors about some unknown large and terrible animal, nicknamed mokele-mbembe, which came from there, are very curious. They also reached the German big game hunter Hans Schomburgk many years before Koldewey wrote his first extensive work.
Schomburgk worked for Karl Hagenbeck, a wild animal dealer, who supplied them to zoological gardens and kept a huge zoo at Stählingen near Hamburg. On his return from Africa in 1912, Schomburgk told Hagenbeck an amazing story. And he was delighted when Hagenbeck did not ridicule him. Instead, he himself told Schomburgk that he had received similar information from other sources more than once.
These reports were retellings of the native rumor of a "dragon and elephant" hybrid believed to inhabit impenetrable swamps.
Arriving on the shores of Lake Bengweulu in Zambia, where places seemed to be ideal for hippos, Schomburgk asked the natives why not a single hippopotamus could be seen here. The natives replied that there was a good reason for this.
They very seriously explained that an animal lives in the lake, which, being smaller than hippos, nevertheless kills and eats them. According to his habits, he must be an amphibian: the animal goes ashore, but no one has ever seen his tracks.
“Unfortunately, I regarded this story as a fairy tale and did not pursue further research. Later I talked about this with Karl Hagenbeck and now I am convinced that the beast belonged to some kind of lizard. I am of this opinion because Hagenbeck received reports from other sources that completely coincide with my observations and with information received by me from the natives whom I interviewed. Hagenbek sent a special expedition to Lake Bangweulu, but, alas, she did not even manage to find this lake.
The animal is said to have a gray-brown color, smooth skin and the size of an elephant, or at least a hippo. He has a long and very flexible neck and only one tooth, but very long. Some say it's a horn. Some have mentioned a long, muscular tail, like an alligator.
They say that canoes approaching the beast are doomed: the animal immediately attacks the boats and kills the crew, but does not eat the bodies. This creature lives in caves washed by the river in clay banks on steep bends. In search of food, they say, it crawls ashore even during the day and feeds only on vegetation. This feature does not allow explaining everything with myths. I was shown his favorite plant. It is a type of vine with large white flowers, milky juice and apple-like fruits."
After hearing these stories, the scientists laughed. What large unknown animals can we talk about when they are all already discovered!
But too many similar evidence suggests that perhaps a large unknown animal is actually hiding in the shallow bodies of water and rivers in Central Africa. Most likely it is a reptile.
Naturally, the question arises: could a large reptile survive in Central Africa? The answer of zoologists is this: if somewhere she could survive, it was only here, in Central Africa!
All kinds of geological changes have taken place around the world over the past 60 million years. Shallow seas flooded vast land areas, other areas dried up. Isthmuses appeared and disappeared again; tectonic forces piled mountains, there was an active volcanic activity. But Central Africa turned out to be geologically stable: the land mass there is exactly the same as 60 million years ago.
Finally, the continents north and south of the fiftieth parallels in both hemispheres went through a series of glaciations, but although they influenced the climate between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, this impact did not lead to dramatic consequences.
And Central Africa has not been subject to geological cataclysms since the Cretaceous and has experienced only minor climatic changes. So if large reptiles have survived since those times, they should be looked for in Central Africa …