Thread: Among many seals found in ancient 2nd millennium BC Bactria, the ones depicting snakes and dragons are the most prevalent... 
To the point where Nadezhda Dubova from the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Science states: "...nowhere in the whole system of Ancient Near Eastern art had serpents played such an important role as in Bactria..." academia.edu/6341267/Sarian…
What is very interesting is that visual depiction of snakes and dragons in Bactrian art closely corresponds to the Slavic snake and dragon mythology...This is very interesting indeed...I will show you what I mean on couple of examples...
Bactrians depicted dragons as snakes with wings...Slavic legend says that "all snakes once had wings, and flew in the sky, but god took their wings away"...
In Slavic languages the word "zmaj" (dragon) is a masculine version of the word "zmija" (snake). Slavs believed that dragons are just old snakes...
In Slavic mythology snake is a solar animal. Snakes come to our world when the sun comes to our world from the underworld, at the beginning of the spring and they depart our world with the sun at the end of autumn...
In Slavic mythology, snakes are directly linked to sun's heat...Slavs believed that the snakes "feed of the sun's heat" and this is why we have winter, because snakes "suck all the heat out of the sun during spring, summer and autumn"... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/01/enemy-…
Bactrian seal of the sun god(see the wavy lines depicting heat coming out of his body). Sumerians depicted their sun god in the same way. Bactrian sun god is holding two snakes because the sunny part of the year is the period between the appearance and disappearance of snakes...
I believe this seal also depicts the sun god even though there are no sun rays coming out of his body. He is still holding two snakes, but now there are also two birds, flying in opposite directions...Why?
Why? Sunny part of the year, the domain of the sun god, is the time between arrival and departure of the migratory birds...Slavic word for summer and for solar year is "leto", possibly derived from "let" (flight) of migratory birds... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2017/01/leto.h…
Here we again see the sun god, holding two snakes. He is wearing bull horns, because the summer, the season when the sun is most powerful, when the sun is "sitting on its throne"🙂starts in Taurus (Bull) oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2016/05/ram-an… and is symbolised by a Bull oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/10/symbol…
One thing characteristic for slavic mythology is that because snakes are solar animals which "suck sun's heat", and "dragons are just old snakes", Slavic dragons are of a fire breathing variety...Just like snakes represent sun's heat, dragons represent sun's destructive heat...
Rain swallowing, drought causing dragon is a common theme in Slavic folklore...And when a hero kills such a dragon by cutting his head(s) off (the only way to kill a dragon by the way), "rivers (of fertility) flow from each of his necks"...
These dragons in Slavic mythology lived in lakes...Which is why people prayed to them walking around the lakes...And which is why people sacrificed to them by throwing sacrifices into the lake...Including blood sacrifices... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2020/01/dragon…
The dragon from Slavic mythology likes one sacrifice more than any other: young girls...And there are many legends which talk about girls being sacrificed to "the dragon who lived in a lake"...Sounds familiar?
But, there are also South Slavic legends about people sacrificing young girls to the monster living in a lake, where the monster was not a dragon, but a bull...In Serbia, two legends about the same lake, identify the monster as both dragon and bull... oldeuropeanculture.blogspot.com/2019/03/water-…
Why? Well, as I said, in Slavic mythology, dragon represents the destructive heat of the sun. Sun's heat is most destructive during the summer, the season symbolised by a Bull...Hence the equating of bulls and dragons in South Slavic mythology....
So to end this thread, here is my favourite Bactrian seal (so far 🙂) It depicts a snake with two heads: a dragon head pointing to the left and a bull head pointing to the right...Symbolically equating both with the sun's heat, symbolised by a snake body...How cool is this?🙂
Why can Slavic folk mythology, collected from illiterate peasants in the 19th and 20th century, explain Bactrian mythological symbolism from 4000 years ago?
