Serpent King Zahhak, a Reality or a Myth? Theorysfields of Literature and Archeology

The Book of Kings, (shahnameh) is a book of poems in verse
composed by Ferdowsi, whol lived in the fourth century after
hegira, in the reign of Sultan Mahmoud Ghaznavi, and an Iranian
book of historical reference...


Introduction
The Book of Kings, (shahnameh) is a book of poems in verse composed by Ferdowsi, whol lived in the fourth century after hegira, in the reign of Sultan Mahmoud Ghaznavi, and an Iranian book of historical reference. Shanameh contains many stories that correspond to the Iranian kings, including stories about the rule and kingdom of Zahhak, the serpent king. Ferdowsi says that Jamshid, the king, began to exercise cruelty in the second fifteen years of his kingdom. The people rebelled against him and transferred the kingdom to Zahhak, who had killed his father, Merdas, a farmer and a nice man, and made him the king of Iran. Devil, guised as a skillful cook who cooks diverse and delicious foods for him. After a while, Zahhak asks the cook for a gift. Devil asks Zahhak to let him kiss his shoulders, which is consented. The devil kisses his shoulders and disappears. Two snakes grow out of his shoulders and give the king a lot of pain.
This time the devil appears to Zahhak in the guise of a curandero, and prescribes the brains of two young people to be fed to the snakes so that they would stop irritating the king. So Zahhak kills two young people every day and feeds their brain to the snakes to keep them calm and do not disturb him. It is noteworthy that due to the lack of space in the discs in the ancient times, words of mouth played an important role as a reference in addition to boards. Some of these narrations have been kept in the minds of the people in for form of verse and oral stories which have sometimes been mixed with myths as a representation of reality. Since most of the mythologies have roots in the beliefs of the people, which in turn originate from reality, it is possible to reflect on them and think about the real origins of these mythologies.
Here, we have different designs of a person with two snakes on his shoulder in some artifacts and figures remaining from the bronze age in Iran and neighboring countries, particularly in Afghanistan and Central Asia, which is suggestive of a character similar to Zahhak from the second and third millennia before Christ.
Adopting the iconological approach of Ervin Panofsky, and anthropologic approach, particularly animatism, this paper seeks to analyze and interpret these artifacts, including the seals, and to analyze the real origin of Zahhak, the serpent king and the dynasty of Serpent Kings, and the metonymy of two snakes on shoulders and their eating of young people's brains.

Research Background
In terms of art and literature, many researchers have analyzed the story of Zahhak and its relationship with a powerful and cruel king with gods of death and cruelty, but no research has been carried out with respect to Zahhak as a real personality and his life, and this study shall deal with it in the form of a new hypothesis. On the other hand, the research background and the approach taken by this study is iconology and comparative analysis.

Research Method
This research adopts a descriptive-analytic method, and relies on anthropological interpretations and description of the real levels of the artifacts with Zahhak's designs on them. The population cohort of the present research has been gathered using the library information on the two disciplines of literature and archeology.

Theoretical foundations
It should be admitted that the artifacts of different civilizations represent mythologies and legends that have been popular in those societies and has formed the intellectual and moral legacies of their future generations. In their iconological studies, researchers seek to face the reality of the artifact and try to find out what is that has been carved out in the artifact. Also, they seek to specify the resources indirectly (using literary and religious and ritual sources) or directly (through visual sources and individual ideologies) that has been used by the artist [1]. Iconology poses the question "Why has this artifact been created?" or in more precise terms, "why has the artifact been made this way?" iconological research focuses on the social and historical values of the artifact instead of focusing only on the history of art. Here they discuss how real social developments and the real aspect of the mythologies have been reflected in the artifact. On the basis of such an approach, the artifact is considered an evidence of its own time (ibid: 9-10). Many definitions have been given with respect to 'myth' and as such, a myth has a multi-layer traits. To keep to the scope of the text, one can say that some of the signets with designs of Zahhak, the serpent have been studied in detail by BitaMesbah [4] with briefings on the design. The following section will analyze the designs and the real facets of Zahhak life and the two-snake metonymy and the feeding of young brains to the snakes. Some researchers have attributed these designs to Indo-European gods and goddesses that exist in the traditional beliefs of these people [4,5] (Figure 1&Table1).

Discussion and Analysis
Mythology In some parts of the world, such as India, there are still people who believe in these myths. In lexical terms, animalization or giving spirit stem from the word ' Anim', translated into 'Farrah' in Persian, which as been referred to by Tiller, a British anthropologist in his theory related to the origin of religion [6,7]. In this approach, man deals with this perplex by personifying God and gods and makes stories for them, or even forms families for them and gives them wives, while personifying the natural elements and begins to pray them and sacrifice for them, which is the manifestation of the myths in different regions [6]. Conversely, people, due to their ignorance imprisoned his dissidents or changed them into people with no thoughts and aspirations that did not protest the cruel conditions and they were young people who made no difference with dead people, and they and according to a notorious saying, they were resting in vertical graves. This opposition with intellect and wisdom and hostile reactions of Zahhak was transferred through the word of mouth and this condition is manifested in the mythologized story of feeding young people's brains to the snakes, a symbol of suppressing wisdom and thinking [14][15][16][17][18].
Thus the artifacts and printed evidence of the signets that only belonged to the elites, evidence the realities of the lives of mythological people, particularly Zahhak, the serpent king.
Numerous signets from ancient cultural sites signify the existence of a wisdom-fighting and cruel dynasty and the use of iconography as a symbol of their dynasty and an emblem for their governance.

Result
The results of our study, given the reference to the story of