The World Serpent Appears in Every Culture

Ancient Egypt and the ancient Aztecs both depicted a demigod who rode a giant serpent familiar — despite being on opposite sides of the planet. The observation is correct, and the pattern runs far deeper.

This big serpent shows up in culture after culture. The primordial god-hero usually kills it and uses the body to create the human world. The Hebrews have plans for a banquet with God at the end of time involving the same creature. The same great fish-snake appears in Revelation, waiting for its confrontation. Even the virgin oracles of antiquity were said to take their visions from the fumes rising from its corpse.

Whether you call it Apep, Quetzalcoatl's companion, the Leviathan, or Jormungandr, the motif refuses to stay in one tradition. It keeps surfacing because something in the human psyche (or in the structure of myth itself) keeps needing it.