Every Dragon in Every Mythology Explained

Every Dragon in Every Mythology Explained Mushussu. Long before Saint George ever picked up a lance, the people of ancient Babylon were already carving their dragon onto city gates. The Mushussu, sometimes called the Sirrush, was a composite creature unlike anything else from the ancient world — the scaled body of a serpent, the forelegs of a lion, the hind legs of an eagle, and a single horn curving from its head. It wasn't a monster to be slain. It was a divine guardian, the sacred animal of the god Marduk and later Nabu, and it was depicted prominently on the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, built around 575 BCE under Nebuchadnezzar II. That gate, reconstructed and now housed in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, shows the Mushussu rendered in glazed brick of deep brick-red and gold, striding in an eternal procession alongside bulls and lions. This is a dragon that represented divine authority, not chaos — and it is one of the oldest dragon images ever found.