The Serpent Column: The persistent meanings of a pagan relic in Christian and Islamic Constantinople

Abstract

In the heart of Istanbul, on the site of the former Hippodrome, stand the remains of the Serpent Column, one of the most ancient and most enigmatic monuments in the city: a three-headed snake made of bronze to which various sacral and magical properties have been attributed in the past by pagans, Christians, Muslims and Jews. Originally set up as a votive offering in Greece’s central sacred site, Delphi, the column commemorated the Greek triumph in the Second Graeco-Persian War (480-479 BCE). This powerful icon of victory couched in pagan principles of cosmology was brought to Constantinople in the Fourth Century CE to become an emblem of the universal rule of the Christian Roman emperor. In late Byzantine and Ottoman times the Serpent Column was seen as an apotropaic talismans safeguarding Constantinople from poisonous snakes. In this paper it is argued that the column retained its status as a powerful sacred object for so many centuries because in Constantinople it came to be associated with the Brazen Serpent lifted up in the desert by Moses (Numbers 21:4-9), which in turn was believed to prefigure the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ (John 3:14-15).