In real life, snakes are… honestly
fine. Lil slithery, kinda hard to read,
but broadly inoffensive. But there’s something
about ‘em that just tickles the imagination,
you know? You can’t walk five feet these
days without tripping over a mythological
snake with crazy anomalous properties. Maybe
they’re the feathery forefather of humanity,
or a many-colored harbinger of rain, or an
eldritch abomination aiming to devour the sun,
or any number of other slithery bois wending their
coils through human mythohistory. Something about
their sleek design just speaks to us, you know?
But while mythical snakes span the whole moral
spectrum, if there’s one title that just
screams “evil” it’s “serpent king.” Nobody
good has ever held the title serpent king,
and if you want proof, let’s go back about a
thousand years to the opening chapter of the
famous Persian epic The Shahnameh. Written
by the poet Ferdowsi between 977 and 1010 CE,
the Shahnameh, literally “the epic of kings,”
is the national epic of Greater Iran and a
very, very important piece of literature.
It’s also long as balls, but conveniently
subdivides into a lot of smaller stories
for easier consumption. Here’s one of them!
So the story begins with a quick rundown on
some ancient mythical kings and all the cool stuff
they did, mostly important civilization-things
like inventing clothes and fire and irrigation
- you know, basic stuff like that. This line
of kings does pretty well for itself until it
produces Jamshid (جمشید), who does really well
for himself - so well, in fact, that he decides
he’s basically god and starts having people
worship him. This is generally considered to be
unwise, and has some unintended consequences.
See, in Zoroastrianism, to put it very simply, the
earth is basically a constant battleground between
the forces of good and evil. Specifically, it’s a
proxy war between the beings Ahura Mazda, creator
deity and ultimate good guy, and Angra Mainyu,
later called Ahriman, the source of all evil and
creator of various evil spirits called Daevas -
not to be confused with the Devas in Hinduism,
very different concept. In this model it’s the
duty of humanity to do good and bring happiness
because it bolsters the forces of good and helps
in the cosmic battle against Ahriman. In contrast,
doing bad stuff tips the scales the other way, and
empowers Ahriman to do more bad stuff. Now by the
time the Shahnameh was written at the turn of the
11th century, the dominant religion in Persia was
Islam, which had locally overtaken Zoroastrianism
a few centuries earlier. So the poet Ferdowsi
was writing from an interesting position: the
ancestral Iranian religion of Zoroastrianism
was no longer widely practiced and some of that
culture was in danger of being erased. So similar
to how the Prose Edda frames the Norse gods as
something old and distant, the Shahnameh is framed
mythologically while still actively preserving
these ancient and culturally significant stories.
But anyway, long story short, Jamshid does a big
no-no and in the process tips the local cosmic
balance towards evil. Ahriman gets a nice little
power boost and starts sniffin’ around to cause
some mischief. So he zips out into the desert
to the kingdom of Thasis, ruled by the wise
and just king Mirtas. Now Mirtas has a beloved
son, Zahak (ضحّاک), and Ahriman rolls up to the
palace disguised as a nobleman and tells Zahak he
should enter a covenant with him, and if he does,
he’ll raise his head above the sun. Now Zahak
is a nice boy, maybe a little bit gullible,
so he thinks, willickers, mister, that sounds
pretty nifty! and agrees! Step one? Kill your
dad. Zahak doesn’t really wanna do that, but, eh,
a deal’s a deal, so he and Ahriman set a trap for
Mirtas and kill him. Now Zahak is the king of
Thasis! Nice! Ahriman teaches him some nifty
magic and encourages him to be evil, but Zahak’s
not all bad. He’s not a great king, but, you know,
he’s trying his best. So Ahriman changes tactics
and zips round the back to change out his groucho
glasses and enters the palace in a different
disguise - this time a young man who offers to
be a cook. Zahak doesn’t see the harm in it and
agrees, and Ahriman wastes no time in whipping up
a meal fit for a king - specifically, he changes
the formerly vegetarian menu to include meat,
and Zahak is so impressed by this dietary shift
that he has the cook summoned before him so he
can grant him a boon, and Ahriman asks only that
he be allowed to kiss the king’s shoulders. Well,
we don’t kinkshame in this palace! Zahak
agrees, and he probably shouldn’t have,
because after the deed is done, Ahriman is
swallowed up by the earth and two venomous
snakes sprout from Zahak’s shoulders. Fun times!
Well Zahak obviously wants these snakeshoulders
out of his life, but they can’t find any way to
get rid of them. Enter Ahriman Version Three,
this time disguised as a learned scholar,
who tells Zahak that the only way to tame
a case of the ol’ snakeshoulders is
to feed those bad boys human brains.
Now obviously having a king with snakeshoulders
who eats human brains is not so good for the
kingdom. Word begins to spread about
this absolutely terrifying snake king,
which is actually good news for the people back
in Persia who’ve been dealing with their own evil
king for a good few centuries now. Rebel forces
congregate in Thasis and declare Zahak the new
Shah, and an army musters to march against
Jamshid, who sees the writing on the wall
and books it. He manages to evade capture for a
good hundred years or so before they eventually
catch him and saw him in half. Tough break, buddy.
So now Zahak the Serpent-King, or as I’ve taken
to calling him, Johnny Snakeshoulders, is the
Shah of Persia, which is great if the goal is
making the world an exponentially sh*ttier place
to live. Eventually things get so bad that Ahura
Mazda sits up and takes notice, and sets a plan in
motion to get things back on track. Jamshid’s got
a few surviving descendants rattling around,
and thanks to a little divine intervention,
one of them has a son named Feridoun. Not so
coincidentally, that night Zahak has a terrible
nightmare where a young man kills him with a
mace shaped like a cow head. He wakes up and
demands an explanation from his advisers,
who reluctantly inform him that it sounds
like there’s a prophecy that he’s going to be
overthrown and destroyed by a man named Feridoun.
Well, you know how these evil king types get
about prophecies. Zahak immediately starts
scouring the land for Feridoun. Feridoun’s mother
catches wind of this and hides him in a forest,
where he’s raised by a magic cow called Purmaieh.
Unfortunately after a few years the forest isn’t
safe anymore, so she comes back to collect him
him and heads off to an isolated mountain peak
where a hermit can take care of him instead - and
just in time, too, since Zahak finds the forest,
learns that Feridoun is gone, and gets so angry
that he kills Purmaieh and everything else in
the forest, turning it into a barren desert.
Zahak continues to strengthen his army and
search for Feridoun, but that doesn’t do
his confidence any favors, and he starts to
worry he might be a bad king. Nooooo. Whaaaat?
Nooooo. SO naturally he demands his citizens
reassure him that he’s actually a good king
doing a really good job. Obviously they do
what he says, because snakeshoulders,
but dissent is beginning to spread.
This comes to a head one day when a blacksmith
named Kavah marches straight into the palace and
demands an audience. Kavah’s had seventeen sons,
see, but sixteen of them have been sacrificed to
the king’s snakeshoulder situation, and now his
last son has been chosen to die too. He demands
that Zahak spare his last son, and Zahak actually
agrees! Then he asks Kavah if he'll sign this
official paperwork stating that Zahak is a good
king actually, to which Kavah responds by ripping
the paperwork into confetti and striding out of
the palace while everyone is too stunned to stop
him. He heads straight for the city square, tears
off his blacksmith apron, uses it as a banner to
rally the people in rebellion and leads an army
out of the city to go find the prophecied hero
who’ll deliver them from the serpent king.
Give me this movie, hollywood! You cowards!
Meanwhile, Feridoun has grown into a responsible
and wise young man, returned home to his mother
and learned of his royal lineage and
his destiny to destroy the Serpent King.
He’s ready to fulfill his destiny and is,
frankly, getting kind of impatient waiting,
cuz he wants to kill the evil king now but his mom
says it’s not safe to go alone so he’s gonna have
to wait. This is around the time the massive army
of rebels rolls up on their front lawn to ask if
Feridoun can come out and play. Now that they’ve
got the manpower and the prophecy on their side,
Feridoun gears up in some kingly armor and
has the rebels forge him a mace - and in
honor of his old nursemaid, the business
end of the mace is shaped like a cow head.
Oh yeah. It's all coming together.
So they march to the city,
finding it… actually mostly undefended,
since coincidentally Zahak is out with
his army looking for Feridoun. The people rally
behind them and they invade the palace, defeating
the daevas Zahak left to guard the place and
setting Feridoun on the throne as the new Shah.
Now Zahak is none too pleased about this when
he returns. He and his army besiege the city
and there’s a very dramatic battle - which
our heroes win! Feridoun whacks Zahak with
his mace and is just about to kill him when he’s
stopped by Sraosha, a servant of Ahura Mazda,
who tells him to imprison Zahak on Mount
Damavand instead. Feridoun follows his
advice and binds Zahak under the mountain for all
time. And so thanks to a prophecied true king,
a charismatic rebel leader and a battle scene so
ridiculous I literally can’t believe they haven’t
made this trope goldmine a movie yet, so ends
the tumultuous tale of Johnny Snakeshoulders!
[You're Gonna Go Far, Kid - The Offspring]