Dragon Slayer Capital

In the British Museum is a ‘Dragon slayer capital’, the top part of a pillar in which a terrible lizard fights a man. The given explanation, of course, suggests that it is a ‘mythical beast’. The man, wearing a short tunic, stands astride the dragon's tail, grips its neck and thrusts a spear into its breast. Again, the helpful sign explains: 'This is likely to be an allegory of the human struggle against evil'.

The carving was found in the monastery of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, where it may have been part of a doorway and comes from about 1130. We who believe the earth is younger than most, and that dragons or dinosaurs were not occupying a human-free planet, but coexisted for millennia, may have a different explanation. Remarkable, is it not, that every human civilisation, shares this dragon ‘mythology’?

May those curse it who curse the day,

Those who are ready to arouse Leviathan. Job 3:8