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Mythical creature. Transformed ray. Royal Cabinet of Curiosities. 16th/17th century.

Since the “king of venomous animals” could not be omitted from any cabinet of curiosities but did not occur in nature, a likeness had to be made. The Viennese basilisk is a transformed ray.


DEADLY KING OF SERPENTS
People have believed in basilisks since ancient times. “Basiliskos”, the Greek word for “little king”, referred to the king of serpents. It was not until the Middle Ages that the basilisk became a mythical creature that was a hybrid of a cockerel, a toad, and a serpent. It supposedly lurked in cellars, wells, and shafts, and both its stinking breath and its ghoulish gaze were lethal. Until the 17th century, the existence of the most terrible of all beasts was seldom doubted; basilisks were the topic of dissertations and were never missing from a royal cabinet of curiosities in the Renaissance era.
Several scholars, however, had already become sceptical of the preserved mythical creature. For example, in his Historiae animalium of 1558, Swiss polymath Conrad Gessner cautioned against artificially fabricated mythical animals: “Apothecaries and other vagabonds created the body of the ray in various forms following a whim, by cropping / bending / stretching to create the forms of serpents / basilisks and dragons…”
The Viennese basilisk had gone missing in the cellars of the NHM and was not found again until the 1990s. The mock-up is very skilfully shaped using a dried ray: the ray’s nostrils have been made into “eyes”, the pectoral fins into “wings” and the sexual organs into “basilisk legs”. The result looks very like a famous illustration in a book of fish dating back to the 16th century. Traces of insect feeding show that this was originally a mounted specimen. Only when various insects were threatening to devour it was the Viennese basilisk preserved in alcohol.

Details

  • Title: Viennese Basilisk
  • Rights: (c) NHM (Lois Lammerhuber)

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