Theomachy Cross-References

A comparative CC0 dataset of the combat myth (chaoskampf) across the ancient traditions — champion, adversary, chaos form, weapon, outcome, reference — with links to the digitized texts. CSV and JSON.

CC0-1.0 · public domain · updated 2026-07

Combat myths
8
Traditions
8
Formats
CSV · JSON
License
CC0-1.0
CSV One row per combat myth — opens in any spreadsheet. JSON Self-describing: columns + rows.

One of the most widely distributed plots in the ancient world: a young storm-and-order god confronts an older adversary of chaos — sea, dragon, or serpent — defeats it, and takes or secures kingship. Scholars call it the Chaoskampf. This dataset lines up eight instances field by field — the champion, the adversary, the form chaos takes, the weapon, and the outcome — each row linked to the digitized source text where the library holds one.

Instances

Marduk vs Tiamat (Enūma Eliš), Baal vs Yam and the serpent Lôtan (Baal Cycle), Yahweh vs Leviathan / Rahab / the Sea (Psalms, Isaiah, Job), Zeus vs Typhon (Theogony), Indra vs Vṛtra (Rig Veda), the Storm-god vs Illuyanka (Hittite), Ra vs Apophis (Egyptian), and Michael vs the dragon (Revelation).

What it's for

The kinship of these myths — Ugaritic Lôtan and Hebrew Leviathan are the same word — is a textbook case in comparative mythology, argued from Gunkel's Schöpfung und Chaos onward. This table gathers the core instances into one sortable file, as CSV and JSON, free to filter, merge, and cite.

How Wheel of Heaven reads it

The pattern is usually explained by diffusion — one Chaoskampf borrowed down the generations. The Wheel of Heaven corpus takes the shared plot as something sharper: the compressed cultural memory of an actual conflict — the Theomachy, the multi-age political-military struggle between the Elohim home-world Council and the exiled-creator faction on Earth — retold by each tradition as its own dragon-slaying. The "serpent" who withholds order, in this reading, is the losing side of that war, and the flood is one of its campaigns.

Also available on

This dataset is also published, CC0, on two open-data platforms — the same files, mirrored for reach and preservation:

Cite this dataset

Zinsfuss, Zara. Wheel of Heaven Theomachy Cross-References. Wheel of Heaven, 2026. CC0-1.0. https://www.wheelofheaven.world/datasets/theomachy-crossrefs/

@misc{woh-theomachy-crossrefs,
  title  = {Wheel of Heaven Theomachy Cross-References},
  author = {Zinsfuss, Zara},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {CC0-1.0 public domain},
  url    = {https://www.wheelofheaven.world/datasets/theomachy-crossrefs/}
}