E-mail: mariazavyalova@gmail.com Tel.: +7 (495) 938-17-80
32a, Lenin av., Moscow, 119991, Russian Federation
PhD in Philology, Senior Researcher, Institute of Slavic Studies, Russian Academy of Science
The research was conducted within the framework of the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 22–18–00365 “Semiotic models in cross-cultural space: Balcano-BaltoSlavica.” URL: https://rscf.ru/project/22–18–00365/
The snake or grass-snake (zmeia or uzh) is one of the most popular mythologemes around the world, whose origins date back to ancient times. In the Baltic religion, the snake cult was preserved until recently, thanks to the late adoption of Christianity and a very persistent pagan tradition. Echoes of these myths are numerous in the well-known Lithuanian fairy-tale “Eglė — the Queen of Serpents.” Many researchers define its genre as a legend or myth. Despite the large number of works devoted to this tale, it still poses many questions to researchers. This article is an attempt to answer some of them. It considers the most ancient information about the serpent cult among the Balts and includes a detailed analysis of the text, discussing its structural, semiotic, areal, and typological aspects. Based on this, the author draws conclusions about the possible origin of the plot, as well as, in a broader sense, the snake/grass-snake mythologeme in the theogonic aspect. Parallels in the mythologies of various peoples of the world are considered, and the dichotomy snake/grass snake takes on special significance. Grounds are presented to assert that the theogonic and cosmogonic role of the snake can be considered universal, while the particular plot about the wife of the grass snake is of Indo-European origin with a special development in the Balto-Balkan area.
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