The Cognitive Archaeology of the Serpent-Shouldered King: Chlorite Iconography, Cultural Degeneration, and the Aesthetic Transformation of the Iranian Plateau in the Myth of Zahhak .

The myth of Zahhak occupies a foundational position within Iranian cultural memory, constituting one of the most enduring narratives of tyranny, moral corruption, and civilizational collapse in ancient Near Eastern literature. While traditional scholarship often approaches the narrative as a moral fable detailing the triumph of righteous kingship over despotism, this study demonstrates that the myth preserves deep-seated visual and cognitive structures rooted in the prehistoric archaeological record of the Iranian Plateau. Specifically, we examine the recurring motif of the serpent-shouldered human figure and its stylistic and semiotic antecedents within the third-millennium BCE chlorite carving traditions of the Halil Rud basin (Jiroft cultural sphere). Integrating cognitive archaeology, semiotics, visual culture theory, and cultural memory studies, this paper traces the functional evolution of serpent iconography: from an archaic sign of terrestrial vitality and cosmic mediation to an embodied emblem of systemic political pathology. Rather than treating Zahhak's serpents as mere literary inventions of late antiquity or medieval epic poetry, we interpret them as manifestations of a long-duration visual memory (longue durée). Furthermore, the study re-evaluates the longstanding historiographical tension between Ernst Herzfeld’s diffusionist paradigm and Yousef Majidzadeh’s emphasis on indigenous Bronze Age innovation. Ultimately, we argue that the serpent-shouldered body of Zahhak represents one of the earliest conceptualizations of internal political degeneration in ancient thought—a paradigm wherein evil is understood not merely as an external invasion, but as a fatal autogenic transformation emerging from within the body politic itself.