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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;savitale, post: 8251660, member: 95284&quot;]Interesting discussion! It looks to me like it is intended to be a snake. Or a serpent-like creature, at least. I doubt we will ever be able to understand exactly what message the symbols were intended to covey. But the rivalry between the elephant and the serpent was pretty well established, Pliny spends a fair bit of Book VIII of his Natural History discussing it. From Loeb:</p><p><br /></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>XI. Elephants are produced by Africa beyond the deserts of Sidra and by the country of the Moors; also by the land of Ethiopia and the Cave-dwellers, as has been said; but the biggest ones by India, as well as serpents that keep up a continual feud and warfare with them, the serpents also being of so large a size that they easily encircle the elephants in their coils and fetter them with a twisted knot. In this duel both combatants die together, and the vanquished elephant in falling crushes with its weight the snake coiled round it.</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>XII. Every species of animal is marvelously cunning for its own interests, as are those which we are considering. One difficulty that the serpent has is in climbing to such a height; consequently it keeps watch on the track worn by the elephant going to pasture and drops on him from a lofty tree. The elephant knows that he is badly handicapped in fighting against the snake’s coils, and therefore seeks to rub it against trees or rocks. The snakes are on their guard against this, and consequently begin by shackling the elephants’ steps with their tail. The elephants untie the knots with their trunk. But the snakes poke their heads right into the elephants’ nostrils, hindering their breathing and at the same time lacerating their tenderest parts; also when caught in the path of the elephants they rear up against them, going specially for their eyes: this is how it comes about that elephants are frequently found blind and exhausted with hunger and wasting misery.</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>What other cause could anybody adduce for such a quarrel save Nature arranging a match between a pair of combatants to provide herself with a show?</i></p><p><i><br /></i></p><p><i>There is also another account of this contest—that elephants are very cold-blooded, and consequently in very hot weather are specially sought after by the snakes; and that for this reason they submerge themselves in rivers and lie in wait for the elephants when drinking, and rising up coil round the trunk and imprint a bite inside the ear, because that place only cannot be protected by the trunk; and that the snakes are so large that they can hold the whole of an elephant’s blood, and so they drink the elephants dry, and these when drained collapse in a heap and the serpents being intoxicated are crushed by them and die with them.</i></p><p><i></i>[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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