Silence, Plenty, and the Ancestor in the Sun

The lizard carried varied meanings across the ancient world: in Egypt the lizard hieroglyph could signify plenty or numerousness, and lizards were associated with the sun and with divine wisdom. Roman writers such as Pliny record a body of lore about lizards, their supposed enmity with snakes and their revival in warmth. In several living traditions, including those of Aboriginal Australia, lizards and goannas are ancestral and creator figures within specific cultural stories, which belong to those communities and are noted here only from the outside. Regeneration, resurrection, the sun and silent watchfulness are the recurring meanings of a small reptile that renews its own body and disappears and returns with the warmth.

An unrelated Central American lizard, the common basilisk, earns the popular nickname Jesus Christ lizard for a genuine physical feat rather than any religious teaching: it can run bipedally across the surface of water for short distances, supported by rapidly slapping fringed toes against the surface before it breaks, a real biomechanical trick studied by researchers interested in surface tension and locomotion, unconnected to the mythological basilisk of European legend, which is a different creature entirely, a serpent-king whose gaze or breath killed.