Ancient cultures around the world intertwined mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria, with mythology. People used gods, demons, and supernatural forces to explain the spread of these diseases. In the second chapter of his book, “The Mosquito,” recently translated into Hebrew and originally published in English in 2019, Timothy C. Winegard provides several examples.
Mesopotamian texts attribute malaria to Nergal, the god of the underworld, depicted as a mosquito. The Canaanites and Philistines worshipped Baal-Zebub, and the fact that Christians later associated this name with the devil suggests that he was a god worshipped to prevent diseases. This conclusion is based on the idea that in Zoroastrian and Babylonian beliefs, the evil spirits that brought diseases were represented as mosquitoes. In Chinese folklore, malaria is described as a demonic trio, with each demon representing a stage in the fever cycle: one wielding a bucket of ice water for chills, another stoking a blazing fire for fever, and the third armed with a hammer for sweating and headaches. These demons were believed to disrupt the balance between yin and yang and harm the chi, according to Chinese beliefs. Indian physicians referred to malaria as the “queen of diseases” and associated it with the fiery fever demon Takman, who was born from lightning.
The Bible frequently depicts divine judgment in the form of plagues of insects and the deadly diseases they spread. The Bible also describes several diseases given as punishment, and while it is not clear what they were, scholars suggest that the disease that decimated Sennacherib’s army during the siege of Jerusalem might have been malaria, although some argue it was bubonic plague. The reason to believe it was malaria is based on archaeological findings that mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria, were prevalent, and perhaps the most common, in Egypt and across the Middle East during those years. Herodotus reports that the Egyptians fought against mosquitoes and invented various methods to combat them, such as nets and towers to keep them away from low-flying mosquitoes. He also notes that to cure themselves of malaria, the Egyptians would bathe in fresh urine.
Malaria was so widespread in Egypt that even kings suffered from it, such as Tutankhamun. Reliefs in Thebes and Luxor show that filariasis severely affected Egypt in the second millennium BCE and might have been the “plagues” mentioned in the Book of Genesis that God sent upon Pharaoh. Could the “hornet” that God sent against the Canaanites before the Israelites’ entry into the Promised Land have actually been the mosquito?
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