The Nehushtan (The snake of Moses)
A gift of the emperor Basil II, 1007
Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio
Piazza Sant'Ambrogio
Milan, May 2018
“In the biblical Books of Kings (2 Kings 18:4), the Nehushtan (or Nohestan) (Hebrew: נחושתן or נחש הנחושת) is the derogatory name given to the bronze serpent on a pole first described in the Book of Numbers, which God told Moses to erect to so that the Israelites who saw it would be protected from dying from the bites of the ‘fiery serpents’ which God had sent to punish them for speaking against God and Moses Numbers 21:4-9. In Kings, King Hezekiah institutes an iconoclastic reform that requires the destruction of ‘the brazen serpent that Moses had made; for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it; and it was called Nehushtan’. The term means ‘a brazen thing, a mere piece of brass’.” (Nehushtan, Wikipedia)
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