Un monstre sibérien dans l'Encyclopédie et ailleurs : le Behemoth

Résumé En

Michel Mervaud : The Behemoth, a Siberian Monster in the Encyclopédie and elsewhere. A mysterious Siberian animal with ivory tusks haunts 18th-century travel accounts and imaginations. Authors hesitate as to the nature of the " behemoth ", which is also the subject of legends. Diderot echoes these uncertainties in a short Encyclopédie article, but he does not refer to the behemoth in the Book of Job. The link between this mythical animal and two real Siberian animals (the walrus or the mammoth) is not obvious, even if the mammoth is sometimes identified with the Biblical monster, frozen after the Flood. The use of the word « behemoth », which is perhaps metaphorical, is also a puzzle ; it cannot have come from the Russians as Slavonic Bibles do not use the word, and the Russian term begemot, which is relatively recent, designates neither the walrus nor the mammoth but the hippopotamus. It is perhaps only a figment of travellers' imaginations, but it is frequent enough to take on the myth and to become part of the history of mentalities.