Blood-Born Lion of the Zouaoua Ark Tale

Overview

Basset’s Zouaoua account places the lion’s birth during Noah’s construction of the ark. A boar visits at night, breaks into the structure and removes a plank with its tusks. Noah repairs the damage, but it recurs the following day and the boar continues on the third. Angry at the repeated destruction, Noah wounds his hand while hurriedly repairing the broken part. He makes a hole in the sand, lets his blood run into it, covers it with earth and leaves. When sunlight heats the buried blood, a lion is born from it. The birth occurs through warmed blood in the ground; the account does not describe Noah deliberately shaping or naming the animal.

On the boar’s next attempt, the lion is waiting. It tells the intruder to withdraw and threatens to kill it; when the boar refuses, the lion attacks and devours it. The story connects that encounter with lions subsequently eating boar flesh. Its final scene places both kinds of animal in their respective places in the ark: a rat emerges from the boar’s sneeze, and a cat emerges from the lion’s. The cat’s pursuit of rats is consequently paired with the lion’s predation on boars. Those two origin explanations conclude the short witness; no later flood episode or additional lineage is supplied. The text places the boar-devouring scene before the paired ark scene without explaining how the same boar might survive; those printed scenes are retained without supplying a resurrection.

Origins & earliest records

René Basset, Contes populaires berbères (1887), no. 12, Origine du lion, du chat et du rat, complete printed pp. 25–26, headed Zouaoua. Source note 21, p. 149, identifies manuscript no. 17 in the Bibliothèque nationale’s Berber collection and calls the Zouaoua text unpublished.

Records & interpretation

Complete original French narrative inspected in DjVu pages 63–64, including the boar’s refusal and both concluding sneezes; source note 21 inspected in original page 187. The translated witness gives no individual contributor’s name.

Selected bibliography

Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.

1. 01

   Contes populaires berbères

   René Basset, French translator and editor; manuscript no. 17 source · 1887

   No. 12, complete pp. 25–26; source note 21, p. 149.

Family & connections

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References

Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.

1. Primary collected narrative; original facsimiles inspectedOriginal edition, complete ark animal-origin narrativeResearch access: 2026-10-05

Image credits

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