Apollo taught to the humans the art of healing and archery. Phoebe, his grandmother, gave the oracular shrine of Delphi to Apollo as a birthday gift. Themis inspired him to be the oracular voice of Delphi thereon. Later, with his bow and arrows that he had received from Hephaestus, Apollo went in search of the chthonic dragon Python, which lived in Delphi beside the Castalian Spring, and was a terror to the people. Hera had sent this serpent to hunt the pregnant Leto to her death across the world. To avenge the trouble given to his mother, Apollo killed Python in
Serpent Column his "Dürr-i Meknûn", written around the time of the Fall of Constantinople. He states that it is a hollow bronze of intertwined snakes, threeheaded, a talisman for the citizens against snake bites. Between fifty and one hundred years after the Turkish conquest of Constantinople, the jaw of one of the three serpent heads was documented missing. The accepted version states that Mehmed II shattered it upon entering the city in triumph as its conqueror. Later, at the end of the 17th century, all three of the serpent heads were destroyed. Again, although there is legend that a drunken Polish nobleman