As leviathan is the king of fishes, so the ziz is appointed to
rule over the birds.[129] His name comes from the variety of
tastes his flesh has; it tastes like this, zeh, and like that,
zeh.[130] The ziz is as monstrous of size as leviathan himself.
His ankles rest on the earth, and his head reaches to the very
sky.[121]

It once happened that travellers on a vessel noticed a bird. As
he stood in the water, it merely covered his feet, and his head
knocked against the sky. The onlookers thought the water could
not have any depth at that point, and they prepared to take a
bath there. A heavenly voice warned them: "Alight not here! Once
a carpenter's axe slipped from his hand at this spot, and it took
it seven years to touch bottom." The bird the travellers saw was
none other than the ziz.[132] His wings are so huge that unfurled
they darken the sun.[133] They protect the earth against the
storms of the south; without their aid the earth would not be
able to resist the winds blowing thence.[134] Once an egg of the
ziz fell to the ground and broke. The fluid from it flooded sixty
cities, and the shock crushed three hundred cedars. Fortunately
such accidents do not occur frequently. As a rule the bird lets
her eggs slide gently into her nest. This one mishap was due to
the fact that the egg was rotten, and the bird cast it away
carelessly. The ziz has another name, Renanin,[135] because he is
the celestial singer.[136] On account of his relation to the
heavenly regions he is also called Sekwi, the seer, and, besides,
he is called "son of the nest,"[137] because his fledgling birds
break away from the shell without being hatched by the mother
bird; they spring directly from the nest, as it were.[138] Like
leviathan, so ziz is a delicacy to be served to the pious at the