The Mother of All Carved Lionesses? 40,000 Years Old!

Just about fell off my chair reading this article!  This lioness is an incredibly beautiful work of art -- and 40,000 years old.  Best of all is the re-uniting of the head with the body after so many years.

I've featured many carved lions and lionesses at this blog since it's founding back in April 2007.  I believe this one is the oldest thus far discovered. 

Ice Age Figurine's Head Found: Archaeologists Put New and Old Finds Together to Reassemble Ancient Work of Art

July 18, 2013 — Researchers from the University of Tübingen have successfully re-attached the newly discovered head of a prehistoric mammoth-ivory figurine discovered in 1931. The head was found during renewed excavations at Vogelherd Cave, site of the original dig in 1931. The recent excavations, between 2005 and 2012, have yielded a number of important finds. The discovery of this ivory head helps to complete a figurine which now can be recognized as a lion -- and demonstrates that it is possible to reassemble often fragmentary figurines from the earlier excavation.

The new discovery is presented in the 2013 edition of the journal Archäologische Ausgrabungen in Baden-Württemberg.

Vogelherd Cave is located in the Lone Valley of southwestern Germany and is by far the richest of the four caves in the region that have produced examples of the earliest figurative art, dating as far back as 40,000 years ago. Overall, Vogelherd Cave has yielded more than two dozen figurines and fragments of figurines. While the work of fitting together thousands of small fragments of mammoth ivory from Vogelherd is just beginning, the remarkable lion figurine, now with its head, forms an important part of the display of the earliest art at the Museum of the University of Tübingen (MUT) in Hohentübingen Castle.

Professor Nicholas Conard and his excavation assistant Mohsen Zeidi today presented the new discovery and discussed its scientific importance, after which the find rejoined the permanent exhibit at MUT.

Two Ptolemic Lions Uncovered in the Fayoum...and MeHeN

Lion-shaped statues unearthed in Fayoum

Italian archaeological mission discovers a pair of large limestone lion statues at the Ptolemaic temple of god Sknopaios in Fayoum

Nevine El-Aref , Monday 3 Dec 2012

Screen snip from article -- "in storage." 

The Italian archaeological mission of Salento-Litchi University stumbled upon a pair of gigantic seated lion statues on Monday.

They were found erected at the entrance of Soknopaios Temple at the Ptolemaic town, Dimeh Al-Siba, in Fayoum.

Dimeh Al-Siba, which means ‘Island of the Crocodile god,’ is located eleven kilometres to the north of Qarun Lake. It was founded by Ptolemy II on top of a Neolithic residential area (Ptolemy II Philadelphus r. 283 - 246 BCE).

The Ptolemaic-era town contains a collection of residential houses, a large temple to worship Sknopaios, in ancient Egypt Sobek-en-Pai (crocodile), a bakery and a market.

During excavation work carried out by archaeologist and director of the Italian mission, Mario Capasso, a pair of lion statues appeared on the sand surface.

The lion statues are skillfully carved of limestone and were presumably used to decorate the entrance gate of the temple.

Mohamed Ibrahim, Antiquities Minister, describes the discovery as interesting, as it confirm that the temple was constructed according to an architectural plan used in main temples in large cities and capital.

“It is also the first time that the gigantic lion shaped statues can be unearthed in a small Greco-Roman settlement in Fayoum,” said Ibrahim

Both statues are in a very well-preserved condition and are now at the Fayoum storehouse for restoration.

*****************************************

By the time of the reign of Ptolemy II, how many lions do you think were still living around the area, heh?  Probably NONE.

There had probably been no lions living in the desert for at least a couple thousand years after the founding of Dynasty Zero.  They would have long since been hunted to extinction, and what humans didn't wipe out, the desertification of the vast area of northern Africa certainly did. 

But, there was a time when the Egyptians were quite familiar with lions.  In fact, one of the oldest board games of record had lions (and/or lionesses) playing pieces.  That game was called MeHeN -- the game of the serpent according to some.  But if it was a serpent's game, why were there lion playing pieces???

Just one of the unexplored mysteries of ancient Egypt, I guess.  The gameboard for MeHeN is, in fact, in the shape of a coiled serpent.  That could mean that it was first created in southern Egypt -- the land where serpents abounded in the more arid regions far away from the fertile delta of the Nile on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. 

I think it is safe to say the MeHeN predates Dynasty Zero.  It was already an old game when the first carved stone gameboards were excavated in the earliest Dynastic tombs, and was, according to modern-day historians, soon on its way to extinction as the game of twenty-squares or "robbers" (but also called "dancers") became more and more popular.

Here is a lion game piece that is probably from a MeHeN game found in the First Dynasty tomb of Djer "Dojer"), and it's beautiful, even in its ruined state:

Gaming Piece. Tomb of Djer, First Dynasty.

From the British Museum website about the lion gaming piece, above (I think it is actually a lioness).

Hypotheses vary as to why MeHeN went extinct.  But you know how it goes -- the same thing happens today.  New games come along, new forms of entertainment, languages change -- and the old often falls by the wayside, trampled in the dust of time, forgotten.  Fortunately, for ancient Egypt, they did many things in STONE.

MeHeN crumpled into dust as the game of Senet took over in popularity and, eventually, religious symbolism in representing the passage of a human being from life to death to life again. But the lioness (and sometimes the lion), remained a powerful symbol of sovereignty, majestic power, and perhaps most importantly of all, mysterious power received from the Heavens.  Long after MeHeN was forgotten and its last vestiges as a sacred game buried under tons of sand, the lioness continued to be an extremely powerful symbol in Egypt and indeed, throughout the Middle East.  These Ptolemaic examples of that continuing fascination, well, just more evidence piled upon evidence piled upon evidence...

Ancient Egyptian Games: Mehen

Faulkner’s Concise Dictionary of Middle Egyptian gives the translation of the word ‘Mehen’ as literally meaning “coil” and is used in reference to the goddess Mehen, or ‘Coiled One’, and also the board game called Mehen.

I am this one who escaped from the coiled serpent (Mehen),
I have ascended in a blast of fire, having turned myself about.
The two skies go to me, the two earths come to me,
I have trodden on the green k3d-plant, which is under Geb,
I have travelled the roads of Nut.
- Pyramid Texts Utterance 332.

In later years, the hieroglyphic that looks like a series of "M's" or "V's" stuck together, which represents, surprisingly enough, water, which may have been pronounced something like "NUUUN" in ancient Egyptian, in close conjunction with the symbol of a horizontal gameboard with pieces upon it, came to represent the shorthand symbol for "board game" and the popular game Senet, which soon overtook Mehen as THE game to play, and in later Dynasties' tomb paintings was openly represented as having religious significance.  "NUN," the ancient Egyptian symbol for water or the waters of life, was also the name of the ancient Mother/Sky Goddess who was often depicted as "arced" or stretched over the Earth as a protector and life-giver.  In later years, "NUN" came to be shown as swallowing the Sacred Barque bearing the God Horus at night.  Horus represented the Sun God on his journey through the Underworld or Land of Death (in ancient Egyptian texts, this was the Land to the West)  to a new day and rebirth.  If successful in this harrowing journey, in the morning the Mother Goddess "NUN" would "give birth" to Horus once again, representing the dawning of a new day.

I have posted about MeHeN before:

Mehen
May 25, 2008

Mehen: An Ancient Egyptian Boardgame
February 21, 2009
Sorry about the formatting of this article!  It got totally f'd up when Google did one of it's abitrary "enhancements" and nearly all (but not all?) of the posts at this blog got messed with.  There were too many posts screwed up to go back and try to fix them all.  So as I re-post links to them I go in and try to fix them as best I can.  But, I'm too tired tonight to fix the February 21, 2009 post, I'll do it tomorrow (if I remember, LOL!)

An important point to remember is that, in the earliest translations from Egyptian hieroglyphics to English, MeHeN was a FEMALE GOD -- a Goddess - who was charged with keeping safe the Horus on the Sacred Barque.  In later symbolism, after the original meaning had been obscured, Horus was often replaced by Pharaoh, in a sort of Naos-like enclosure that was surrounded by a serpent-like creature that often reminds me of early 20th-century American representations of electricity! 

In the earliest representations that I have seen, MeHeN was, Herself, forming the Naos like an embryo in a uterus around the Horus, without any intervening wooden structure on the Sacred Barque.  That symbolism harkens back to earliest prehistoric times, back to the time when the process of birth was itself sacred, when the color red obtained its special status as the color of Sacred Blood and Life, and the womb was akin to a Sacred Cave. 

A lot to ponder...

One of the most frustrating things -- here is what is obviously a MeHeN gameboard shown in the same photograph with the lion game piece from Djoser's tomb, and yet it is NOT identified at all!  How ridiculous is this:

From British Museum website.  Game board is NOT identified; marbles are NOT
identified; "white lion" is NOT identified.  ARRRRGGGHHHH! 

Giant Lion Carvings Split Apart in Looter Search for Treasure

Looters should be drawn and quartered.

From Live Science

Owen Jarus, LiveScience Contributor

Date: 25 July 2012 Time: 12:18 PM ET

Two sculptures of life-size lions, each weighing about 5 tons in antiquity, have been discovered in what is now Turkey, with archaeologists perplexed over what the granite cats were used for. One idea is that the statues, created between 1400 and 1200 B.C., were meant to be part of a monument for a sacred water spring, the researchers said.

A life-size granite lion sculpture discovered in the town of Karakiz in Turkey. Dating back more than 3,200 years, to the time of the Hittite Empire, the lion is shown "prowling forward" with rippling muscles and a curved tail. In antiquity there would have been a second lion connected to it, bringing the total weight of the sculpture to about 5 tons (10,000 pounds).
CREDIT: Photo copyright American Journal of Archaeology

The lifelike lions were created by the Hittites who controlled a vast empire in the region at a time when the Asiatic lion roamed the foothills of Turkey.

"The lions are prowling forward, their heads slightly lowered; the tops of their heads are barely higher than the napes," write Geoffrey Summers, of the Middle East Technical University, and researcher Erol Özen in an article published in the most recent edition of the American Journal of Archaeology.

The two lion sculptures have stylistic differences and were made by different sculptors. The lion sculpture found in the village of Karakiz is particularly lifelike, with rippling muscles and a tail that curves around the back of the granite boulder.

"The sculptors certainly knew what lions looked like," Summers told LiveScience in an interview. He said that both archaeological and ancient written records indicate that the Asiatic lion, now extinct in Turkey, was still very much around, some even being kept by the Hittites in pits.

Curiously the sculpture at Karakiz has an orange color caused by the oxidization of minerals in the stone. Summers said that he doesn't believe it had this color when it was first carved.

The head of the surviving Karakiz lion. It was never finished, its sculptor intending the piece to be moved and completed on location. Remnants of the second lion can be seen on the left.
CREDIT: Photo copyright American Journal of Archaeology

Digging up lions

The story of the discovery of the massive lions began in 2001, when Özen, at the time director of the Yozgat Museum, was alerted to the existence of the ancient quarry by a man from Karakiz village and an official from the Ministry of Culture. An extensive search of the area was undertaken in spring 2002 with fieldwork occurring in the following years.

Looters, however, beat the archaeologists to the catch. The Karakiz lion was found dynamited in two, likely in the mistaken belief that it contained hidden treasure. "There's this belief that monuments like this contain treasure," said Summers, explaining that the dynamiting of monuments is a problem in Turkey. "It makes the Turkish newspapers every month or so."

The second lion, found to the northeast of the village, had also been split in two. As a result of this destruction both lion sculptures, which originally were paired with another, now mainly have one lion intact.

A second granite lion was found to the northeast of the town. There are stylistic differences between this sculpture and the one in Karakiz although in antiquity this also was attached to a second lion.
CREDIT: Photo copyright American Journal of Archaeology 

The danger of new looting loomed over the researchers while they went about their work. In the summer of 2008 evidence of "fresh treasure hunting" was found at the ancient quarry along with damage to a drum-shaped rock that, in antiquity, was in the process of being carved.

What were they intended for?

The discovery of the massive lions, along with other pieces in the quarry, such as a large stone basin about 7 feet (2 meters) in diameter, left the archaeologists with a mystery — what were they intended for?

A search of the surrounding area revealed no evidence of a Hittite settlement dating back to the time of the statues. Also, the sheer size of the sculptures meant that the sculptors likely did not intend to move them very far.

Summers hypothesizes that, rather than being meant for a palace or a great city, the lions were being created for a monument to mark something else – water.

"I think it's highly likely that that monument was going to be associated with one of the very copious springs that are quite close," he said in the interview. "There are good parallels for associations of Hittite sculptural traditions with water sources."

Indeed one well-known monument site, known as Eflatun P?nar, holds a sacred pool that "is fed by a spring beneath the pool itself," write Yi?it Erbil and Alice Mouton in an article that was published in the most recent edition of the Journal of Near Eastern Studies. The two researchers were writing about water religions in ancient Anatolia (Turkey).

"According to the Hittite cuneiform texts, water was seen as an effective purifying element," Erbil and Mouton write, "used in the form of lustrations or even full baths during ritual performances, its cleansing power is self-evident."

To the Hittites the natural world, springs included, was a place of great religious importance, one worthy of monuments with giant lions. "These things (water sources) were sacred, just as their mountains were sacred," Summers said.

2800 Year Old Lion Statue Uncovered at Tell Tayinat (Turkey)

"Unreported News" at Heritage News.  Video of the statue being moved to the archaeological museum.

Here is a photo of the lion statue from the project website: Tayinat Archaeological Project (University of Toronto).

Taiwan Celebrates Chinese New Year with "Eye-Dotting" Ceremony

From thestar.com.my
Monday February 8, 2010

Dragons and lions come alive at eye-dotting ceremony
GEORGE TOWN: With a thundering roll of drums and cymbals, a huge group of “dragons” and “lions” came “alive” at the Goddess of Mercy Temple. The event – a grand eye-dotting ceremony to usher in the Year of Tiger.

It was a sight to behold as the coterie of 26 lions and two dragons slowly formed a circle and bowed in homage to a statue of the deity.  (Photo: A group of 26 lions and two dragons paying homage to the Goddess of Mercy at the temple in Jalan Masjid Kapitan Keling in Penang during a grand ‘eye-dotting ceremony’. Several different kinds of lions performed amid a thunderous roar of drums and cymbals to start the Chinese New Year festivities. GOH GAIK LEE / The Star)
The “heavenly creatures” included five lions bearing the Hokkien head patterns from Taiwan and a dragon with the design of lotus flower on its body.

Tourists and children were seen chattering with excitement and snapping pictures during the ceremony.

Among them was seven-year-old Law Ee Jie, who appeared fascinated to witness such a grand “reunion” of lion and dragon dances.

“I have never seen so many lion heads for an eye-dotting ceremony and it is simply beautiful,” he said.

The ceremony for the animals was performed by state Tourism Deve­lopment and Culture Committee chairman Danny Law.

Penang Ching Xing Sports Gymnasium secretary Jeffrey Goh Thian Hooi said the event traditionally symbolised the animals “coming alive” before being used for performances during their house-to-house visits to bring good luck and prosperity.

“This is the first time we have brought along all our dragon and lion dance heads for a grand eye-dotting ceremony and we are planning to do it every year,” he said.

Senior instructor Kok Siew Hong said the troupe charged between RM600 and RM2,000 for their performances, depending on the type of function they are booked for.

“Many hope the lion dances can ‘roar’ for better luck this year. Our troupes have been fully booked since a month ago,” he said.

*******************************************************************

The Goddess of Mercy is Kwan Yin (also Kuan Yin, Guanyin -- Goddess of Compassion and Healing).

What is an eye-dotting ceremony?  I found some fascinating information.  It is based in Taoist tradition.  In essence, it is a ceremony that brings life force and power to a statue or another object (such as a lion costume -- see below) - it actually represents the "birth" of the object into the world!  According to this description of a recently-enacted ceremony (January, 2010), a special red-colored ointment, the color associated with life, is used to dot the statue in a ceremony designed to "invite" the spirit and soul of the god or goddess into the statute.  Without the ceremony, the statue has no life and no power and, therefore, cannot hear one's prayers and supplications.

I cannot help but feel that it may be a very ancient practice.  The use of red ochre, for instance, on objects and in cave paintings that date back into neolithic times, is often associated with fertility and birth.  Perhaps the ancient "Opening of the Mouth Ceremony" used to "open" a mummified person so that his or her ba and ka could easily travel back and forth from the body to the outside world shares an archaic common source with the eye-dotting ceremony practiced in Taoism, rooted in traditions that date back to shamanistic practices long before writing was invented in China. 

Check out this description of an eye-dotting ceremony to awaken the spirit within a new "lion" - a costume used by dancers in ceremonial dances:  Han Shou Tang Lion Dance: Eye Dotting Ceremony - Hoi Gong. 

New Southern Chinese Lions must be initiated through a traditional ceremony called the Hoi Gong (eye opening/dotting). A new lion should not be used if it has not been through the Hoi Gong ceremony. According to the tradition of the lion dance, if the lion is used at any kind of event without being initiated or awakened, it will bring misfortune and bad luck.

"Dotting the Eye" refers in particular to the Chinese tradition of painting in the eye of the Chinese lion before the start of the lion dance to awaken the spirit of the lion. Hoi Gong is a traditional ceremony to awaken a new lion, or from a more traditional viewpoint, bring down the spirit of the lion from the heaven and give it life. This ceremony signifies the existence or birth of a new lion into the world.Interestingly, the description of this ceremony focuses on - literally - "dotting the eye" - that is, painting in an iris on an eyeball -- a practice the author traces to these stories from Chinese history:

"Eye Dotting" Origin Of The Tradition
(Chinese Text from Ming Pao Daily, Translated by E. Hou)

It is generally believed that the tradition of "eye-dotting" originated from two Chinese stories concerning painting pictures.

During the Eastern Jin Dynasty [314-420 A.D.] a painter named Gu Kai Zhi was famous for painting portraits. However, he had a strange habit of leaving the eyeballs out, even for several years. When he was asked why, he said, "The most life-like strokes of a subtle portrait come from the eyes."

When a painter called Zhang Seng Yu was designated to paint a mural for the An Le Monastery in Nanjing during the Southern Dynasty [420-589 A.D.], people found that all the dragons on the wall-paintings lacked pupils in their eyes. When the Abbot invited him to add the pupils, Zhang replied, "It must not be done, otherwise they will fly away from the wall and into the sky." The Abbot was not convinced and had the pupils painted in. Eventually those dragons with eyeballs painted on them emerged and flew away, while those without stayed on the wall - This is the origin for the Chinese proverb "Draw the dragons, dot the eyes."

When we dot the eyes for dragon boats, lion dance or masks, the meaning is the same: We draw the eyes, we give them life.

*****************************************************************

An old Yiddish proverb tells us "The eyes are the mirror of the soul."  Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson's take on this ancient wisdom - "The eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul."

Eyes reflect internal and imputed sources of power. Only think about some of the expressions we know today and the context in which they are used -- "who blinked first" -- "staring someone down" -- giving someone a "hard stare," a "look that could kill." And we've probably all heard about someone getting "the evil eye." There was a very good reason for not looking into the eyes of the Medusa...

Eyes can also invite and seduce. A man will certainly have a different reaction to seeing an attractive young lady staring at him as to, say, a tatooed homey with a gold-plated toothpick dangling on his lip. Well, usually...

Here is what Barbara Walker has to say about the Eye in The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets:

The All-Seeing Eye of ancient Egypt once belonged to the Goddess of truth and judgment, Maat.(1) The Mother-syllable Maa meant "to see"; in hieroglyphics it was an eye.(2)

A late text transferred the All-Seeing Eye to a male god, Horus, and the common symbol came to be known as the Eye of Horus, also representing the phallus as the "One-Eyed God." Yet the same Eye was incongruously described as a female judge: "I am the all-seeing Eye of Horus, whose appearance strikes terror, lady of Slaughter, Mighty One."(3) [sounds like the fearsome lion-headed goddess, Sekhmet, to me] The Eye whose appearance strikes terror was the original prototype of the evil eye which, like the petrifying glance of Medusa, was usually associated with women and was feared by simple folk everywhere, up to the present day.

Staring idols of the Neolithic "Eye Goddess" have been found throughout Mesopotamia. [Image - note below].  In Syria she was known as the Goddess Mari, whose huge eyes searched men's souls.(4)

Ayin was the "eye" in the Hebrew sacred alphabet, possibly derived from Aya, the Babylonian Creatress.(5) Islamic Arabs diabolized her and corrupted her name into Ayin, spirit of the evil eye. Moslem Syrians called her Aina Bisha, the eye-witch.

Like Moslems, Christians diabolized the female spirit of the All-Seeing Eye. Old women were credited with the ancient Goddess's power to "overlook" - to curse someone with a glance. Judges of the Inquisition so greatly feared the evil eyes of their victims that they forced accused witches to enter the court backward, to deprive them of the advantage of a first glance.(6)

Oddly enough, remedies for the evil eye were often female symbols. Necklaces of cowrie shells, those ubiquitous yonic symbols, were and are valued in India as charms against the evil eye. The triangle or Yoni Yantra, representing the vulva, is similarly used in India, Greece, and the Balkans. Northern Indian farmers protect crops from the evil eye by hanging Kali's symbol of a black pot in the field. In 18th-century England, the classic witch's familiar, a black cat, was supposed to afford protection; and sore eyes could be cured by rubbing with a black cat's tail.(7) In addition there were many signs, gestures, and other kinds of counter-spells to be used as instant remedies if one suspected having been "overlooked."

It seems men were very much averse to meeting a direct glance from a woman. In the most patriarchal societies, from medieval Japan to Europe, it was customary to insist that "proper" women keep their eyelids lowered in the presence of men. In 19th-century Islamic Iran, it was believed that every woman above the age of menopause possessed the evil eye. Old women were not permitted in crowds attending public appearances of the Shah, lest his sacred person be exposed to an old woman's dangerous look.(8)

Any person invested with spiritual powers, however, could be credited with the power to curse with a look. Several popes were reputed to be bearers of the evil eye or jettatura. Pope Pius IX (d. 1878)was a famous jettatore. Pope Leo XIII, his successor, was said to have the evil eye because so many cardinals died during his reign.(9) [or maybe he just had them poisoned to get rid of them, ahem].

Notes:
(1) Budge, G.E. 1, 392.
(2) Budge, E.I., 55.
(3) Cavendish, P.E., 167.
(4) Neumann, G.M., 111-12 pl. 87.
(5) Assry. & Bab. Lit., 133-34.
(6) Lea unabridged, 831.
(7) Gifford, 79-81.
(8) Gifford, 47.
(9) Budge, A.T., 365.

***************************************************************

Goddesses and eyes and lions, oh my!  It is, perhaps, no coincidence that the "eye-dotting" ceremony for the lions and dragons reported in the article at the beginning of this post was held within the precincts of a Goddess's sacred Temple. The associations of Goddess and lion, and Goddess with eye, pre-date writing.

Note from above: Alabaster Eye Idol, British Museum. From Tell Brak, north-eastern Syria, about 3500-3300 BC

What is that symbol on top of the pyramid on the flip side of a U.S. dollar bill?  Yep - it's the All-Seeing Eye!  Notice the rays shooting out from it, denoting both divinity/godhood and light - i.e., enlightenment. Sounds like a segueway into Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol!" Hey, the Masons would not have lasted this long if they didn't have at least some things right... Annuit Coeptis...

From the British Museum
Faience wedjat eye
Egypt, Third Intermediate Period, 1069-945 BC

An Egyptian healing symbol

The wedjat is associated with Horus, the god of the sky, who was depicted as a falcon or as a man with a falcon's head. In a battle with Seth, the god of chaos and confusion, Horus lost his left eye. But the wound was healed by the goddess Hathor and the wedjat came to symbolise the process of 'making whole' and healing - the word wedjat literally meaning sound. [cf. the Goddess Kwan Yin]  The left eye of Horus also represented the moon. The waxing and waning in the lunar cycle therefore reflected Horus losing and regaining his sight. [Moon = multi-cultural goddess symbol -- think crescent Moon and "horns."]

The first use of a wedjat eye as an amulet was when Horus used one to bring Osiris back to life. Their regenerative power meant that wedjat eye amulets were placed in mummy wrappings in great numbers. Faience is a type of ceramic, commonly used to make amulets.

But, of course, what the Eye Giveth, the Eye Can Taketh Away...
Check out Nazar Boncugu -- a classic response, creating an eye talisman to ward off the effects of the Evil Eye.

A Place Where Cultures Met

Fascinating article from The New York Times. I don't know what I'm going to do when it goes pay per view next year. I hope the financial model does NOT work and I'll get my free New York Times back. Please.  Does this look like an "imaginary animal" to you?  It looks like an elephant to me, despite the funky toes and truncated body. Identification of graphic: Librado Romero/The New York Times -- A stone carving of an imaginary animal, the Gajasimha, from Thap Mam, Binh Dinh province, in the 12th to 13th century.

Gaja is one of several Sanskrit terms for an elephant.  It's not hard to figure this out by looking at the carving - it has tusks and the an upturned nose/trunk.  Simha - I'm guessing - it's a lion (like "Simba" from The Lion King - demonstrating my total ignorance but brilliant guessing capability???)  The toes and the general shape of the body, along with the long tail curved against the rear flank, suggest an oriental rendering of a lion - such as in Chinese "foo dogs."  So, this figure is a combination of two powerful, totemic animals with ancient religious and mystical significance across several cultures.

Ancient Sphere Where Cultures Mingled
By HOLLAND COTTER
Published: February 4, 2010

In 1988 the art historian Nancy Tingley, then a curator at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, went to Vietnam to talk with museums about borrowing examples of the country’s ancient art for the first major United States exhibition. It was a bold idea. To most Americans, Vietnam still meant little more than the memory of a nightmare war. And who knew it had a great art tradition, never mind museums that preserved it?

The show didn’t happen. The diplomatic situation was volatile; negotiating loans proved impossible. The Asian Art Museum dropped out as a sponsor, and even after new ones signed on, the project remained in limbo. But Ms. Tingley stuck with her original plans, and her persistence, 20 years on, has paid off in “Arts of Ancient Vietnam: From River Plain to Open Sea” at the Asia Society Museum. Is the show worth the wait? It is. It’s fabulous. Perfectly (meaning modestly) scaled, with the kind of Asian art loans — matchless in quality, straight from the source — that we rarely see here anymore.

From the moment you enter the galleries you’re seeing things you won’t find anywhere else and certainly not in this combination: a bronze drum as hefty as a hot tub; a wooden Buddha, tall, dark and Giacometti-thin. Avid-eyed Hindu deities keep company with contortionist dancers. A tiny serpent of beaten gold basks in a spotlight. Ceramic plates and bowls crowd a room just as they had once filled the hold of a ship that went down in the South China Sea.

Once you’ve made your way through the society’s suave installation, you’ve seen treasures from 10 Vietnamese museums. You’ve time-traveled from the first millennium B.C. to the 17th century A.D. And you’ve style-traveled through dozens of cultures both inside and outside Vietnam itself.

Geographically Vietnam was made for trade. A narrow slice of land with a 2,000-mile coastline running from China to Cambodia, it was open to the world whether it wanted to be or not. Where nearby countries like Laos and Thailand are chunky and dense in shape, Vietnam measures at certain points less than 40 miles across. It has virtually no interior, no way to shut its doors and retreat.

As important as accessibility was its location at a nodal point where international shipping routes met. With countless natural harbors — its coastline might have been cut with pinking shears — Vietnam made an ideal layover for sea traffic. It also made a lucrative global marketplace and as such gave as good as it got.

It absorbed early formative influences from China, evident in metalwork (seen in the show’s first gallery) from the prehistoric Dong Son culture that settled in northern Vietnam in the last half of the first millennium B.C. At the time Vietnam itself was valued for its creative vitality. The bronze ritual drums made by Dong Son artists were sought-after collector items, with examples, some weighing close to 400 pounds, turning up not only in China but across Southeast Asia as well.

With the rise of the pre-Angkor state of Fu Nan in the Mekong Delta in the first centuries A.D., Vietnam’s cultural spheres expanded further. We still don’t know much about Fu Nan — there’s a lot of basic archaeological catch-up work to be done — though we do know that its people established harbor cities and experienced a wave of influence from India, which led to adopting Buddhism and Hinduism and their intertwined traditions of religious sculpture.

The tall wooden Buddha, its features time-smoothed almost to invisibility and its figure in profile like a parenthesis, reflects post-Gupta style conventions current on the subcontinent in the sixth century. But it was Hinduism that really caught on, first with the worship of Vishnu. We see him, with the breath-swelled body of a yogi and wearing a princely crown, in a stone figure on loan from the Ho Chi Minh City Fine Arts Museum.

Devotion to Shiva also became in vogue, and soon much of the rest of the Hindu pantheon found its way into Fu Nan and its art: Ganesha, with his elephant’s head and pudgy body; Durga, a blank-faced warrior-goddess stripped down to her skirt for a fight; and Surya, the sun god, in his buttoned-up untropical attire of West Asian tunic and boots.

These immigrant divinities showered Fu Nan with prosperity until the mid-seventh century; then their largesse stopped. For reasons we can only surmise — maybe the appearance of overwhelming commercial competition — a vital state grew moribund and gradually dropped from sight.

Rest of article...