Which is pretty weird and cool. But if this is a narrative, what is the story? The great hero scares off a bull with his shamanic rattle, then terrifies two leopards with his cock? But the leopards don't actually look very scared; maybe he decided that since he was going to be eaten by leopards anyway, he might as well die happy? Or are the bulls and leopards his assistants, helping him do some great act of masucline fertility magic? Is the hero seeding the land? Did he die at the, um, culmination of this act, gored by the Bull of Heaven and devoured by the Goddess's leopards?
The mind boggles.
5 comments:
I believe lepers -> leopars, Die he died -> did he died.
leopards, dammit.
@szopeno
I noticed that too. I was kind of disappointed to realize that the initial "lepers" was almost certainly a misprint. Lepers in an image like that would have been intriguing.
@David
I'm curious how one would go about depicting lepers in such an image from that time period.
I've seen a few medieval European depictions of lepers which depicted individuals with lesions, but then had to include text clarifying that it depicted leprosy specifically. I've also seen at least one where it did not specify via text, but depicted both lesions and amputated limbs, which narrows it down a fair deal.
@G - the classical tradition is the same, showing people with spots and sometimes missing limbs. And so far as we know leprosy was unknown in western Asia until the classical period.
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