Abstract
Dragons. In Man for May, Mr. G. D. Hornblower discusses the origin and distribution of the art-forms of the dragon. The conception of a blend of various forms of fierce and dangerous animals such as lion, eagle and snake appears in the earliest pictorial records of the Near East. In Mesopotamia its association with deities may attribute to them the qualities associated with each animal. Dragons are both evil, as Tiâmat, or beneficent, as in the wings (a dragon survival) of the sun disc in Egypt. On all the earliest cylinders animal forms predominate, much subject to distortion. Animal art disappears in Mesopotamia under Semitic influence, but reappears in Assyrian art, while it holds its position in Egypt and North Syria. Beyond Assyria in Urartu (Armenia), dragons, lions and aurochs pointing to Assyrian influence appear on the objects looted by Sargon II from Musasir. It has been shown that Mitanni-Khattite art extended to this region, and thence to the Medes and through them to the Achaemenids, this zone including the hilly country around Elam, the modern Luristan, whence come objects of art attributed to the Kassites of the Iron Age and to be related, through Armenia, to a northern or ‘Scythian’ region of this art-province. Nomad peoples gave to this animal art a new life and vigour. The Scythians compounded an ancient animal art, possibly descended from an ancient stone age art extending from Finland to Siberia, with the influences from Mesopotamia and formed the animal art called ‘Scythian’, later adopted and further modified by the Sarmatians. In the southern province the animal art developed the peculiar characteristic of the elongation convention. Scythian elements were introduced into China in the Ts'in and Han dynasties, when the Chinese began to ride horses and changed their military equipment. In this new phase of Chinese art two provinces are to be discerned, one in which the chief characteristic is a plain animal form rendered naturalistically, and a second in which objects are decorated in foreign style, but with a well-developed Chinese manner.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Research Items. Nature 131, 806–808 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131806a0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131806a0