Today, I would like to introduce you to a habitual animal - the owl.
Compared to everyone who has seen owls, even kindergarten children know what owls look like, but do you really understand owls?
Today, Xiaobian specifically tells the story of the owl:
01 Prehistoric owls
The earliest evidence that humans knew about the existence of owls dates back about 30,000 years.
On December 18, 1994, three cave explorers discovered a hidden entrance to an underground cave in southeastern France. They dragged away the rubble blocking the entrance and dug out a narrow passage. They drilled through this passage and found a huge cave with walls covered with wonderful prehistoric paintings.
The art of petroglyphs encompasses all the common animals we know all about: bison, deer, horses, rhinos, mammoths, and other large mammals, but the astonishing thing about this newly discovered cave is that they also found a carved owl image deep inside the cave.
This earliest owl image was a large eagle owl, a family of snow owls
The top of the Chauvet Cave in France, carved in white lines, is 30,000 years old
About 30 miles (about 48 kilometers) east of the Three Brothers Caves, also at the foot of the Pyrenees, there is an obscure Le Portel petroglyph. Not far from the entrance, in Hall One, there is the image of a bird, with a simple black silhouette, so close to a horse and a bison that it is thought to be an owl.
A small statue of two owls in Lower Westnice, Czech Republic; an owl carved from animal teeth in Aziling, Pyrenees, France
02 Ancient owls
❀Babylon❀
Some 4,000 years ago, in Babylonia (now southern Iraq), an artist made a peculiar clay relief in which a formidable humanoid nude goddess stood in the center, with the wings and feet of an owl.
Queen of the Night, also known as Bonnie Relief
The British Museum calls her "The Queen of the Nightt." Whoever she was, it seemed to be one of the first of many owls.
❀Egypt❀
In the ancient Egyptian script, the only function of the owl glyph was to indicate the pronunciation or letter of m.
A painting on the outer coffin of a prince, Djehutynekht, during the Middle Kingdom period
This glyph has two interesting features:
All other birds, and indeed all other kinds of animals, are outlined when they are converted into hieroglyphs. This strict tradition is only invalidated in front of the owl, whose body is also outlined, but its head rotates 90 degrees to face the viewer.
The second peculiarity of the owl glyph is that these birds sometimes appear as broken legs, as if to make it impossible for them to come back to life and attack.
An owl hieroglyphic painting from the Time of Ramses
❀Greece❀
Here, wisdom and owls become synonymous.
Athens is named after its patron goddess Athena, and the owl is her sacred bird.
For hundreds of years, from the 6th century BC to the 1st century BC, coins minted in Athens had the image of this goddess on one side and the image of an owl on the other.
Athena's owl
It was this coin that led to the concept of "the front and back of the coin", which became popular on many later coins. These Greek coins are commonly known as "owls".
The owl and the goddess also make a rather ingenious connection through her menstrual cycle.
Clay figurine of the goddess with an owl's head
This argument is simply that the owl is the bird of the moonlight, the moon has a cycle of the moon, and the goddess has a cycle of the moon, so the owl is closely related to the goddess.
In earlier times, the Louvre had a famous 7th-century BC prototype Corinthian perfume bottle (aryballos) in the shape of an owl.
Corinthian terracotta vase
Its shape is very special, and the owl's head is turned to one side, as if the Collins potter who made it is still under Egyptian influence, imitating the hieroglyphic owl to a large extent, with a body that is sideways, and the head is turned to face the viewer.
❀Rome❀
In ancient Rome, the goddess Athena was transformed into the goddess Minerva.
When the Roman armies conquered Greece, they had to choose the patron saint, and since the Roman goddess Minerva was almost identical to the Greek Athena, they borrowed the latter's sacred bird and used it for their own purposes.
However, after the defection to Minerva, the owl's life was not so good, because the Roman people already had a common idea that the owl was a symbol of evil animals and death.
The Romans, convinced that the owl's cry heralded the imminent arrival of death, would find a way to catch the bird and kill it in order to counteract the prophecy.
❀China❀
Artists of the Shang Dynasty (circa 1500-1045 BC) created the world's most exquisite bronze statues to date.
There are many magnificent owls hidden under extremely complex cutting patterns and relief designs.
They generally come from around 1200 BC and take the shape of a pleasing small bronze wine container, known as "Zun".
A bronze figure in the shape of an owl in the late Shang Dynasty
"Zun" is believed to be used in the ceremony of ancestor worship.
These owls sit firmly on a three-legged platform consisting of two legs and a hard tail base, staring at large eyes, two clusters of ear feathers on the head, a relief pattern of a bull's head on the chest, and, strangely, its wings appear as a pair of snake-shaped spirals. The back of the owl's body is decorated with a pair of birds that resemble birds of prey, with a ferocious curved beak.
The ancient Chinese did not regard the owl as a wise old friend, but a fierce and terrifying image - an evil bird of prey in the night.
That's it for today's sharing! See you in the next issue!