See eye worship from artifacts
Li Li
The recent exhibition of Ancient Syrian Cultural Relics in China presents us with a rich variety of cultural relics the historical process of Syria from the Stone Age, through the Bronze and Iron Ages, to the Hellenistic, Roman and Islamic Eras. Syria, located in the western part of the Asian continent, on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. Since ancient times, because it is located at the crossroads of the three continents of Asia, Africa and Europe, various cultures have been exchanged and integrated here. The dawn of civilization in the Two Rivers Basin has shone through this land, the Hellenistic trend has swept through here, and the glory of Rome, the colorful Islamic world... The light of human civilization shines here, and the prelude to world dialogue and exchange is played here. Today, Syria is home to more than 3,500 monuments, like a vast museum exposed under the blue sky. The cultural relics exhibited this time give us a more intuitive understanding of the ancient civilization of the Two Rivers Basin.
In addition to cuneiform clay tablets, lapis lazuli necklaces, and pottery ball bookkeeping books, I am more interested in the ancient Syrian custom of drawing eyeliner! There is a female statue on the head, wearing a spherical ornament, which some experts speculate is a hat or crown. It is worth noting that her eyes and eyebrows are inlaid with gemstones and painted with thick and deep eyeliner. On the side, you can also see the bird-shaped clay eyeliner container, which is a special beauty tool for painting eyeliner. Why did people at that time pay special attention to the decoration of the eyes? Originally, this was due to the Fact that the Sumerians believed in polytheistic worship, worshipping the sun, moon, mountains, animals and plants, and believing that all unexplained phenomena came from the will of The Gods. The human eye can see that everything in the world may also be a god-given, so they may want to express their worship of the eye by drawing eyeliner.
When ancient human beings, with their own eyes and hearts, tasted everything that life gave, they looked at the world curiously, and those eyes shone brightly. I think back thousands of years ago, those eyes that looked at the heavens and the earth, the past and the future, were as strong as steel, as clear as springs, as pure as babies...
It was natural for ancient humans to worship the eye, which should represent the sun and light, and also have the meaning of self-identification. In China, there is also eye worship - the ancient Shu civilization, whether it is Sanxingdui or Jinsha ruins, there are related cultural relics. It can be said that there are eyes everywhere in sanxingdui cultural relics, and the eyes are the most common carved symbols and engraved patterns. Bronze idols have pupils that protrude out of the eye sockets, and ordinary bronze figures also have huge eyes. In addition, there are large diamond-shaped copper eyes, cylindrical copper pupils, copper animal faces supported by the eyes, and even the bronze portrait costumes have eye patterns. Archaeology speculates that the ancient Shu people worshipped the eyes, which originated from the worship of the sun, because the sun brought light to the world and the eyes brought light to mankind, and the sun was indeed a common theme in the worship of early world cultures. The reason why the bronze god statue has a bulging pupil is to show that this god has great power to control the light. There are also studies that believe that the leader of the Silkworm Cong clan is called the King of Shu, because he has double pupils, people call him "Longitudinal Eye", so posterity believes that the Shu King Silkworm Cong Clan is a "Longitudinal Man". Speaking of heavy pupils, almost all Chinese heavy pupils have been emperors for five thousand years, so in ancient times, heavy pupils were used to represent the emperors of the world. They include: Cangjie, Yu Shun, Zhong'er, Xiang Yu, Lü Guang, Gao Yang, Yu Juluo, and Li Yu. Yu Shun was one of the Three Emperors and Five Emperors, Gong Zhong'er of Jin Wen was one of the Five Emperors of spring and autumn, Xiang Yu was the "King of Western Chu" who was unique in ancient times, Lü Guang was the King of Houliang who swept through the Western Regions during the Sixteen Kingdoms period, Gao Yang was the founder of Northern Qi, and Li Yu was the lord of the Southern Tang Dynasty during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. The only non-emperors were cangjie, a sage of the Yellow Emperor's era, and Yu Juluo, a famous sui dynasty general. Yu Juluo was jealous of the Sui Emperor Yang Guang because he was "a different person with a heavy pupil", and had a portrait of an emperor, and was beheaded by the Sui Emperor in the city. According to Liu An's "Huainanzi", "in the past, cangjie was written in the rain and the ghosts cried at night", such a witchy scene can be regarded as the superstition of the ancients, but it can also distinguish another meaning: it renders the magic and difficulty of inventing writing. Although Cangjie is not ranked among the kings, the invention of writing is like the use of fire, Cangjie uses his wise eyes to look up at the heavens, see the changes in heaven and earth, and see the ancient truth at a glance, so we should realize that the sage Cangjie is the emperor of the ancient writings! And he himself is the embodiment of wisdom!
Unlike the ancient cult of the eye in the Near and Far East, ancient Greece had a very strange philosophy that only the blind could see the truth. In Greek mythology, there was a prophet, Theresias, a blind prophet, the son of the mortal Eurys and the goddess Carrickrod. There are two theories about the reason he became blind. One was that because he had revealed the secrets of God that he had learned from his mother, he received punishment from the gods and blinded his eyes. Another theory is that he accidentally saw Athena, the goddess of wisdom, bathing, and Athena blinded his eyes in anger. Goddess Athena is the daughter of Zeus, the god of the gods, who possesses the same wisdom and power as her father. Therefore, seeing her symbolizes that the person has insight into the highest wisdom of the universe. So Teresias was punished and his eyes became blind, a metaphor for the dangers of knowing the truth of the world.
I think that whether it is exaggerated eyes or blind eyes, this is precisely from the positive and negative aspects, indicating a problem, that is, the ancients of the animistic era believed that behind the vision of all things, there are supernatural gods dominating, mountains, rivers, lakes and seas, wind and rain... There is no God who is in charge. Everything in the world is given by the gods, so the only mission of mankind is to worship and obey these gods. And the connection between man and God is the eye, and everything must shine into the heart through the eyes. However, the meeting with the supreme deity is like the most intense and dazzling light piercing into the eye, and the strong light stimulates people to the point of blindness. That terrible situation, as the great poet Rilke wrote in the first song of the Lamentations of Duino:
If I shout, who will be in the sequence of angels
Hear me? Even if one of them was sudden
Wrap me up to his chest and I'll be stronger in him too
Disappears from the power of existence. Because beauty is not
It's the beginning of the horror that we can just bear.
And we praise it because it is serene
Disdain to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.
Therefore, the ancient Greeks believed that the truth can only be truly seen from the mind if it is beyond the confinement of the eyes. In the ancient Syrian and Chinese civilizations, it is necessary to decorate the eyes with gems and draw thick black eyeliner, or to upgrade the factory settings of a pair of mortal eyes, so that they have the superpower of "god's eyes like electricity".
In fact, the great scientist Einstein of the 20th century also worshipped the human eye. Albert Einstein said, "The God I think of is not necessarily a personalized God, barely the ultimate law of the universe that is difficult to quantify..." He based it on this basis: "In the case of any organ in the human body, we know that the structure of the eye is at least 1,000 times more complex and ingenious than the best camera." Einstein argued that this could not be justified by nature's "accidental concordance." He concluded: "Our natural world may seem to be extremely complex, but if we pay close attention, we can find that it is very harmonious and very regular, so that it can always maintain balance, and can continue to live endlessly, which requires the overall design and domination of a supernatural supreme wisdom." ”
It is not easy for modern man to truly understand this divinity. We are actually a little more unfortunate than the ancients, because we may be a little farther away from the real existence, and there are a lot of things spaced between us. When the ancients looked at the world with clear and pure eyes, when man was not far from nature itself, man had just been separated from nature, and nature had not been the object of man's gaze for a long time. And today we have gone through countless generations of eye transformation, after countless generations of vision cultivation, generation after generation of human knowledge, and finally through our eyes, has long rewritten our innocent eyes, so our distance from nature is much farther than the ancients, just touched the edge of existence, it is impossible to truly enter the existence.
You say, ancient Syrian sculptures with thick black eyeliner, bronze statues of Sanxingdui with bulging pupils, what are they staring into the void?
Between Your Eyes and Me Adonis (Syria)
When I sink my eyes into your eyes
I caught a glimpse of the deep dawn
I see the ancient yesterday
See everything I can't comprehend
I felt the universe flowing
Between your eyes and me