Ancient Sculpture Quotes

But  Phidias was better than most men since he made beautiful sculptures. He was even making one of her—well, he called it “Athena,” but anyone could see it looked like her.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door — Only this, and nothing more." Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore — For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here for evermore. And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door — Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is, and nothing more." Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" — Merely this, and nothing more. Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice: Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore — Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; — 'Tis the wind and nothing more." Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore; Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door — Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door — Perched, and sat, and nothing more. Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore. Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore — Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore." Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning— little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door — Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore.

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President

However," he continued when she remained silent, her throat a knot of emotion, "it seems Montgomery could not help himself when it came to this vase. I'm afraid he has a weakness for beautiful things and has been known to relocate an item if he feels it is not being accorded the proper appreciation. Once he 'relocated' an ancient sculpture from the home of another archangel.

All of Nature follows perfectly geometric laws. The Ancient Egyptian, Greek, Peruvian, Mayan, and Chinese cultures were well aware of this, as Phi—known as the Golden Ratio or Golden Mean—was used in the constructions of their sculptures and architecture.

I sometimes wonder if the hand is not more sensitive to the beauties of sculpture than the eye. I should think the wonderful rhythmical flow of lines and curves could be more subtly felt than seen. Be this as it may, I know I can feel the heart-throbs of the ancient Greeks in their marble gods and goddesses.

A Cathedral Façade at Midnight Along the sculptures of the western wall I watched the moonlight creeping: It moved as if it hardly moved at all Inch by inch thinly peeping Round on the pious figures of freestone, brought And poised there when the Universe was wrought To serve its centre, Earth, in mankind’s thought. The lunar look skimmed scantly toe, breast, arm, Then edged on slowly, slightly, To shoulder, hand, face; till each austere form Was blanched its whole length brightly Of prophet, king, queen, cardinal in state, That dead men’s tools had striven to simulate; And the stiff images stood irradiate. A frail moan from the martyred saints there set Mid others of the erection Against the breeze, seemed sighings of regret At the ancient faith’s rejection Under the sure, unhasting, steady stress Of Reason’s movement, making meaningless.

It wasn't the many slashes and scars marring his chest that caused her sudden gasp, though she felt the pain of each one. It was the unparalleled beauty of his physique that stole her breath. Dorian's body was rendered by some ancient god of war. No Greek sculpture could compare, no artist could re-create the sleek, predatory masculinity rippling through the complex landscape of his torso.

My world is full of beauty, but you avert your eyes. My world is full of light, but you only worship the dark. My world is filled with song, but you exalt silence. My world is filled with delight, but you cut throats that ring with laughter. My world is adorned with exquisite art, but you smash sculptures, destroying ancient civilisations. In my world, people rejoice with one another and share each other’s burdens, but you only preach vanity and greed. What do you know of courage? What do you know of resilience? My world is so vast, it welcomes even you— for your drop of hatred will always be absolved in our ocean of love.

It’s empathy—the same quality in the sculptures that surround them. The ancient artists were devotees above all else. Without love of their subject, they’d just be cutting

There is so much to see—little alleys and passageways leading to courtyards with intricate stone fountains, ancient and modern sculptures, and fascinating little boutiques and shops.

We get to the end of the block of shops. Here the street opens into a grand plaza. Right in the center of it is a sculpture of a winged couple holding each other in a tight embrace. Only this sculpture floats several feet in the air. I pause in front of it. “Who are they?” I ask, staring at the couple. The woman seems to be made of the same dark stone my beads are, her skin drawing in the light. The man she embraces is made of some shimmering sandstone, his skin seeming to glow from within. “The Lovers,” Des replies. “Two of our ancient gods.” He points to the man. “He’s Fierion, God of Light, and she’s Nyxos, Goddess of Darkness.” Nyxos … why does that name sound familiar? “In the myths,” Des continues, “Fierion was married to Gaya, Goddess of Nature, but his true love was Nyxos, the woman he was forbidden from ever being with. Their love for each other is what causes day to chase night and night to chase day. “Here in the Land of Dreams they’re finally allowed to be with each other.

The ancient canyon art of Utah belongs in that same international museum without walls which makes African sculpture, Melanesian masks, and the junkyards of New Jersey equally interesting—those voices of silence which speak to us in the first world language. As for the technical competence of the artists, its measure is apparent in the fact that these pictographs and petroglyphs though exposed to the attack of wind, sand, rain, heat, cold and sunlight for centuries still survive vivid and clear. How much of the painting and sculpture being done in America today will last—in the merely physical sense—for even a half-century?

When his secretary ushers Katie into the attorney’s ultramodern office with its high-contrast display of ancient fired-clay horse sculptures from the Sung and T’ang dynasties, the attorney springs up from his chair as might a twenty-year-old.

Flattery isn’t the right word for his portrait. It’s empathy—the same quality in the sculptures that surround them. The ancient artists were devotees above all else. Without love of their subject, they’d just be cutting stone; their adoration is what brings it to life.

Alexandros points to the bronze sculpture of Socrates. "His society didn't collapse because of an outside aggressor. It collapsed from within, from the complete breakdown of communication between citizens, and the breakdown of loving sentiment for one another. They ganged up and got rid of Socrates because he was an uncomfortable reminder of the glory days of ancient Athens, when /demokratia/--'people power'--reigned and citizens worked toward a greater good. He epitomized the fact that you're meant to stay open to all views, to all human experiences, because that's how you deepen your love for people and of wisdom. That amazing man sacrificed his life in the name of classic Athenian values of excellence and honor and compassion, so one day they might live on. And they did, here in America, for more than two centuries. I'm worried my beloved America is becoming as loveless as ancient Athens in its days of decline.

It was the Church, they told me, that had kept alive the Latin and Greek of the classical world in the benighted Middle Ages, until it could be picked up again by the wider world in the Renaissance. On holidays, we would visit museums and libraries where the same point was made. As a young child, I looked at the glowing gold of the illuminated manuscripts and believed in a more metaphorical illumination in ages of intellectual darkness. And, in a way, my parents were right to believe this, for it is true. Monasteries did preserve a lot of classical knowledge. But it is far from the whole truth. In fact, this appealing narrative has almost entirely obscured an earlier, less glorious story. For before it preserved, the Church destroyed. In a spasm of destruction never seen before—and one that appalled many non-Christians watching it—during the fourth and fifth centuries, the Christian Church demolished, vandalized and melted down a simply staggering quantity of art. Classical statues were knocked from their plinths, defaced, defiled and torn limb from limb. Temples were razed to their foundations and mutilated. A temple widely considered to be the most magnificent in the entire empire was leveled. Many of the Parthenon sculptures were attacked, faces were mutilated, hands and limbs were hacked off, and gods were decapitated. Some of the finest statues on the whole building were almost certainly smashed off then ground into rubble that was then used to build churches. Books—which were often stored in temples—suffered terribly. The remains of the greatest library in the ancient world, a library that had once held perhaps 700,000 volumes, were destroyed in this way by Christians. It was over a millennium before any other library would even come close to its holdings. Works by censured philosophers were forbidden and bonfires blazed across the empire as outlawed books went up in flames.

I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in which life was gathered, rooms in which the morning sunlight, the floors spread with Oriental rugs that had been her mother-in-law’s, apricot, rough and tan, rugs which though worn seemed to drink the sun, to collect its warmth; books, potpourris, cushions in colors of Matisse, objects glistening like evidence, many which might had they been possessed by ancient people, have been placed in the tombs for another life: clear crystal dice, pieces of staghorn, amber beads, boxes, sculptures, wooden balls, magazines in which were photographs of women to whom she compared herself.

Helen’s era was quite different from what most people think of when they hear the words ancient Greece. The Parthenon, the graceful statues, the works of Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, Aristotle, and Plato, all came nearly a thousand years after Helen’s time, during the classical era. In the Bronze Age, no one yet knew how to make brittle iron flexible enough to use for tools and weapons. Art, especially sculpture of the human form, was stiffer and more stylized. Few people could read or write. Instead of signing important papers, you would use a stone seal to leave an impression on clay tablets. The design on the seal would be as unique as a signature. There was a kind of writing in Bronze Age Greece, but it was mostly used to keep track of financial matters, such as royal tax records. Messages, poems, songs, and stories were not written down but were memorized and passed along by word of mouth.

The decline of Greek democracy was brought about not by the realism of antiquity (where, according to Marx's German Ideology 'communal life was a "truth", whereas in modern times it has become an idealistic lie'). Quite the contrary, the seed of its destruction lay in the idealism of abstract civic freedom, which is incapable of mastering material development. The historical limitation of ancient sculpture was not its adherence to life, its corporeality, but on the contrary, its escape from life, its retreat into empty space. 'Abstract individuality', i.e. the atom of 'civic society', 'cannot shine in the light of existence'. The only conclusion which can be drawn from this interpretation is that freedom and material life must be united around a higher principle than the 'abstract individuality' of the atom-citizen. Or, to translate philosophy into the language, of politics, democratic demands must be given a realistic plebeian colouring, a broad mass base.

Naturally, Wendell's apartments are absurdly comfortable, and somehow there is the atmosphere of a forest about them, though I know this makes little sense. The ceilings are very high, rather like the canopy of an ancient grove--- I suspect he has enchanted them somehow--- and always there is the sound of rustling leaves, though this abruptly ceases if you listen too closely. I would have expected a lot of luxurious frippery from faerie royalty, but his furnishings are simple--- a scattering of sofas, impossible soft; a huge oak table; three magnificent inglenook fireplaces; and a great deal of empty floor through which an impossible little breeze is always stirring, smelling of moss. For decoration there is the mirror from Hrafnsvik with the forest reflected inside it and a few silver baubles, sculptures and vases and the like, which catch the light in unexpected ways, but that's it. And, of course, the place is so clean one feels one may sully it by breathing too hard.

You say respect my elders, but what you mean is respecting my betters, is that not right? Are you so full of your own arrogance that you need me to bow and kowtow to you like some throwback fledgling? Or perhaps we should reinstate the role of concubines in our society. Then you may have the pleasure of claiming me and forcing me to fall to my knees, bowing low in respect of your masculine eminence!” Gideon watched as she did just that, her gown billowing around her as she gracefully kneeled before him, so close to him that her knees touched the tips of his boots. She swept her hands to her sides, bowing her head until her forehead brushed the leather, her hair spilling like reams of heavy silk around his ankles. The Ancient found himself unusually speechless, the strangest sensation creeping through him as he looked down at the exposed nape of her neck, the elegant line of her back. Unable to curb the impulse, Gideon lowered himself into a crouch, reaching beneath the cloak of coffee-colored hair to touch her flushed cheek. The heat of her anger radiated against his touch and he recognized it long before she turned her face up to him. “Does this satisfy you, my lord Gideon?” she whispered fiercely, her eyes flashing like flinted steel and hard jade. Gideon found himself searching her face intently, his eyes roaming over the high, aristocratic curves of her cheekbones, the amazingly full sculpture of her lips, the wide, accusing eyes that lay behind extraordinarily thick lashes. He cupped her chin between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, his fingertips fanning softly over her angrily flushed cheek. “You do enjoy mocking me,” he murmured softly to her, the breath of his words close enough to skim across her face. “No more than you seem to enjoy condescending to me,” she replied, her clipped words coming out on quick, heated breaths. Gideon absorbed this latest venom with a blink of lengthy lashes. They kept their gazes locked, each seemingly waiting for the other to look away. “You have never forgiven me,” he said suddenly, softly. “Forgiven you?” She laughed bitterly. “Gideon, you are not important enough to earn my forgiveness.” “Is your ego so fragile, Legna, that a small slight to it is irreparable?” “Stop talking to me as if I were a temperamental child!” Legna hissed, moving to jerk her head back but finding his grip quite secure. “There was nothing slight about the way you treated me. I will never forget it, and I most certainly will never forget it!

Will for life is will for form. Death, in its most visible and immediate expression, is the disintegration of form. Childhood and youth are the promise of form. Old age is the ruin of physical form; death, the fall into formlessness. That is why one of the most ancient and simple manifestations of the will for life is art. The first thing man did upon discovering that he was mortal was to erect a tomb. Art began with the consciousness of death. The mausoleum, since ancient times, has been both an homage to the dead and a defiance of death: the body decays, turns to dust, but the monument remains. Form remains. We are threatened not only by death by time itself, which makes, then unmakes, us. Every sculpture, every painting, every poem, every song is a form animated by the will to survive time and its erosions. The now wants to be saved, to be converted into stone or drawing, into color, sound, or word.

Among the clay tablets brought back by Rassam from Ashurbanipal's library, were fragments of the Babylonian story of the Deluge. These, as translated by George Smith, aroused immense interest, which led to the desire that search be made for the missing fragments. The explorers of the Heroic Period had uncovered palaces, bas-reliefs, and statues, but had given the insignificant tablets secondary consideration. From the library chamber of Ashurbanipal's palace Rassam had extracted only those tablets which could be conveniently reached. With the power to read attained meanwhile, the tablets had become fully as important as the sculptures, if not more so. George Smith's expedition indicated, therefore, that the Modern Scientific Period of excavation had begun. Its end is not yet in sight, since its goal is the investigation of all feasible localities in the Mesopotamian valley, with the purpose of throwing all available light upon the history and life of these ancient peoples.

Many women have identified with the grimace and the rage of Medusa. May Sarton identifies the Medusa-face as the face of her own frozen rage. Emily Culpepper speaks out of her own experience: “The Gorgon has much vital, literally life-saving information to teach women about anger, rage, power, and the release of the determined aggressiveness sometimes needed for survival.” Patricia Klindienst Joplin tells us why the artist is drawn to Medusa: “Behind the victim’s head that turns men to stone may lie the victim stoned to death by men... if Medusa has become a central figure for the woman artist to struggle with, it is because, herself a silenced woman, she has been used to silence other women.” Many artists have identified with the rage of Medusa. The Italian scholar and artist, Cristina Biaggi, who now works in the United States, incorporated her studies of prehistory and ancient history and myth into a powerful fiberglass sculpture, “Raging Medusa” (2000). The sculpture is 5.5 feet in diameter and weighs 98 pounds.

It is no surprise, then, that the earth deities of the Old Religion were demonized or co-opted. A typical task for Greek heroes was to rid the civilized world of those “earth-born bogeys.” The Gorgon Medusa, whose gaze turned men to stone, became an obvious target. Nevertheless, on the periphery of the Greek world, there is evidence that She was venerated in her ancient powers. During the 6th century BCE on the island of Corfu, an eight-foot-high full-bodied sculpture of Medusa was placed at the highest point on the pediment of the temple of Artemis. This Medusa is not raging, but is radiant in her full potency. Snakes with open jaws extend from each side of her head and two copulating serpents encircle her waist, carrying the potential for both death and new life. She wears winged sandals, her great wings are fully extended, sheltering her two children, and her bent-knee posture suggests that she is flying. All shamanic dimensions are Hers—the Great Above, the Great Below, the Primordial Waters, and the entire expanse of the Earth. She is flanked by great felines, just as the Phrygian Mountain Goddess Cybele and the seated Ancestral Mother from Çatalhöyük before her.'' ''The establishment of the Greek patriarchal world shifted the previous cultural valence from the egalitarian continuity of the Old Religion to the extreme imposition of male dominance and the cult of the hero. Under this new world order, all challenges to male hegemonic systems were to be crushed. As the classicist Eva Keuls emphasizes, “the suppression of women, the military expansionism and the harshness in the conduct of civic affairs all sprang from a common aggressive impulse.” That impulse was the expression of “male supremacy and the cult of power and violence.

The presence of this extraordinary being caused, as it were, a breath of life to circulate throughout the entire cathedral. It seemed as though there escaped from him, at least according to the growing superstitions of the crowd, a mysterious emanation which animated all the stones of Notre-Dame, and made the deep bowels of the ancient church to palpitate. It sufficed for people to know that he was there, to make them believe that they beheld the thousand statues of the galleries and the fronts in motion. And the cathedral did indeed seem a docile and obedient creature beneath his hand; it waited on his will to raise its great voice; it was possessed and filled with Quasimodo, as with a familiar spirit. One would have said that he made the immense edifice breathe. He was everywhere about it; in fact, he multiplied himself on all points of the structure. Now one perceived with affright at the very top of one of the towers, a fantastic dwarf climbing, writhing, crawling on all fours, descending outside above the abyss, leaping from projection to projection, and going to ransack the belly of some sculptured gorgon; it was Quasimodo dislodging the crows. Again, in some obscure corner of the church one came in contact with a sort of living chimera, crouching and scowling; it was Quasimodo engaged in thought. Sometimes one caught sight, upon a bell tower, of an enormous head and a bundle of disordered limbs swinging furiously at the end of a rope; it was Quasimodo ringing vespers or the Angelus. Often at night a hideous form was seen wandering along the frail balustrade of carved lacework, which crowns the towers and borders the circumference of the apse; again it was the hunchback of Notre-Dame. Then, said the women of the neighborhood, the whole church took on something fantastic, supernatural, horrible; eyes and mouths were opened, here and there; one heard the dogs, the monsters, and the gargoyles of stone, which keep watch night and day, with outstretched neck and open jaws, around the monstrous cathedral, barking. And, if it was a Christmas Eve, while the great bell, which seemed to emit the death rattle, summoned the faithful to the midnight mass, such an air was spread over the sombre façade that one would have declared that the grand portal was devouring the throng, and that the rose window was watching it. And all this came from Quasimodo. Egypt would have taken him for the god of this temple; the Middle Ages believed him to be its demon: he was in fact its soul.

The ancient Greeks who created the magnificent sculptures and structures were the same people who could be utterly cruel and barbaric.

Banalata Sen Jibananda Das. Translated from the original Bengali by Amitabha Mukerjee A thousand years I have walked these paths, From the harbour at Malacca in the dark of night To the straits of Ceylon at glimmer of dawn. Much have I travelled - The grey world of Ashoka-Bimbisara, Further yet, The dark city of Vidharbha; Around me life foams its stormy breath. Weary of soul, I found a moment's respite in her presence - She: Banalata Sen of Natore. Her hair the ancient darkness of Vidisha, Face a sculpture from Sravasthi. A sailor in distant oceans, rudderless, lost, When hoves into view Island of grass through fronds of cinnamon, A green relief So she felt to me. In the darkness she spoke - "All these years, where had you been?" Her eyebrows arched like the soaring wings of a bird - She: Banalata Sen of Natore. With the sound of dewdrops, Comes evening. The sunset fringe of gold on the eagle's wing Melts into the night And the glow of fireflies. Birds return to nest - The shop of life Shuttered for the day. Left behind in the darkness Face to face - Only she: Banalata Sen of Natore. Original translation 11/90

On the left side of the balcony, at the rear just outside the open doorway through which I'm looking, I suddenly become aware of the presence of a figure. It is an imposing statue, about six feet high and apparently carved in one piece from some green stone - perhaps jade. The sculptor provided excellent detailing of fine robes, and a belt, and something - possibly a sword? - suspended from the belt. At first this stunning piece of sculpture seems just that - a harmless, inanimate statue. I'm curious to see more of it and move my point of view a little closer to get to look at its face. To my surprise, the statue is half animal, half human. It has the body of a powerful and well-muscled man but the head of a crocodile, like Sobek, the ancient Egyptian crocodile god. And now I suddenly realise it is alive - a living being, a supernatural guardian. At this moment its eyes swivel sideways and it is looking at me, taking note of me. The look is intelligent, appraising somehow sly, but yet not threatening. What is this living statue, this being of jade? The vision fades...

They were probably confirmed in this idea, by the phrase, ‘buried in baptism.’ The consequence has been, that all the Baptists in the world, who have sprung from the English Baptists, have practiced the backward posture. But from the beginning, it was not so. In the apostolic times, the administrator placed his right hand on the head of the candidate, who then, under the pressure of the administrators hand, bowed forward, aided by that genuflection, which instinctively comes to one’s aid, when attempting to bow in that position, until his head was submerged, and then rose by his own effort. This appears from the figures sculptured in bronze and mosaic work, on the walls of the ancient baptisteries of Italy and Constantinople. Those figures represent John the Baptist leaning towards the river; his right hand on the head of the Savior, as if pressing him down into the water ; while the Savior is about to bow down under the pressure of the hand of John.

In other Celtic lands, destruction of the ancient bardic orders meant the loss of history and myth as well as of poetry. But not in Ireland -- at least, not entirely. There, the melding of the Christian and the pagan began early, during the great period of Celtic monasticism. Irish monks of that period provided most of our written records of Celtic mythology. In continental Europe, evidence of Celtic beliefs is found only in sculpture; in Britain, it is found only in a few verbal shards and the occasional inscribed statue; but in Ireland we find entire epics, whole chants and songs, lengthy narratives. In the curvilinear script for which they are justly famous, Irish monks wrote down the stories, poems, place-names, and other lore of their pagan ancestors before it disappeared in the mists of history.

It is no wonder that historians trace the birth of Western civilization to these jewels of the Aegean, Ionian, and Mediterranean seas. The Greek Isles are home to wide-ranging and far-reaching cultural traditions and mythic tales, not to mention the colorful history and unforgettable vistas that still draw thousands of tourists to the region every year. Minoan ruins stand alongside Byzantine churches and Crusader fortresses. Terra-cotta pots spilling over with hibiscus flowers adorn blinding-white stucco houses that reflect the sun’s dazzling light. Fishing villages perched upon craggy cliffs overlook clusters of colorful boats in island harbors. Centuries-old citrus and olive groves dot the hillsides. Lush vegetation and rocky shores meet isolated stretches of sand and an azure sea. Masts bob left and right on sailboats moored in secluded inlets. Each island is a world unto itself. Although outsiders and neighbors have inhabited, visited, and invaded these islands throughout the centuries, the islands’ rugged geography and small size have also ensured a certain isolation. In this environment, traditional ways of life thrive. The arts--pottery, glass blowing, gem carving, sculpture, and painting, among others--flourish here today, as contemporary craft artists keep alive techniques begun in antiquity. In the remote hilltop villages of Kárpathos, for example, artisans practice crafts that date back eons, and inhabitants speak a dialect close to ancient Greek. Today, to walk along the pebbled pathways of a traditional Greek mountain village or the marbled streets of an ancient acropolis is to step back in time. To meander at a leisurely pace through these island chains by boat is to be captivated by the same dramatic landscapes and enchanted islets that make the myths of ancient Greece so compelling. To witness the Mediterranean sun setting on the turquoise sea is to receive one of life’s greatest blessings.

The table before the emperor was spread with an entire city of sugar, a city so resplendent it was as though a door had opened into heaven itself. Groves of trees dotted the the table's landscape with beautiful painted castles nestled among hills of pale green. Stars hung from the trees and graced the castle flags. From the ceiling, many dozens of gold and silver stars hung by ribbons over the table, creating a fantastical sky. Amid this wondrous landscape there were sculptures of ancient Roman gods in various scenes: Jupiter on a mountain, lightning bolt in hand; Venus born from a sea of blue; Bacchus in drunken debauchery in a grove of delicate green vines. Ever one to be in control, Michelangelo had insisted he not only develop the many dozen molds but that he also be the one to pour the sugar and finalize the details with sugar paste.

The sheer volume of granite, diorite, and alabaster that was cut precisely into statues around Luxor attests to the ancient Egyptians' mastery of their craft. The Greeks and Romans did not sculpt statues in igneous rock. Granite was not fashioned into statues until the development of more modern power tools with steel bits. In "The Materials of Sculpture", Nicholas Penny writes: "Granite had occasionally been worked in shallow relief, for architectural ornament where it was the local building stone, and for the stiff figures of sixteenth-century cavalries in Brittany, but, before the advent of improved metals and power-driven tools in the nineteenth century, the idea of making statues out of it was seldom seriously entertained by sophisticated sculptors.

because of this extreme preservation measure, the sculpture is said to have maintained its original state.

I noticed many of the familiar red stamps. Some were, of course, the stamps of the artists—but there were others. One piece of calligraphy was covered in them. Lucie and Sherry explained: Ancient Chinese scholars and nobility, if they liked a work of art, would sometimes stamp it with their stamp too. One emperor in particular loved to do this, and would take beautiful sculptures or pieces of jade—centuries old—and have his stamp and perhaps some lines of his poetry carved into them. What a fascinating mind-set. Imagine being a king, deciding that you particularly liked Michelangelo’s David, and so having your signature carved across the chest. That’s essentially what this was. The concept was so striking, I began playing with a stamp magic in my head. Soulstamps, capable of rewriting the nature of an object’s existence. I didn’t want to stray too close to Soulcasting from the Stormlight world, and so instead I used the inspiration of the museum—of history—to devise a magic that allowed rewriting an object’s past.

These extraordinary sculptures were, it turned out, an important part of the process of conversion of Cambodia from a variety of animist cults to Puranic Hinduism, a process which had been evolving since the third century ce, but which suddenly accelerated alongside the conquests of Jayavarman II.8

the temple ruins were phosphorus-bombed by American jets during the 1960s Vietnam War and many other fine sculptures were destroyed).33

The ancient Africans seem to have been at least as early as the Asiatics in the art of taming elephants. The Egyptian monuments show them bringing tame elephants and lions into Egypt; and very ancient sculptures show the real African species, which the artist must have seen. They refused to sell elephants, which cost them months of hard labour to catch and tame, to a Greek commander of Egyptian troops for a few brass pots: they were quite right. Two or three tons of fine fat butcher-meat were far better than the price, seeing their wives could make any number of cooking pots for nothing.

How can I be certain I’m not manufacturing a memory to match the evidence? You can’t rely on memory. You can’t rely on ancient artifacts, either, to tell you a story you can live with. You can rely only on the sculpture of your life you carve out of the available material, the one that stands by while you muddle your way into your future. Patrick

Ah, the clues. There’s only one clue. Only one,” said Hortensia. Prudencia gathered her hair at the nape of her neck and drew her chair closer. “And that is . . . ?” she asked. “Harmony, of course. The Ancient Greeks’ άρμουια, the Romans’ harmonia. Herminia would explain it better, she knows so much about this sort of thing . . . Well, how to express it? I think the classical definition refers to balance in the proportions of parts of a whole. As in the sculpture of a beautiful face or body, in the manner in which you arrange flowers in a vase, combining them in ten different ways until you achieve something that satisfies your soul. As a highly qualified woman, you no doubt know that harmony comes from the Greek άρμόζω, which means ‘to fit together,’ ‘to connect.’ That’s the definitive clue, dear, the one that’ll help you solve your detective story.” Miss Prim considered this as she took a bite of apple tart.

It’s empathy—the same quality in the sculptures that surround them. The ancient artists were devotees above all else. Without love of their subject, they’d just be cutting stone; their adoration is what brings it to life.

There have been three major slave revolts in human history. The first, led by the Thracian gladiator Spartacus against the Romans, occurred in 73 BC. The third was in the 1790s when the great black revolutionary Touissant L'Ouverture and his slave army wrested control of Santo Domingo from the French, only to be defeated by Napoleon in 1802. But the second fell halfway between these two, in the middle of the 9th century AD, and is less documented than either. We do know that the insurgents were black; that the Muslim 'Abbasid caliphs of Iraq had brought them from East Africa to work, in the thousands, in the salt marshes of the delta of the Tigris. These black rebels beat back the Arabs for nearly ten years. Like the escaped maroons in Brazil centuries later, they set up their own strongholds in the marshland. They seemed unconquerable and they were not, in fact, crushed by the Muslims until 883. They were known as the Zanj, and they bequeathed their name to the island of Zanzibar in the East Africa - which, by no coincidence, would become and remain the market center for slaves in the Arab world until the last quarter of the 19th century. The revolt of the Zanj eleven hundred years ago should remind us of the utter falsity of the now fashionable line of argument which tries to suggest that the enslavement of African blacks was the invention of European whites. It is true that slavery had been written into the basis of the classical world; Periclean Athens was a slave state, and so was Augustan Rome. Most of their slaves were Caucasian whites, and "In antiquity, bondage had nothing to do with physiognomy or skin color". The word "slave" meant a person of Slavic origin. By the 13th century it spread to other Caucasian peoples subjugated by armies from central Asia: Russians, Georgians, Circassians, Albanians, Armenians, all of whom found ready buyers from Venice to Sicily to Barcelona, and throughout the Muslim world. But the African slave trade as such, the black traffic, was a Muslim invention, developed by Arab traders with the enthusiastic collaboration of black African ones, institutionalized with the most unrelenting brutality centuries before the white man appeared on the African continent, and continuing long after the slave market in North America was finally crushed. Historically, this traffic between the Mediterranean and sub-Saharan Africa begins with the very civilization that Afrocentrists are so anxious to claim as black - ancient Egypt. African slavery was well in force long before that: but by the first millennium BC Pharaoh Rameses II boasts of providing the temples with more than 100,000 slaves, and indeed it is inconceivable that the monumental culture of Egypt could have been raised outside a slave economy. For the next two thousand years the basic economies of sub-Saharan Africa would be tied into the catching, use and sale of slaves. The sculptures of medieval life show slaves bound and gagged for sacrifice, and the first Portuguese explorers of Africa around 1480 found a large slave trade set up from the Congo to Benin. There were large slave plantations in the Mali empire in the 13th-14th centuries and every abuse and cruelty visited on slaves in the antebellum South, including the practice of breeding children for sale like cattle, was practised by the black rulers of those towns which the Afrocentrists now hold up as sanitized examples of high civilization, such as Timbuktu and Songhay.

You can’t rely on memory. You can’t rely on ancient artifacts, either, to tell you a story you can live with. You can rely only on the sculpture of your life you carve out of the available material, the one that stands by while you muddle your way into your future.

I want to take our museum bodies and turn them into art galleries to show us how lovely we are. I want to dust off the fingerprints of old lovers, take down the signs that name our bodies ancient history, turn every wounded object inside us into something that can still be looked at and seen as beautiful, not an object from an era we are glad we are not living through any more. I want us to love ourselves like we love art. I want whole gallery walls dedicated to our soft hearts, vermilion and crimson and indigo across canvas after canvas framed in gold. I want sculptures made from the tears we cried over losing everything. I want our skins to be a celebration: The texture is what makes this art, all these lines and blemishes and spots that show the artist's love. I don't want us to look at ourselves as forgotten things we hate any more. I want us to look at ourselves and see art.

That night when Heyerdahl went to bed, the stories of Tiki and his ancient homeland swirled in his mind, “accompanied by the muffled roar of the surf in the distance,” sounding, he thought, “like a voice from far-off times which . . . had something it wanted to tell.” Suddenly it struck him that the sculptures he had seen up in the forest, “the huge stone figures of Tiki,” as he called them, were “remarkably like the gigantic monoliths which are relics of extinct civilizations in South America.” And so, he wrote, “the whole thing began.

Medieval Romans colonized the vestiges of the ancient city as sea creatures might a sunken ship. Amphitheatres and temples were turned into fortified strongholds; the monuments of the imperial capital were used as quarries for building materials. An entire neighbourhood was devoted to burning classical marbles, sculptures included, to turn them into lime: steadily reducing the glories of antiquity to powder.

Earth, air, fire, and water," he began. "The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles says that these four elements are the roots of everything." Here was the garden he inherited from Leah. Celia, who mostly tended it, called it her sculpture in four dimensions, the fourth being time. Perhaps all sculpture changed over time, with decay and dissolution setting in, rust and chipping and breakage. But marble or bronze evolved so slowly, and their changes were unintended, while the garden was always in visible flux, each morning a new unfolding. Celia always said that the flower beds were a progression of looping actions: each plant opening, blooming, fading, setting seed, drooping, falling; and each seed rooting, sprouting, budding, blooming. And the seasons, the moons and days, the pendulum of darkness and light, the beat of the cardinal's song. Was the earth, then, our real timepiece? Stop, Pindar. Pay attention. "But Empedocles also said that our spirits have successive lives, born sometimes as the fair-tressed laurel trees, sometimes as lions who live in the golden grass...." A shifting of the light through the trees made Pindar notice the Queen Anne's lace in its brass vase. Constellations of tiny white stars swirled in a galactic umbrella the size of his hand- who was above? Who below? Beside their lacy flaring explosives symmetry, the black-eyed Susans gazed at him with their fierce yellow. Wide-open, with none of the hidden turns and caverns of the lilies whose trumpets would be deep enough to incubate in, or at least hide one's thoughts in, though their scent would be too strong for the dinner table.

At all events, the traditional assumption that the pharaohs had ruled like European kings and kept closed harems is based on those traditional translations, on nineteenth-century courtly manners and, ultimately, Champollion’s secular vision. Better to drop such Eurocentric notions along with the quaint assumption that the ‘family’ of the king held genius in its generations and was stuffed with princely craftsmen, architects and engineers endowed with the abilities to raise vast pyramids and make some of the world’s great sculptures. Better to conceive the Old Kingdom court as an environment where such talents had been cultivated within a series of courtly households grouped around that of the ruling house. And the single central office in that rare society was that of pharaoh. It sustained the living and the dead. It alone bestrode the households of the gods and those of humankind. No wonder, then, that unlike the households of the courtiers there is no evidence of an established order of direct familial succession for the throne.

A plentiful supply of paper – just as much as the study of ancient sculpture or single-point perspective – was among the factors that led to what we call the Renaissance. It allowed artists to think and work in different ways, a transformation as significant as the Internet and computer technology have been in the early twenty-first century.

In those days, the ancient rainforests spread from Northern California to southeastern Alaska in a band between the mountains and the sea. Here is where the fog drips. Here is where the moisture-laden air from the pacific rises against the mountains to produce upward of one hundred inches of rain a year, watering an ecosystem rivaled nowhere else on earth. The biggest trees in the world. Trees that were born before Columbus sailed. And trees are just the beginning. The numbers of species of mammals, birds, amphibians, wildflowers, ferns, mosses, lichens, fungi, and insects are staggering. It's hard to write without running out of superlatives, for these were among the greatest forests on earth, forests peopled with centuries of past lives, enormous logs and snags that foster more life after their death than before. The canopy is a multi-layered sculpture of vertical complexity from the lowest moss on the forest floor to the wisps of lichen hanging high in the treetops, raggedy and uneven from the gaps produced by centuries of windthrow, disease, and storms. This seeming chaos belies the tight web of inter-connections between them all, stitched with filaments of fungi, silk of spiders, and silver threads of water. Alone is a word without meaning in this forest.

But the principal cause of the difference lies in the plastic spirit of the antique, and the picturesque spirit of the romantic poetry. Sculpture directs our attention exclusively to the group which it sets before us, it divests it as far as possible from all external accompaniments, and where they cannot be dispensed with, it indicates them as slightly as possible. Painting, on the other hand, delights in exhibiting, along with the principal figures, all the details of the surrounding locality and all secondary circumstances, and to open a prospect into a boundless distance in the background; and light and shade with perspective are its peculiar charms. Hence the Dramatic, and especially the Tragic Art, of the ancients, annihilates in some measure the external circumstances of space and time; while, by their changes, the romantic drama adorns its more varied pictures. Or, to express myself in other terms, the principle of the antique poetry is ideal; that of the romantic is mystical: the former subjects space and time to the internal free-agency of the mind; the latter honours these incomprehensible essences as supernatural powers, in which there is somewhat of indwelling divinity.

What exactly does he look like?" "Like no other." "There must be some way to describe him." "He looks... to be honest..." It was rare to find Davenport lost for words and he seemed annoyed by the fact. "I have it, Fergins. He looks like one of those ancient Greek sculptures of a god, just before the Romans knocked off its arms and nose." There you have Davenport truly believing he was answering a question.

In Latin the word ‘museum’ once indicated ‘a temple of the Muses’; in what respects is the modern museum the right place to preserve treasures from a classical temple? Does it only look the part? The issues raised by Bassae provide a model for understanding Classics in its widest sense. Of course, Classics is about more than the physical remains, the architecture, sculpture, pottery, and painting, of ancient Greece and Rome. It is also (to select just a few things) about the poetry, drama, philosophy, science, and history written in the ancient world, and still read and debated as part of our culture. But here too, essentially similar issues are at stake, questions about how we are to read literature which has a history of more than 2,000 years, written in a society very distant and different from our own.

Several of the early Turkic sultans were energetic iconoclasts and made a point of building their mosques from the rubble of destroyed temples, in some of which can still be seen the defaced sculptures of their Hindu and Jain predecessors.