DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61301#0052
28
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
be another aspect of the principle of life, more material
than Amun, but still an advance from some early grosser
nature-worship. Probably in early days he had the
body as well as the head of a ram, was in fact a ram.
The beast was at first the god himself, afterwards as it
were his “ double.” But by the Theban time he is a
man with a ram’s head sometimes painted green, the
colour of fertility. He sits sometimes in a curious boat
with a ram’s head on the prow, and so moves as a
creative spirit upon the waters ; he is called in inscrip-
tions the lord of “ inundations,” and of the “outpourings
of the waters ” he seems in every aspect to be a special
form of the life-giving spirit. For this sort of abstract,
all embracing, far-away thought, it would have been
indeed difficult for the artist to find embodiment that
should be at once adequate in form and clear in intent.
He cut the knot by the simple process of symbolism.
The god had the honourable body of a man, but, that
his special creative aspect might never be obscured, he
retains the head of a ram. Now Amun and Knum are
in a way interchangeable; Amun takes the attributes of
Knum, his horns and even his head. The Greeks seem
to have been greatly puzzled by this god Amun, who
was the concealed or veiled one, and this ram-headed
Knum with whom he was apt to be associated, and so
Herodotus tells a charming story after his usual manner
to account for the connection. Gom, the inquisitive
STUDIES IN GREEK ART.
be another aspect of the principle of life, more material
than Amun, but still an advance from some early grosser
nature-worship. Probably in early days he had the
body as well as the head of a ram, was in fact a ram.
The beast was at first the god himself, afterwards as it
were his “ double.” But by the Theban time he is a
man with a ram’s head sometimes painted green, the
colour of fertility. He sits sometimes in a curious boat
with a ram’s head on the prow, and so moves as a
creative spirit upon the waters ; he is called in inscrip-
tions the lord of “ inundations,” and of the “outpourings
of the waters ” he seems in every aspect to be a special
form of the life-giving spirit. For this sort of abstract,
all embracing, far-away thought, it would have been
indeed difficult for the artist to find embodiment that
should be at once adequate in form and clear in intent.
He cut the knot by the simple process of symbolism.
The god had the honourable body of a man, but, that
his special creative aspect might never be obscured, he
retains the head of a ram. Now Amun and Knum are
in a way interchangeable; Amun takes the attributes of
Knum, his horns and even his head. The Greeks seem
to have been greatly puzzled by this god Amun, who
was the concealed or veiled one, and this ram-headed
Knum with whom he was apt to be associated, and so
Herodotus tells a charming story after his usual manner
to account for the connection. Gom, the inquisitive