Posted by pseudolus 10/24/2024
I wonder when "showing up with a weird animal" went out, as a form of diplomacy. It definitely seems to have been A Thing for a while.
I mean, I suppose there's pandas.
For those ancient animal gift exchanges I always wonder about the practicality. Travelling overland and over the Himalayas with lions does not seem like the best thing to do.
Also: Back in 801/802 Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne send an emissary - Isaac, the jew - to the Caliph in Baghdad, Harun Al-Rashid. Yes, that one. For the return journey the caliph gave a present, an elephant called Abul Abbas. And according to the historical chronicles Isaac really travelled with Abul Abbas from Badghad to todays Tunesia, crossed the Mediterranean on a ship and travelled to the emperor's court in Aachen, in western Germany. Charlemagne used the elephant in his campaign against the saxons. Abul Abbas seems to have survived until 810, when he died in todays northwestern Germany.
I do love the origin of the term white elephant:
> Because the animals were considered sacred and laws protected them from labor, receiving a gift of a white elephant from a monarch was simultaneously a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because the animal was sacred and a sign of the monarch's favour, and a curse because the recipient now had an animal that was expensive to maintain, could not be given away, and could not be put to much practical use.
Presumably that was part of the point; it's a good gift because it's difficult and expensive.
> Also: Back in 801/802 Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne send an emissary - Isaac, the jew - to the Caliph in Baghdad, Harun Al-Rashid. Yes, that one. For the return journey the caliph gave a present, an elephant called Abul Abbas.
That just seems rude. It's one thing to _bring_ an elephant as a gift; quite another to make the recipient responsible for getting the damn thing home.
From wikipedia:
> It seems that in 831, Harun al-Rashid's son al-Ma'mun also sent an embassy to Louis the Pious.
No word on whether Louis sent some sort of inconvenient animal back, as revenge.
But Lions. Lions are apex predators, and though they hadn't been seen, the trade routes would surely have brought their reputations ahead of them. Lions kill people, they eat camels, they devour. Kill one and you're mighty. Capture one, and you're very powerful, skillful and brave. Double up and you're formidable. Have a breeding pair and you're a warlord with no need for an army.
The Chinese Imperial story has a lot to do with being the presiding authority of knowledge and power. Check out the preoccupation with celestial events. The emperor made sure that he not only knew when and where an eclipse would take place in the realm, but he went there to make sure people knew that the mysteries of the sky were known by the Emperor.
If you want to cozy up to a ruler like that, you show him that you also know similar power, and you have enough to share ~ "tell your people you can make lions now, thanks to your friends in Persia"
Nowadays it just looks more like 5th gen fighter contracts.
Four main direction are dragon, tiger, special bird, Tortoise … wonder if you present a lion to old emperor what does it meant. Giraffe is a good example.
By 413, Demos had inherited his father's peacocks, descendants of an original breeding pair given to Pyrilampes s.v. on one of his embassies to the Persian court. They were such beautiful εὐόφθαλμος and expensive birds—a pair valued at a thousand drachmae (Ael. NA 5.21)--that visitors would arrive from Sparta and Thessaly to see them, and in hopes of obtaining some of their eggs. Apparently Demos continued the tradition his father had begun, more than thirty years previously, of admitting the public on the first day of each month to view the birds.
https://www.guidedtoursinvenice.com/en/blog/a-guided-tour-in...
Exchange is a strange word for mostly looting …
At least we paid for the phone.
By the way, material … some metal may be from say America or Australia …
The Lion sculpture has had a very long and obscure history, probably starting its existence as a funerary statue called zhènmùshòu (镇墓兽 in Simplified Chinese, literally “tomb guardian”) in medieval China, during the reign of the Tang Dynasty.
...The Lion, in its present form, is a composite of different pieces of bronze created at very different times, building upon ancient "core" components. It has undergone extensive restoration and repair work at various times.
...More recent studies, however, suggest that the statue likely comes from the regions near the lower course of the Yangtze River, in eastern China, and was probably cast sometime in the period from the 7th to the early 10th century CE, during the reign of the Tang Dynasty. The original bronze figure, taken as a whole, was likely significantly different from the Lion of today...
Hate to nitpick, but Mumbai didn't exist in those times - it was a group of islands and not a major port.
Major trading ports of India at the time were Muziris, Goa, Surat etc.
(we call them "chop shops" in english because they used to file off the chops and serial #s the eastern chinese oems engraved on their statuary)
What are "chops"?
I always thought chop shops were so called because they chop up stolen cars into small pieces that are hard to trace and sell them individually.
> In the western world, Asian seals were traditionally known by traders as chop marks or simply chops, a term adapted from the Hindi chapa and the Malay cap, meaning stamp or rubber stamps.
These are still _quite a big deal_, eg https://www.ft.com/content/48baeb67-2d3c-41c3-8645-e89ac69a9...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Menzies#1434:_The_Year_a...
> There is no historical record of when or how the lion arrived in Venice, but it was already installed atop the column in St. Mark’s Square by the time Marco Polo returned from China in 1295.
Careful, some of them are the St Mark's Square lion. Which the metal came from China but the origin of the artwork seems unclear.
So we definitely know that the metal came from China. I suppose it's theoretically possible the metal could have been made in China, exported elsewhere to make into the statue, but that seems like a claim that would require a LOT of evidence to make plausible.
Or the metal was made in China, made into a statue and then reworked into a slightly different one. Happens all the time that statues get melted down and the metal is reused.
> that seems like a claim that would require a LOT of evidence to make plausible
That is not the claim. The claim is that we don’t know. Direct quote from comment: “the origin of the artwork seems unclear”.
Saying “we know both the metal and the pattern the metal is in came from China” is what requires evidence. (Not extra ordinary evidence, but some. For example the stylistic analysis mentioned in the article could be that evidence easily.)
And before someone tries to psychoanalyse my opinion about the origins of this statue: i do not have an opinion.
The only thing i have strong opinions about is that the person claiming that we do know something is the one who has to provide evidence, not the person who claims we don’t know something.
Lion is not native in china.
First it's not theoretical where the metal is from, it's just been established. That is all that's been proven.
Second, I'm not aware of much international metals trade across the silk road circa 1290~. If that was the case.. I really would expect some documentation on it. Especially given Venice's historical diligence with recording trade.
Edit : "where the metal is from"
If you were an expert art historian, you might know more about the statue too.
Instead you just dismiss it because you don't know enough.
Are you being flippant about the metal being from China but the creation (artwork) was done in Venice ?
That would be a bit strange, Venice had access to easier sources of metals than the silk road. Also why would it be a point of contention? If it came from China, cool, that's fascinating that items of this size/magnitude was transported for reasons.. Maybe a gift maybe pillaging ? But that's just speculation.
Even wildly famous western artwork often has unknown provenance, or only vaguely-known provenance. Furthermore art historians often see identifying details, stylizations, flaws, etc that laymen (like myself) don't. I'm happy to trust the reporting here as much as I'd trust anything from a field I don't know much about (what alternative is there, really?).
You don't find many of these when looking at the past, and if you do, this should be a giant, glaring red flag. I may not be a trained art historian but I do know my historiography very well.