Qasr mosaic leopard and VMS Leo/August image

[Diane]

I've seen this comparison before I think.

Really, where?

What would that mean though, if indeed this is supposed to represent the Qsar mosaic leopard? Other animals in the Qsar mosaic have greenery behind them too.

Right... and depictions of Leo generally do not.

One of them is an actual lion.

...and the VMS illustration does not look like a lion.

I don't really see any other connections, do you?

You mean beyond being a blue leopard with a very similar looking tree in the background?

One more problem I see, is how would the mosaic be known to someone to reference it, if it was dug up in 1957 as a mysterious find? It seemed they were surprised by some of the imagery so it seems too obscure a reference, even if somehow someone had knowledge of it during the time of the creation of the MS.

Well I'm not saying someone saw this exact same image of course, but something similar that stemmed from the same tradition.

Linda is probably thinking of the various mosaics which I've shown from Tunis, though I didn't refer to this one.  Since I know of no-one else save you, Sam, who has focused more on the manuscript than on theories about it, I don't think it is likely that anyone except you would have hunted similarities for the imagery on its own terms, rather than limiting the search to whatever theory they adhere to.

I've never seen anyone else refer to mosaic imagery except me in this context.  Carry on as you are!

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I also found this goat, from El Djem in Tunisia (2nd century AD):



Coincidental similarity?

Also, Diane, I think you've mentioned before that you think one of the VMS goats is wild and the other domestic, and the stock imagery site with this mosaic image specifies that it is a wild goat:

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Hi Sam - I don't come by so often these days, so forgive the delay.

Interesting that you should ask about the 'wild' and the 'tame'.

I tried to talk about the following some time ago.. like when I first began analysing this section 2009-2010.. but met such resounding silence that I didn't try to show further how important I think it.

Within the manuscript, there is a whole pattern of allusion that isn't the usual Latin idea of "good vs bad".  It's far more interesting, and works like ..  as if the people who made the images felt that everything *should* have its natural complementary-opposite.  As if an open door couldn't exist in the world without the closed door, or the tame without the wild, or the benevolent without the ill-intentioned. (I'm trying to avoid theological terms, here.. ).

It isn't in the least a Latin European mind-set and it extends to the botanical section too - the wild/tamed plant is a crucial distinction for the makers.

But it even extends to the disposition of the animals around the notional circle: the 'wild' tend to be creatures from the south, and those 'tame' from the north.  Sorry, that's a bit too technical.

If you take a really, really close look at the month-names, you'll probably be able to see the same thing there too - a pattern of the open and the closed. 

I keep thinking of Newbold who translated the marginalia on f.116v as reading "to me you have given many gates".  He was a classical scholar and a professor in his field.  I do not think it entirely right that we never hear much of his reading, these days.