marginaliant:Elephant Capital from the Great Temple at Petra, 1st Century BCE-1st Century CEDepartme
marginaliant:Elephant Capital from the Great Temple at Petra, 1st Century BCE-1st Century CEDepartment of Antiquities of Jordan, Amman[Pictures via Dr. Sarah Bond on Twitter]This capital can be seen at the current exhibition ‘The World between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The label reads: “Excavations at the building known as the Great Temple at Petra uncovered hundreds of column capitals whose corners terminate in elephant heads. Unique to Nabataean architecture, they derive from Ionic column capitals, which end in volutes (spiral scrolls) at either side. Some adaptations have four volutes, one at each corner, which are transformed in this design into elephant heads whose trunks evoke the spirals of the original form. The elephants may refer to Dionysos and his mythological journey to India.” -- source link
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