#TwoForTuesday #hippos:
Fritz Rudolf Hug (Swiss, 1921-1989)
1. Maternité, 1970 oil on canvas, 80 x 120 cm
2. Hippo, n.d. oil on canvas, 46 × 46 cm
#WorldHippoDay 🦛
Wood hippopotamus mask (Utobo), 1930s Central Ijo. Nembe, Niger Delta, Nigeria
Cambridge Museum of archeology and Anthropology 2014.290 “This mask represents a hippo, utobo, submerged below the waterline. It would’ve been worn in the Owu masquerade. The powerful water spirits or Owu control animals and nature. It was worn by a male dancer on the top of his head, facing upwards, and was associated with the masquerade character called Nwere Utobo (Hippo's Wife), in the Rumuji Owu play.”
#FrogFriday: a collection of tiny temple frogs from #AncientEgypt, “Early Dynastic Period, Dynasty 1-2(?), c. 3100-2675 BCE, reportedly from Abydos” - bonus tiny faience hippo and pig in the back. Brooklyn Museum case.
Ancient Egyptian hippo & hedgehog squad at the Brooklyn Museum!
Standing Hippo
Middle Kingdom 2nd Int. Per. Dyn.12-17 c1938-1539BCE
Faience
“Egyptian artists decorated statuettes of hippos with images of Nile flora & fauna. Common motifs included lotus buds, flowers, marsh grass, lily pads, frogs, waterfowl, & insects. The legs of most statuettes were broken just before burial to ensure that they posed no threat to the tomb owner. Museum conservators restored the legs of many examples, including this one, to show how the statuettes looked when they were made.”
L: Votive(?) Hippos
Middle Kingdom Dyn.11-13 c2008-1630BCE
Painted pottery
“These coarse figures stand on low bases representing sleds or sledges, possibly alluding to a ritual called The Feast of the White Hippo in which a hippo was dragged on a sledge before the king. Worshippers at the festival probably either left these objects as votive offerings or acquired them as keepsakes.”
R: Two Hippos
Middle Kingdom Dyn.12-17 c1938-1539BCE
“The ancient Egyptians often snapped off the legs of hippopotamus statuettes before placing them in tombs, as these two examples show. The broken stumps of the smaller statuette's legs demonstrate how bright-blue glaze adhered to the white faience. The larger figure's snout, perhaps also broken in antiquity, has been restored.”
L. Hedgehog Rattle
Middle Kingdom Dyn. 12-13 c1938-1630BCE
Faience, 7.6 x 4.4 x 3.5 cm
“The hollow body of this hedgehog figure contains tiny pellets that rattled when it was shaken. The rattles were used to ward off harmful forces such as snakes, scorpions, or malevolent spirits. When attacked, a hedgehog rolls into a ball, presenting a mass of pointed spines to the predator. To the Egyptians, this behavior-_imitated in this figure-made the hedgehog an ideal protective symbol.”
R. Hedgehog Figurine
Middle Kingdom Dyn. 12-13 c1938-1630BCE
Faience, 4.2 x 4.1 x 7.1 cm
“When food is scarce, hedgehogs retreat into underground dens for long periods, to re-emerge only in times of abundance.
The Egyptians associated this behavior with rebirth and thus wore amulets in the form of hedgehogs or left figures such as this one in tombs. Also, according to the Ebers Medical Papyrus of the early Eighteenth Dynasty, hedgehog spines, when ground up and mixed with fat or oil, cured baldness.”
(note: labels are reversed - rattle is on L & figurine on R)
For #InternationalBeaverDay, here is a beaver illustration clearly copied from the one in Gessner's Historia animalium...but mislabeled as a Hippopotamus. 🤷🏻♀️
Antonio Tempesta (Italian, 1565-1630), undated etching print from Nova raccolta de li animali piu curiosi del mondo [New collection of the most curious animals in the world], published by the Vatican in Rome, h 95mm × w 137mm. Rijksmuseum.
#beaver#rodents#hippopotamus#hippo#animal holiday#International Beaver Day#Antonio Tempesta#European art#Italian art#Renaissance art#16th century art#17th century art#natural history art#zoological illustration#scientific illustration#sciart#Rijksmuseum#print#etching#works on paper#Conrad Gessner#Historia animalium#animals in art
One more for #WorldHippoDay: a hematite hippo head!
Weight in the Form of a Hippopotamus Head, c. 1540–1296 BCE, Egypt, New Kingdom, Dynasty 18. Carved & polished hematite, 2.2 x 3 x 4.2 cm (7/8 x 1 3/16 x 1 5/8 in.), 62.1 g (2.19 oz.). The Cleveland Museum of Art
"Sensuously carved and polished to a silky luster, this weight takes the form of a hippopotamus head. Eyes, ears, and nostrils ae modeled in relief; the mouth is closed. The flat underside provides a surface on which to rest the object. This hippo head weighs 62.1 grams, roughly three-quarters of a deben, a unit of weight in ancient Egypt. As such it does not correspond to any of the more usual subdivisions of the deben, although similar examples are known. In fact it is an inter-standard weight, representing eight seniu or two-thirds of a deben, and is equivalent of an Aegean unit of 62.1 grams."
Another goofy hippo face for #WorldHippoDay:
#WorldHippoDay weirdness: This goofy hippo picture is from a rare hand-colored copy of Michał Piotr Boym's Flora Sinensis (1656), one of the earliest European works on Chinese natural history. So why is there an African hippo in it? 🤔
Well, Boym's voyage from Lisbon to Macao included a stop in Mozambique, and in the accompanying text he confirms he observed these "sea horses" while there. Guess he just felt like including them! (He later also wrote an account of Mozambique's natural history.)
Happy #WorldHippoDay!
#DYK a group of hippos is called a bloat? Here are two cool contemporary TingaTinga artworks from Tanzania featuring hippo bloats!
The Hot Summer by S. Mgude c. 2018 oil, acrylic, ink on canvas
The Hippos in the Nyasa by Slyd c. 2018 oil, acrylic, ink on canvas
happy happy hippos🦛🦛🦛
Detail from a woodcut illustration in Men and Creatures in Uganda by Sir John Bland-Sutton (British, 1855-1936), 1933, p. 46.