The Pazyryk Carpet is the oldest known carpet on earth woven 2500 years ago (5th Century B.C.). It was discovered in the tomb of a Scythian prince in the Pazyryk Valley of Siberia by Ukrainian archaeologist Sergei Rudenko in the late 1940s.
Yesterday, I read a chapter about the Parisian saint Marcellus from the book “Time, Work & Culture in the Middle Ages” by French historian Jacques Le Goff. In it, he alludes to the hypothesis, that dragon depictions from the Merovingian era have been influenced by Chinese motives that have come to Europe through cultures from the Central Asian steppe.
That certainly makes sense to me, since the Huns have had a presence in Europe up until the 5th century, but I’ve never heard of this hypothesis before. Le Goffs sources are all in French (for example “La Civilisation mérovingienne d'aprés les sépultures, les textes et le laboratoire” by Edmond Salin), which I can’t read, and a quick search in Google Scholar didn’t bring up anything interesting.
Does anybody know if this hypothesis is still considered? The book is from the late seventies, so maybe it’s something that never caught on or has been discredited since then, but I haven’t found anything on that, either.
Huh, you might be on to something interesting there. What are the sources?
You can find a digitalized version of Le Goffs book here: https://monoskop.org/images/a/ab/Le_Goff_Jacques_Time_work_and_culture_in_the_middle_ages_1980.pdf
He alludes to the theory on page 170-171, and mentions a source on page 333, the above mentioned “La Civilisation mérovingienne d'aprés les sépultures, les textes et le laboratoire” by Edmond Salin, which is available online here: https://www.persee.fr/doc/crai_0065-0536_1959_num_103_2_11068
But I can’t read French and I don’t trust google translate on such complex texts.
I’ll reblog this too. Anyone know French who could help?
Speaking. The Salin paper linked above is not, in fact, the source cited, but rather a summary of findings in that book. So no emphasis on dragons, apart from (translated for your reading pleasure):
In the VIth Century, a wave of animal art came in from the Pontic regions (the fish, the hydra, the cicada, the eagle from High Asia). Then, with the Lombard invasion, a very important wave of animal art of Scytho-Sarmatian origin (griffons, various dragons, rolled up monsters, etc.) reached the West.
Not much on dragons here.
Fortunately, the entire four-volume set of La Civilisation Mérovingienne is available to borrow on Archive! I’ll see what I can find in it.
(Have I mentioned how important Archive is today? I’ll mention it)
Can’t be mentioned too often…
To be fair, Le Goff doesn’t seem to think much of Salin.
… the author, following J. Grimm, gives the rather improbable and in any case derivative interpretation of the dragon as guardian of a treasure.
Alright this was a ride. There’s a lot there about dragons and griffons in Merovingian art, the two-headed monster, the decorative dragon. I’m going to focus on the one you were specifically looking for though, the monstre enroulé (the curled-up or rolled-up monster).
Anyway! Translation my own, any errors are entirely my responsibility:
First of all, in Gaul and in the times of the Tène, the curled-up monster appears on a Boii stater (plate K, 4); a ball is found in the center of the circle drawn by its body. A similar depiction also evokes the monster Tiamat and with it the oldest myths of the Middle East. Oddly, the monster that adorns a jade Chinese ring from the Han period (plate K, 3) is so close to the Boii depiction, with its dorsal crest and its tail curled at the extremity, that a convergent phenomenon seems excluded: the two images must be issued from a common source.
We can distinguish similarly on the foot of a Chinese Zhou vase a curled-up monster (plate K, 2) singularly close to the monster which decorates the damasked Merovingian plaque without known provenance (plate K, 5b).
It is, as has happened before, the World of the Steppes which must have served in this case as a liaison between the East and the West. The Scythians had known in fact, the curled-up animal, as witnesses this median medallion from a bronze belt buckle, belonging to Scythian art from the VIth Century BC, found in the necropolis of Olbia (mouth of the Dniepr) (plate K, 1). More ancient than the preceding, this depiction here, does not seem monstrous yet; one would say it was a rabbit or a squirrel, but its tail already shows the curling that we found on the Han jade ring or the Boii stater.
Going back to the time period that concerns us, it is possible that the Merovingian curled monster is the Midgardsorm, distant descendant of Tiamat. But the sense attributed to the depictions has, as we know, evolved often, and we should retain another aspect of Germanic legend: the curled serpent holding its tail in its mouth is, effectively, the guardian of a treasure which it surrounds with its body; as it grows, the treasure increases as well; when the coils of the serpent loosen and a space exists between the mouth and the tail, then it is possible to slip through and steal the prey over which it watches. [footnote: cf. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie] We find here the legend of the treasure-guarding dragons and this is the one that in this case seems to apply the most often to depictions of the Merovingian curled monster whose tail touches its mouth or even enters it. [italics in original]
The plate in question:
And that’s! @drachenwiki @theload anything else I can get you?
Awesome. Thank you very much for the translation. The similarities are indeed fascinating, but I’m not sure if they couldn’t habe appeared independently. I wonder why this hypothesis doesn’t appear in newer texts.
I’m going to guess lack of support and/or interest. Seems to have been a stretch.
However, history/folklore/ethnozoology grad students, if you’re looking for a paper to work on…
Interesting insights by@zenosanalytic
@zenosanalytic looks like the idea that the Chinese got their dragon designs from steppe peoples has already been around in the 1930s: George Davis Hornblower (1933), Early Dragon-Forms, Man, Vol. 33, pp. 79-87, https://doi.org/10.2307/2790162, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2790162
Hornblower speculates that the Scythian designs have their origins in Mesopotamia and have been adapted by the Qin- and Han-Dynasty Chinese.
But take this with a grain of salt, this paper is from 1933, it might be horribly outdated and I just haven’t found any later papers on the matter yet.
@a-book-of-creatures and @theload: Pretty sure this is of interest to both of you, too.
Yesterday, I read a chapter about the Parisian saint Marcellus from the book “Time, Work & Culture in the Middle Ages” by French historian Jacques Le Goff. In it, he alludes to the hypothesis, that dragon depictions from the Merovingian era have been influenced by Chinese motives that have come to Europe through cultures from the Central Asian steppe.
That certainly makes sense to me, since the Huns have had a presence in Europe up until the 5th century, but I’ve never heard of this hypothesis before. Le Goffs sources are all in French (for example “La Civilisation mérovingienne d'aprés les sépultures, les textes et le laboratoire” by Edmond Salin), which I can’t read, and a quick search in Google Scholar didn’t bring up anything interesting.
Does anybody know if this hypothesis is still considered? The book is from the late seventies, so maybe it’s something that never caught on or has been discredited since then, but I haven’t found anything on that, either.
Huh, you might be on to something interesting there. What are the sources?
You can find a digitalized version of Le Goffs book here: https://monoskop.org/images/a/ab/Le_Goff_Jacques_Time_work_and_culture_in_the_middle_ages_1980.pdf
He alludes to the theory on page 170-171, and mentions a source on page 333, the above mentioned “La Civilisation mérovingienne d'aprés les sépultures, les textes et le laboratoire” by Edmond Salin, which is available online here: https://www.persee.fr/doc/crai_0065-0536_1959_num_103_2_11068
But I can’t read French and I don’t trust google translate on such complex texts.
I’ll reblog this too. Anyone know French who could help?
Speaking. The Salin paper linked above is not, in fact, the source cited, but rather a summary of findings in that book. So no emphasis on dragons, apart from (translated for your reading pleasure):
In the VIth Century, a wave of animal art came in from the Pontic regions (the fish, the hydra, the cicada, the eagle from High Asia). Then, with the Lombard invasion, a very important wave of animal art of Scytho-Sarmatian origin (griffons, various dragons, rolled up monsters, etc.) reached the West.
Not much on dragons here.
Fortunately, the entire four-volume set of La Civilisation Mérovingienne is available to borrow on Archive! I’ll see what I can find in it.
(Have I mentioned how important Archive is today? I’ll mention it)
Can’t be mentioned too often…
To be fair, Le Goff doesn’t seem to think much of Salin.
… the author, following J. Grimm, gives the rather improbable and in any case derivative interpretation of the dragon as guardian of a treasure.
Alright this was a ride. There’s a lot there about dragons and griffons in Merovingian art, the two-headed monster, the decorative dragon. I’m going to focus on the one you were specifically looking for though, the monstre enroulé (the curled-up or rolled-up monster).
Anyway! Translation my own, any errors are entirely my responsibility:
First of all, in Gaul and in the times of the Tène, the curled-up monster appears on a Boii stater (plate K, 4); a ball is found in the center of the circle drawn by its body. A similar depiction also evokes the monster Tiamat and with it the oldest myths of the Middle East. Oddly, the monster that adorns a jade Chinese ring from the Han period (plate K, 3) is so close to the Boii depiction, with its dorsal crest and its tail curled at the extremity, that a convergent phenomenon seems excluded: the two images must be issued from a common source.
We can distinguish similarly on the foot of a Chinese Zhou vase a curled-up monster (plate K, 2) singularly close to the monster which decorates the damasked Merovingian plaque without known provenance (plate K, 5b).
It is, as has happened before, the World of the Steppes which must have served in this case as a liaison between the East and the West. The Scythians had known in fact, the curled-up animal, as witnesses this median medallion from a bronze belt buckle, belonging to Scythian art from the VIth Century BC, found in the necropolis of Olbia (mouth of the Dniepr) (plate K, 1). More ancient than the preceding, this depiction here, does not seem monstrous yet; one would say it was a rabbit or a squirrel, but its tail already shows the curling that we found on the Han jade ring or the Boii stater.
Going back to the time period that concerns us, it is possible that the Merovingian curled monster is the Midgardsorm, distant descendant of Tiamat. But the sense attributed to the depictions has, as we know, evolved often, and we should retain another aspect of Germanic legend: the curled serpent holding its tail in its mouth is, effectively, the guardian of a treasure which it surrounds with its body; as it grows, the treasure increases as well; when the coils of the serpent loosen and a space exists between the mouth and the tail, then it is possible to slip through and steal the prey over which it watches. [footnote: cf. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie] We find here the legend of the treasure-guarding dragons and this is the one that in this case seems to apply the most often to depictions of the Merovingian curled monster whose tail touches its mouth or even enters it. [italics in original]
The plate in question:
And that’s! @drachenwiki @theload anything else I can get you?
Awesome. Thank you very much for the translation. The similarities are indeed fascinating, but I’m not sure if they couldn’t habe appeared independently. I wonder why this hypothesis doesn’t appear in newer texts.
I’m going to guess lack of support and/or interest. Seems to have been a stretch.
However, history/folklore/ethnozoology grad students, if you’re looking for a paper to work on…
