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A bird's head, formed from a streaming mosaic of scales
Everybody remembers Tanith Lee's The Book of the Beast (1988)? The second of the Secret Books of Paradys, with the rapacious scaled bird-headed demon carried from the Near East to the fort of Par Dis in Roman days? It possessed a centurion, then his son, devouring him into its deadly avatar; then their line was extinguished, except it wasn't? Out of Assyria, an utuk, having as its own form the body of a man, the head of a bird, but a bird of the beginnings, scaled not feathered, from the fifth day of the earth . . .
Okay, technically that is a Romanized image of Horus from the first or second century CE, currently on display at the British Museum as part of a really interesting-sounding exhibit. In keeping with the traditions of Roman portraiture, it's an impressively realistic attempt to represent a man with a falcon's head, with partial results of modern-day nightmare fuel; the inclusion of human hair and ears is striking, as is the way the feathers of the throat transition into the scale-mail of the imperial lorica plumata. The head looks flattened because it is missing the crown it should have supported. It was acquired by the museum in 1912 and I would love to know if Lee ever saw it. The answer may well be nope. Writers have imaginations, after all. But I know what it looked like accidental fan art for when I saw it.
(Given the Assyrian origins, I always figured Lee's utuk looked like a bird-headed apkallu, which if so is unfair to some benevolent guardian spirits. The combination of feathers, scales, and bird-headed human figure just really got my attention here. I am now trying to avoid spinning off into actual fan art, because the last time it took forever.)
Okay, technically that is a Romanized image of Horus from the first or second century CE, currently on display at the British Museum as part of a really interesting-sounding exhibit. In keeping with the traditions of Roman portraiture, it's an impressively realistic attempt to represent a man with a falcon's head, with partial results of modern-day nightmare fuel; the inclusion of human hair and ears is striking, as is the way the feathers of the throat transition into the scale-mail of the imperial lorica plumata. The head looks flattened because it is missing the crown it should have supported. It was acquired by the museum in 1912 and I would love to know if Lee ever saw it. The answer may well be nope. Writers have imaginations, after all. But I know what it looked like accidental fan art for when I saw it.
(Given the Assyrian origins, I always figured Lee's utuk looked like a bird-headed apkallu, which if so is unfair to some benevolent guardian spirits. The combination of feathers, scales, and bird-headed human figure just really got my attention here. I am now trying to avoid spinning off into actual fan art, because the last time it took forever.)
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Nine
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I was reading the British Museum's Tumblr and there it was. (The British Museum's Tumblr is a neverending time sink. Look at these educational cuneiform tablets! There's a first-century Greek lesson in Sumerian and Babylonian! It doesn't have a link of its own and I'm so curious!) I'd seen Roman-era Egyptian statues, but nothing like this. It makes me really happy. I am reminding myself that it is almost certainly not possible to make fan art for The Book of the Beast without it turning out Orientalist as hell.