The
beautifully carved ox was short-legged and stout, with stubby horns,
the whole artistic style being deliberately simplistic, having a
tendency to look like a series of arcs fitly joined together; the horns
and front legs both being arcs that went from side to side, the arcs of
the hind legs, belly, backbone, tail, and head being arcs from front to
back. All arcs.
She looked around, her eyes roaming the room, and admired a decorative,
single-handled water vase that was flat, wide, and round at the base
and gracefully slender for the upper two-thirds. Propped on a small
round table, the tall vase was artfully and tastefully colored in
earthtone shadings of tans and browns. Beside it was a fired clay wash
basin. On the basin were to be seen engraved pictographs of the sowers,
reapers and gatherers of grains. It wasn't so much a collection of
idols, as a picture-script, a visual record of the entire harvesting
process, above which was depicted a simple circle with lines pointing
from it, indicating the rays of the sun as a source of light, and not
as a false idol god.
There was, she perceived, a deep, real difference between the symbolic
meaning and morally acceptable symbolism presented in such hieroglyphs,
or picture-carvings, as opposed to the rank evil of outright, false
idolatry.
Pages:
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261