I made my way to various museums while in London and on my last day, I checked out the British Museum where they had collected various treasures of the empire, all of which were rather impressive.

I happened across this particular artifact and was moved to take a photo. It was taken from a North African tomb of some sort. There were two of them and they guarded the entrance.

The thing that struck me about it was that the sculptor put two legs on the front and four legs on the side. It's more like two relief carvings than a three dimensional statute. In any event, I concluded that the cubists weren't radicals at all. They were just copying a technique developed over 1000 years earlier.

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©2002 michael bayne  <mdb@samskivert.com>