Cult of beauty - Minerva

Photo: courtesy of mamoon mengal.
Photo: courtesy of james beresford.
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Minerva May/June 2011
Fig 1. Cuneiform
tablet excavated
from Telloh (ancient
Girsu) in 1904. The
tablet informs the
king of Lagash of
his son’s death in
combat, c. 2400 BC,
H. 7.8cm. Louvre
Museum.
Fig 2. Yangshao
culture pottery bowl
featuring human-
faced fish decoration,
5000–4000 BC. Banpo
archaeological site,
Shaanxi. Capital
Museum, Beijing.
Fig 3. Great Mosque
in Isfahan, painted by
the French architect
Pascal Coste, 1867.
Fig 4. Asia covers
29.9 percent of
Earth’s land area and
hosts 60 percent of
the world’s current
human population.
Fig 5. Soapstone
statuette of a
Priest–King. Found
at Mohenjo-daro
in 1927. H. 17.5cm
National Museum,
Karachi.
Fig 6. The ruins of
Mohenjo-daro, Sindh
province, Pakistan.
Fig 7. The temples at
Khajuraho, Madhya
Pradesh, constructed
between the mid-10 th
to mid-11 th centuries
AD.
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of the Indus valley cities bear witness
to an influence on the subcontinent’s
chief concern: religion. The Indus
civilisation was profoundly impacted
by migrations and invasions from the
north who brought with them the
Indo-European language. However,
many of the religious and ceremonial
traditions of the Indus Valley people
may well have been adopted by later
communities.
One of these traditions was yoga,
which was to become so widespread
that the Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta
(AD 1304–69) was amazed to encounter
during the 1340s a large number
of Moslems studying under yogis
at Khajuraho, a prominent centre of
Hindu and Jain worship on the Deccan
(Fig 7). The subsequent convergence
of beliefs under the Mughal emperor
Akbar (r. AD 1556–1605) provided a
rare moment of religious equipoise in
India (Fig 12).
The geographical remoteness
of China always made it seem a
world apart, although troublesome
Asian history
neighbours in Central Asia periodically
involved it with wider Asian
politics. The Turks, Mongols and the
Manchus revealed in turn the defensive
inadequacies of the Great Wall
(Fig 9). While there were many early
walls built to defend various regions,
history states that the Great Wall was
built by Qin Shi Huangdi (r. 246–221
BC) as protection from the nomadic
peoples living on the steppe. This
determined ruler not only unified
China in an empire that lasted until
1911, but introduced reforms of the
written script that would ensure a cultural
longevity unmatched elsewhere.
For this reason the difference between
the Germanic invasion of the western
provinces of Rome and the Central
Asian occupation of north China
could not have been more marked
since, unlike Latin, Chinese survived
intact and finally replaced the invaders’
tongues as the official language. Only
the Persian language achieved a similar
success in its struggle with Arabic,
even though it was greatly transformed
as a result. The Chinese and Persians
also withstood Mongol rule, and in
their subsequent revival produced two
of the most splendid medieval Asian
dynasties. Their architectural monuments,
which have been restored and
rebuilt over time, are visible in the
‘Forbidden City’, the Ming palace city
at Beijing built between AD 1406–
1420 (Fig 14) and the Great Mosque of
Safavid Isfahan, Iran (Fig 3).
The Arab conquest changed the continent
forever. In AD 711, the year they
invaded Spain, an Arab expeditionary
force reached the Indus delta and captured
Daybul, a port close to the site of
the modern city of Karachi. The action
was intended to rid the area of pirates,
and was inspired by marauders from
Daybul capturing an Arab ship which,
in addition to the Muslim passengers
on board, was also carrying precious
gifts from the ruler of the Maldives
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Photo: courtesy of hartjeff.