The Geographer's Library

The Geographer’ s Library
Item 5: A carved wooden triptych, with a main square panel measuring
roughly 8 centimeters per side, concealed by two rectangular panels. A carving
on the front of the two flaps depicts a wooden chest surmounted by two
winged figures—cherubim—facing each other. Close examination of the
carving shows traces of gold paint on the cherubim.
Opening the flaps reveals an icon depicting a slender, bareheaded,
bearded man with dark brown skin standing in the extreme foreground, arms
raised with hands outward and pointing, gesturing to the scenes depicted on
either side of him (i.e., on the inside of each flap). On his left is a full-color
representation of the same chest carved on the front, this time with two
thin yellow cones, representing the celestial fire, emanating outward from
either cherub. On his right the cones converge on three tall obelisks, as if
the obelisks had somehow been raised by the fire. The steady gaze, large
eyes, and tightly pursed lips give the foregrounded figure an air of worry and
defiance.
Many European alchemists used the figure of a black man (or, by those
who thought themselves worldly, an Ethiopian) to represent the initial stage
of the alchemical process, wherein the substance to be transformed must first
decay and blacken before it can be reborn. Alchemists in the Horn of Africa,
however, who learned the trade from Arab scientists who guided trading convoys
through the Red Sea, used self-depiction to represent not decay but the
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