The totem thief.

• Main Author: Muhammad Faisal Husni.
• Other Authors: Lucy Davis
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music::General; DRNTU::Visual arts and music::Visual arts; DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52392
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Three years ago, I found myself required to research on narratives in European medieval art, expecting to find only paintings and illuminated illustrations. Instead, I found a complex range narrative forms that defy the written texts and two-dimensional or sculptural art one sometimes assume narratives must conform to. However, despite this period being unfairly (and maybe erroneously) labeled as the Dark Ages, I found many of their narrative media to be nothing short of enlightened. One example is the bronze Scylla Bowl (Fig. 1) from 12th Century Germany.2 It is engraved, pictorially with the story of Scylla, the daughter of King Nisus of Megara. Nisus was the king fabled to have had a strand of purple hair that gave him invincibility. Now, one day King Minos of Crete decided on attempting to invade her kingdom. She saw him from a distance and falls in love with him from afar, as one does. She does what any love-struck girl would do. She cut her father’s purple hair hand kills him. She then threw herself at King Minos, who, was not at all impressed by her lack of filial piety. So, he left Megara. She tried to swim after his ship but drowns in the process. I was extremely intrigued that the medieval Christians were still using ancient Greek and Roman stories to teach Christian values and this bowl was one way they did just that. However, what was truly remarkable about this bowl is how it was used. It would come with a twin and it would be used at dinners. One would wash ones hands as the water was poured from one bowl to the other.