Echoes of Occator Crater of the Ceres planetoid in The Nativity icon, St Catherine's Monastery, South Sinai Governorate, Egypt ?



leading from
The Nativity icon, St Catherine's Monastery, South Sinai Governorate, 
Egypt, from approximately 7th century AD
and
The Occator crater lights on the Ceres planetoid


The Nativity icon, St Catherine's Monastery, South Sinai Governorate, Egypt, approximately 7th century AD.
a) Although I had the idea that the formation at Occator could be envisioned as a seated giant woman sitting there with two items either side of her in the manner of Ceres the goddess who holds, or perhaps her hands were held open both sides of her. I wasn't quite sure what to imagine that I was looking at.

b) 3rd of May 2018, I started having thoughts about this certain Nativity icon because I had suddenly recognised how Piranesi had used it in one of his dungeon pictures (still to come) but on 4th of May 2018, I suddenly had another thought because it's as if the place where the Virgin Mary and her baby looked more like a crater and I was obviously familiar enough with Occator Crater on Ceres.


Ceres, Roman goddess of agriculture

c) So here we have some sort of similarity, although it seems to be strange to think that this would transform into a nativity scene, I don't want to assume it is a nativity scene but it might be an example of someone having an experience where he could have a sense of this crater formation from planet Earth, be it an out of body experience, or some such other exciting thing and whether the light formation be just due to bath salts or whatever or an actual cityscape similar in idea to Kirby's drawing, but decided to translate it into a fascinating nativity icon.

If it relates to something even more ancient as handed down information on planet Earth, of course I'd like to know about it.





d) This Nativity scene caught my attention because I perceived a connection with the Henu Barque and once.

Since we have Jack Kirby's Olympia City from The Eternals which I decided also had the features of the Henu barque incorporated into the image (See: Olympia from #9 of The Eternals, (March 1977) by Jack Kirby ) finding something very old doesn't really surprise me that much anymore.

If it wasn't the artist's need to come up with Christian iconography, he might have transformed the features of the crater into something completely different.


Occator Crater from PIA20350, image released on 2016-03-22




e) Giant face like form and the face of Virgin Mary







f) Vinalia Faculae and manger






g) Two slanting line like fomations and bottom of the dress.






h) Cerealia Facula with the three dark points on it and something in the right place on the Virgin Mary's body (is it breast or shoulder?) with three tassels 







i) Going further, I might start to imagine that the artist turns right crater landforms into angels with the outline of the crater dictating the position of the heads and wings






j) Also the upper left landform of the crater becomes this pair of angels, slanting upward left in a similar way.






k)  Rectangular formation with ripples at the left side becomes the three wise men.






l) Diagonal column like forms at the bottom become horse heads. There are similar formations slight further to the left in the actual photo of the crater that would be better placed, but they are not as clearly seen as these


2 comments:

  1. Echoes of Occator Crater of the Ceres planetoid in The Nativity icon, St Catherine's Monastery, South Sinai Governorate, Egypt, posted 4th of May 2018

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  2. Added statements comparing the various landforms to the angels, the three wise men and the horse heads.

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