HR Giger: Mordor IV references Seated Goddess between Lions on Lentoid Ring-stone?



Leading from


a) Discovery
28th July 2017, while looking for more Egyptian Book of the Dead images, oddly I encountered this curious image of a Seated Goddess between Lions on Lentoid Ring-stone (image from "The Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult And Its Mediterranean Relations" by AJ Evans, (1901) p67) I suddenly realised that it must have been the foundation for Giger's Mordor IV before he began to reshape it into various things that he was also familiar with.

"a lentoid of pale yellow cornelian which forms the bezel of a gold ring, shows the Goddess seated on a lion's head, while on either side of her two lions are heraldically posed looking backwards. it will be seen hat the attitude of the lions is directly borrowed from the aniconic scheme in which they rest their feet on an altar or small pillar, which the Goddess herself is represented armless and in an unusual sack like costume as if something of her columnar form still affected the artis's imagination.
" ("Mycenaean tree and pillar cult" by AJ Evans, p67)






Giger had drawn something up that looked almost like a musical instrument
( Work 280: Mordor IV)


b) The right lion transformed
The right animal's shoulder and the line along its belly becomes the small head on the right with the long baguette like flute sticking out behind it. Roughly the back legs have been retained although the front have been transformed into part of a musical instrument like form held by the left creature in Giger's painting. Its head becomes transformed into an elephant shrew like face, bur the details around its face including the eyes become transformed into the aqualung breathing tube.




c) The left lion transformed

c. i) The left animal's eye is kept roughly the way it is if nothing else, but the creature's head and faded away and the beast's shoulder has become the new face with the legs transforming into and merging with other forms.


c. ii) Perhaps the horizontal ink lines as shading become the horizontal ribbed forms here.


c. iii) The lions back legs become tentacle pipe like forms






d) Seated Goddess

d. i) The seated goddess becomes abstractly transformed into a face blowing a croissant like instrument.



d. ii) The star like spheres floating around her head become eyes of the floating face.

A plough like form above her becomes the sting ray face




d. iii) Her eye has been moved  becomes transformed into a faded trace of an eye in he swollen croissant like form that the face appears to blow into.




d. iv) Her knee becomes like a penile form.




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