Meaningful mingling: classicizing imagery and Islamicizing script in a Byzantine bowl

Eastern Origins of Lecanomancy and Hydromancy

Like the classicizing iconography, the pseudo-Arabic inscriptions on the S. Marco bowl reflect a complex network of divinatory beliefs and practices current in the middle Byzantine era. Following the Greeks and Romans before them, the Byzantines associated divination with the learning of the so-called Persians or Chaldeans, that is, ancient cultures of the East. (98) For instance, a tenth-century Byzantine "encyclopedia," the Souda, states that sorcery and magic were invented by the ancient Persians and Medes. (99) Lecanomancy and hydromancy in particular were ascribed "Persian" origins by classical and Early Christian authors. (100)

During the middle Byzantine era, contemporary Islamic groups were identified as the cultural inheritors of the ancient Persians, Medes, and Chaldeans and were therefore credited with possessing occult knowledge. Michael Psellos stated that individuals of "Persian" derivation were commonly assumed to be astrologers and fortune-tellers regardless of whether or not they actually possessed knowledge of these matters. (101) In light of this affiliation, it is a distinct possibility that the maker of the S. Marco bowl sought to enhance the object's divinatory power by employing a pseudo-inscription derived from the Arabic alphabet. The prevailing connection of magic with the ancient and medieval East allied Arabic letters with the occult and therefore with the classicizing imagery of divination on the S. Marco bowl.

An association of pseudo-Arabic and classicizing imagery with divination is also found in the aforementioned eleventh-century commentary on the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzos (Taphou 14). In one illumination (fol. 100r) the priestess of Athena, Xanthippe, consults with the Greek Achaeans. In the background, antique statuary indicates a pagan setting, and a loom, the attribute of the priestesses, stands at the left (Fig. 23). Remarkably, the fabric suspended from the loom, the work of the priestess, is ornamented with a band of pseudo-Arabic, as is the upper sleeve of Xanthippe's robe. (102) The Byzantine maker invented the milieu of an ancient Greek oracle by combining the classicizing device of antique sculpture with the exoticizing device of pseudo-Arabic. The eclecticism of Taphou 14 and the S. Marco bowl are not random or purely aesthetic, as scholars often suppose. In each work of art, classicizing and exoticizing motifs illustrate a specifically Byzantine conception of divination as associated with both ancient pagan and contemporary Islamic cultures.

[FIGURE 23 OMITTED]

Lest we discredit Byzantine affiliation of the occult with the Arabic-speaking world as mere superstition or bias, it must be noted that Islamic groups not only were perceived as the cultural descendants of the ancient Persians and Chaldeans, from whom lecanomancy and hydromancy were thought to originate, but also were believed to have preserved and transmitted ancient Greek learning on occult subjects. During the Abbasid translation movement of the eighth to tenth centuries, among the books converted from Greek to Arabic were works on astrology and other categories of potentially unorthodox knowledge. (103)