robin cook Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> > > [Origen] came up with a pyramid shape for his
> > > ark by battening together statements in the
> Old
> > > Testament in a rather awkward way.
> >
> > I don't think "awkward battening" is an
> accurate
> > description.
>
> - Well I tend to agree with Colavito, the musings
> of religious scholars on the subject are just
> silly. Their psychological and moral insights may
> be valuable but their 'scientific' statements
> don't correspond to reality.

If we can go back and look again at what Colavito said:

Quote

Origen in Genesis Homily 2, Philo in Questions and Answers on Genesis 2.5, and Clement in Stromata 6.11 all claimed that the Ark was pyramidal in shape. They derived this from the account in Genesis, which claims that the Ark was three hundred by fifty cubits at the base but rose to a window embedded in a peak just one cubit square. They concluded, therefore, that the ship must be pyramidal to fit those measurements. (60)

These early writers were making statements based on differing interpretations of differing translations. They weren't making "scientific" statements.

...

(Hermione)
> > (Two authors are believed to be responsible for
> > the OT Flood story: the Jahvist (ca. 950 BC),
> and
> > Priestly. The description of the Genesis Ark's
> > measurements are attributed to the Priestly
> > author, who, as you suggest, might have come
> into
> > contact with the much older NE version whilst
> in
> > Babylon. But, clearly, a version of the Flood
> > tradition was in circulation before the Exile.)
>

Robin Cook:
> - And where did this earlier version come from if
> not Mesopotamia?

It was part of a cycle of Near Eastern traditon.

But the point is that there are two parts to the Genesis Flood story.

One part of the Genesis Flood account was the work of the Jahvist author. (The Ark is mentioned: but there are few details about its appearance).

But the other part of the tradition, the one that dealt with questions such as the measurements of the Ark (likely ultimately derived from Gilgamesh, etc.) were the work of the Priestly author, or authors: so of later date, likely the Exile.

> The illustration of Uccello's pyramid is obviously
> a copy of an original work by Uccello. It is
> titled '33'. I tried a reverse image search on
> google but came up with nothing. I must have
> picked it up during a frenzied search. I now
> realize it is a poor copy of the famous painting
> in Santa Maria Novella in Florence -
>
> [en.wikipedia.org]

Thank you very much: that's very helpful. (Ironically, the frescoes were damaged in the 1966 Florence flood ... )

> This painting by Uccello is lauded because of the
> evidence of perspective in the two objects on
> either side.

So, the lunette "The Flood and the Waters Receding" (Diluvio e recessione delle acque). with two symmetrical views of Noah's Ark. (The reproduction you originally showed was the lower view, "The Sacrifice and Drunkenness of Noah").

Yet there are two realistic pyramids
> as well - one is to the left on the panel below,
> and the other at top centre. In image '3' the
> copyist has misinterpreted the side of the pyramid
> as an arc. Yet the top image seems very realistic.

I'm afraid I know very little about Uccello. However, it appears that he was one of Ghiberti's assistants during the work on the doors - [en.wikipedia.org].

I haven't been able to find any detailed present-day commentary on these works by Uccello, although I found this, by Vasari:

Quote

... lower down he painted the Flood, with Noah's Ark, wherein he put so great pains and so great art and diligence into the painting of the dead bodies, the tempest, the fury of the winds, the flashes of the lightning, the shattering of trees, and the terror of men, that it is beyond all description. And he made, foreshortened in perspective, a corpse from which a raven is picking out the eyes, and a drowned boy, whose body, being full of water, is swollen out into the shape of a very great arch. He also represented various human emotions, such as the little fear of the water shown by two men who are fighting on horseback, and the extreme terror of death seen in a woman and a man who are mounted on a buffalo, which is filling with water from behind, so that they are losing all hope of being able to save themselves; and the whole work is so good and so excellent, that it brought him very great fame. He diminished the figures, moreover, by means of lines in perspective, and made mazzocchi and other things, truly very beautiful in such a work.

Below this story, likewise, he painted the drunkenness of Noah, with the contemptuous action of his son Ham—in whom he portrayed Dello, the Florentine painter and sculptor, his friend—with Shem and Japhet, his other sons, who are covering him up as he lies showing his nakedness. Here, likewise, he made in perspective a cask that curves on every side, which was held something very beautiful, and also a pergola covered with grapes, the wood-work of which, composed of squared planks, goes on diminishing to a point; but here he was in error, since the diminishing of the plane below, on which the figures are standing, follows the lines of the pergola, and the cask does not follow these same receding lines; wherefore I marvel greatly that a man so accurate and diligent could make an error so notable. He made there also the Sacrifice, with the Ark open and drawn in perspective, with the rows of perches in the upper part, distributed row by row; these were the resting-places of the birds, many kinds of which are seen issuing and flying forth in fore[Pg 137]shortening, while in the sky there is seen God the Father, who is appearing over the sacrifice that Noah and his sons are making; and this figure, of all those that Paolo made in this work, is the most difficult, for it is flying, with the head foreshortened, towards the wall, and has such force and relief that it seems to be piercing and breaking through it (136-7) [web.archive.org].

> But are there any other pictures from the period
> showing arks as pyramids?

Origen's ideas about a pyramidal shape for the Ark seem to have been widely accepted at the time - [it.wikipedia.org].
Did any of Ghiberti's or Uccello's assistants subsequently come up with anything?

Hermione
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