The Scene of the Dead Man
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Featured:  Illustration: Portrait fantaisiste du marquis de Sade (1866) by H. Biberstein |
The Scene of the Dead Man[1] is a cave painting found in a side chamber in the Caves of Lascaux, the only painting in the Lascaux caves which depicts a human figure.The human figure (drawn as a stick figure) appears to be a dead man lying prone in front of a bison. The man has an erection. The bison is wounded with its entrails hanging out and next to the scene is a broken spear. There is also a fleeing rhinoceros.
Bird motif
The bird motif is found twice among the depictions. First in a stick with a bird on the top, lying to the left of the spear, and more significantly, the head of the man also appears to be bird-shaped.
Erection of the man
Some have debated the actuality of the erection of the dead man. But most recently William Irwin Thompson in The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture (1981) has argued that:
- "The ithyphallic bird-man is the climactic, ecstatic, instantaneous male principle confronting the enormous, slow, bovine, and enduring principle of the eternal feminine in her epiphany as the bison."
See also
