TIL about the Three Hares motif
The Three Hares Motif is this weird, fun enigma -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_hares
There are a few reasons this little motif is fun & weird.
- archeologists have found it in China, Iran, some parts of Germany, and a lot of examples in England from the ~1200s
- historians *assume* it traveled on the Silk Road…but they don’t *know* that. Nor do they know *why* it traveled on the Silk Road since the meaning is not universal
- speaking of meaning, historians have no idea what it means. I mean, they’ve made some really good guesses about what it means, but we also don’t have any medieval writings where an English monk is like “and so, Bede sayeth to Astrid that three hares shall be engraved on the head of the apse to show the mysteries of the Holy Trinity in the natural world.” – yeah, nothing like that at all. We just have them show up in stone carvings everywhere for a period of time and then go away – like a viral medieval meme
- it also seems like medieval Jewish mystics were interested in it?
But! we do have it in riddles. Like this one –
There are three hares and only three ears,
and yet each hare has two.
The Wikipedia entry is fascinating, if only as a reminder that humans are weird. We also find & share meaning with the most random stuff.
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