Predating modern cat memes by thousands of years, humans have always found a way to commemorate our feline companions. The Magner Collection showcases a few superb Pre-Columbian ceramic pottery pieces to excite any cat lover.
These ceramic artifacts likely originate from the Pre-Columbian civilization known as the Chavín Culture (900 BC – 250 BC). Located approximately 10,000 feet above sea level, this ancient archaeological site is fixed in the high Andean valley. In 400 BC, The Chavín culture emerged as a “crucial religious and ceremonial hub… strategically positioned at the crossroads of trade routes, enabling interactions between diverse cultures from the Ecuadorian border to southern Peru” [1]. Defining characteristics of this early civilization note the “intensification of the religious cult, the appearance of ceramics closely related to the ceremonial centers, the improvement of agricultural techniques and the development of metallurgy and textiles”. [2]
The Chavín people are renowned for their feline reverence as portrayed by their idols, mythology, artwork, and engravings. 1970s archaeological studies of the Chavín culture reveal their ailurophilic ways (ailouros, which means “cat,” and the suffix -phile, meaning “lover”)! The Chavín’s shamans were often depicted as “half-human, half-feline monster”, “Jaguar-Men”, or as “ancestral Jaguar(s)” [3]. Chavín idols, less often, also depict hybrid human-avian and human-crocodilian figures. The shaman is master of the magical, natural, and human world. These realities blend into a fluid state that a shaman can enter, leave, and embody simultaneously. The combination of shamanism and the ideas closely related to “man-animal transformation” are inextricable to the Chavín culture’s concept of religion.
Magner M620. Chavín Culture, Feline, Terracotta. (Dimensions: 7 1/2” x 7 3/4).”
Date ca. 200 BC – 900 BC.
I have attempted to categorize our two pre-Columbian ceramic cats according to Kano’s 1979 classification of the material:
Magner M620
Jaguar jug: (i) Shillacoto Modeled Type: Black surface colors, generally realistic, details of the face described by incision, eye-brows and nose are depicted by a single U-shape, grooved incision, nostrils made by dots inside incision, the mouth is big and rectangular with teeth showing, teeth depicted as continuous design of interlocking triangles (Kano, 17). The whiskers present on Magner M620 are not accounted for nor is its spiral tail.
Magner M636
Miscellaneous Types (PL. XII) “representations of the human face with extremely feline characteristics. [Scholars] were justified in speculating that these may have been representations of shamans (Kano, 21).
Since early civilization, people have adored and treated their cats as if the whole world revolved around them. Cats caught onto this reverence and now also believe the world revolves around them. The cosmology of the Chavín people actually did worship felines as such. Lanzón, the Chavín’s supreme deity, depicts an anthropomorphic jaguar with a feline head, distinct fangs, and a human torso. Click here to see a full 3D scan of the Lanzon. Thought to be the foundation of subsequent Mesoamerican jaguar cults, the Chavín’s repeated artistic representation of jaguars and felines exhibits deep reverence for the characteristics of these animals.
These early representations of mythological feline creatures continue to inspire national pride. In 1963, Peru released a stamp featuring Chavín art of a mythological feline.
[1] Chavín de Huántar Is Peru’s Urban Center
[2] Wikipedia – Chavín culture
[3] Tello, Julio C. “Discovery of the Chavín Culture in Peru.” American Antiquity, vol. 9, no. 1, 1943, pp. 135–60.
[4] KANO, C. (1979). THE ORIGINS OF THE CHAVÍN CULTURE. Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology, p.7, 21, 141.
“always wanted to remember”. Where the days are more lovely with her in it, days “parting from [Dorothy] lay like a dark cloud on a beautiful day”. Meyer, both a romantic and an academic, could not truly encompass his love for Dorothy without likening her to one of his favorite things– “when I see you now, [you have] … the refreshing smell of an old book with a new shiny binding”. And, like an old book, every page in Meyer’s mind “has [her] stamped in it”. Meyer remembers some philosophic musings from the 1883 novel Doctor Claudius by Marion Crawford which sweetly encapsulates both his smarts and his adoration for Dorothy. In this novel, Doctor Claudius says “that two souls are ready for real love when they suddenly realize that their past has been a common one for the last days, months, or years”. Well, that gave the young scholar something to think about. Robert and Dorothy had spent quite a bit of time together by this point– so much time that “it [was] really hard to think of anything, but that [Dorothy] belongs to that thought too”. What follows is a direct quote from Meyer’s letter, as no one can word something so beautiful as a soul in love: “A lot of young people think that the good times they have together, are something that is out of the common. But, the only good thing that lifted all our good times out of the common was that we were together. Together we did nothing out of the commonplace. But what was grand and beautiful about it, was that my Dorothy was with me. Dorothy, I do so believe that our life together is going to be successful. I said our life— not our lives. By this I mean that our life will be but one life blended together. Just to think that we will always be together is such a fine and wonderful thing. It is the one thing that I am really sure of. It doesn’t matter that I finish school or not, that I have millions in cash, no darling, those things are all too complicated, and if real Love depended upon them, then all life, everything, even God Himself would be a mockery. But down in everyone’s heart, deep under the cheap glitter of money, pleasure, fame and glory, is the desire of loving and being loved in return. Isn’t it wonderful how much love counts upon two? Plants need earth, animals feed, and everything requires something. But man’s soul desires something far better than mere food to live. He needs love and that which implies loving in return…”
Robert Theodore Meyer was born August 6, 1911, third-generation in a lineage of farmers, in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. He grew up working on the farm milking animals, taking care of the garden, eating cherry tomatoes, and rising well before the sun. Some of Meyer’s earliest memories recall his “one-room red school house”, which was often closed by the Pastor for fear “strong winds would blow it down” [1]. Meyer’s introduction to classical linguistics— a subject which would become the passionate pursuit of his life— began during his time at Saint Ignatius High School where he took four years of Latin and three years of Greek. Meyer’s upbringing was of the humble, blue-collar sort; as such, he did not come from money and instead entered academia with unflinching stamina, passion, and a dream.
