Tomb A Day #14 - Tomb Raider, Level 12: Sanctuary of the Scion
This level features some absolutely cavernous rooms, but it’s the statues within that I really find impressive. The giant sphinx that fills the main room makes the Khamoon sphinx look like a kitten. Or.. a cub? What do you call a juvenile sphinx?
The twin statues in the flooded chamber below the sphinx are another one of my favorite things in this game. They would have been cool without being submerged, but I love that you get your first view of them as you’re swimming down.
As for their identities… It’s safe to assume that the jackal is meant to be Anubis, but the falcon-headed god on the left is impossible to identify. Ancient Egypt featured quite a few gods that looked identical except for the headgear they wore. Horus and Ra, two falcon-headed gods, were among these. Horus wore a double crown called the Pschent while Ra wore a sun disk. (Spelunky fans should be familiar with the Hedjet, the white crown that’s incorporated into the Pschent)
The jackal-headed statue was likely inspired by the bronze Anubis statue on display in Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. While this wasn’t an unusual style of statue, I haven’t been able to find any similar ones of falcon-headed gods. It’s possible that the developers also based the game’s falcon-headed statue on the bronze Anubis and left off any headgear to maintain symmetry.
Interiors of
La Torre, once a 16th-century watchtower and now the home of jewellery designer Elsa Peretti, in southern Tuscany (via).
Someday I’m going to have a home with a GIANT SCREAMING FIREPLACE in it.
Per the link, the fireplace is based on a sculpture from a 16th-century sculptural garden in Italy called the Garden of Bomarzo (current website here), or the Sacro Bosco (”Sacred Grove”), or for obvious reasons the Park of the Monsters, outside the castle of Orsini, a patron of the arts; sources vary as to whether the gardens were created first and then dedicated to his wife after her death, or if they were specifically inspired by his grief after her passing. The primary sculptor of the monsters, Simone Moschino, is a little hard to find information about in English, and most of his other attributed works haven’t survived, but apparently his father was also a sculptor, who worked with Michelangelo on the Medici Chapel.
Most of the sculptures are mythological creatures, some specific, like Pegasus and Cerberus above, and some general types like nymphs and sphinxes. Also one of Hannibal’s elephants for some reason. (all photos from Wikimedia Commons)
Apparently the garden is probably at least partially inspired by this frankly totally wild popular book of the time, the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (The Dream of Poliphilus) which was filled with over-the-top descriptions of a fantastical island and accompanied by equally bizarre and frequently sexual woodcuts. Of course, being subject to censorship has a way of keeping a book in the public consciousness (e.g., the Burton Arabian Nights or the memoirs of Casanova), so besides being a popular source of gardening inspo in its own time, it apparently was used as a kind of shibboleth for followers of Erasmus (I couldn’t find out why, but since the book is noted for its creative use of Latin and Greek and made-up versions of hieroglyphs, it makes a sort of sense that it would be of interest to followers of a man known for his poetic use of Medieval Latin as a lingua franca), and its wikipedia article lists a slew of 20th- and 21st-century novels inspired by or involving the Hypnerotomachia. My own library apparently has three copies and they’re all restricted to in-library use only, which says something about its continuous appeal.
The gardens themselves are referenced as inspirations by a number of Surrealists; apparently Dali’s particular fondness for the park is part of why it gained enough of a profile to be fixed up and reopened to the public in modern times. I saw it cited as an inspiration for Niki de Saint Phalle’s Garden of the Tarot (below) but the website says she was actually inspired by Gaudi, so who knows. It’s another incredible Italian sculptural garden that is extremely hands-on; the sculptor apparently lived inside the Empress sculpture for several months while she was working on the garden.
In proper cyclical fashion, the Argentinian writer Manuel Mujica Láinez wrote a novel in 1962 loosely based on the gardens and the Duke who created them, involving dreams, demonic deals, and moral decay (needless to say, it looks to have drawn from rumor and allegory as much or more than historical record), and then adapted it into a libretto for an opera by the great Alberto Ginastera. Argentina being under a military dictatorship at the time, it was censored and had to be premiered in Washington, DC, in 1967; it took five years for its production to be permitted in Ginastera’s home country. I realize that twelve-tone-inspired modern opera is not everyone’s jam (if it is, YouTube has a few different productions in full video plus recordings of some more) but at least check out the amazing costumes and set design from this recent production in Spain:
An inscription near the entrance of the garden reads:
He who does not visit this place with raised eyebrows and tight lips will fail to admire the wonders of the world.
Armed Man Steps In To Protect Pregnant Black Woman During Argument With A Khaki-Wearing Florida Crazy At Walmart
(That black man pulled out that gun so slick…he had time TUHday!!!) ✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿
Okay but how is this white man gonna pull up on a pregnant woman, swing on a black man and then lie about it??? Like the amount of lies that man told on camera??? Jesus
Black people are fucking hilarious.
The comedic timing of “I aint use shit yet!” made me bust out laughing.
This is the shit I love to see. Sticking up for one another.
