> A second-century Roman mosaic of a war elephant in Tunisia

It is quite interesting to see that the depicted elephant has wrong proportions. This makes one wonder whether the artist who created that mosaic, ever saw an elephant himself.

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sonofhans 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Pure speculation, of course, but I would say so. The hump in the back; the small, high, tail; dominant forehead — those are all things missed by people who mis-draw elephants. I think this artist got them right, which is hard to do from description alone.

	▲	bertil 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I’m very tempted to agree with you: people who draw from description draw unicorns after being told about rhinoceroses. We have a lot of medieval monks’ drawings of elephants by description and theirs look like tapir with a trumpet stuck in their nose. This is not a photo, of course but it mainly highlights the head, like any one would if they didn’t measured proportions carefully.
	▲	beloch 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There has also been debate about which species of elephant Hannibal's forces used. Elsewhere, Hellenistic Greek forces used Asian elephants, but many believe Hannibal used North African elephants, a sub-species that was extirpated by the Romans. Their proportions might have been a little different than living elephants. It will be interesting to see if the bone can help settle this debate.

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drekipus 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Wrong to elephants today

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inglor_cz 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Might be a limitation of the medium. Mosaics are complicated.

This famous "skeleton" mosaic has the proportions wrong as well, even though the artist almost certainly saw some actual human skeletons, and definitely some living humans with their longer arms and smaller heads than depicted :)

https://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Ha...