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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

C ON DI T ION S OF V I S I BI L I T Y
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

V I SU A L C O N VE RS AT I O N S
I N A RT A N D A RC H A E O LO G Y

General Editor: Jaś Elsner

Visual Conversations is a series designed to foster a new model of comparative

inquiry in the histories of ancient art. The aim is to create the spirit of a comparative
conversation across the different areas of the art history and archaeology of the
pre-modern world—across Eurasia, Africa, Australasia, and the Americas—in ways
that are academically and theoretically stimulating. The books serve collectively
as a public platform to demonstrate by example the possibilities of a comparative
exercise of working with objects across cultures and religions within defined, but
broad, historical trajectories.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Conditions of Visibility

Edited by
R IC H A R D N E E R

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

1
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© Oxford University Press 2019
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
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 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

The authors dedicate this book with gratitude to their students

and to the attendees at the Global Ancient Art conferences, whose
conversation and debate have inspired these essays.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

P RE FA C E
Richard Neer

The Chicago Center for Global Ancient Art was founded in 2009 by members
of the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. Its animating
idea is that a new research paradigm is emerging within art history. Antiquity
was, of course, one of the original topics of this discipline as it emerged in Europe
in the eighteenth century. For many years, however, art history derived its basic
research questions and its accepted ways of answering such questions from the
study of more recent epochs: the Latin Middle Ages, the European Renaissance,
nineteenth-century Paris, 1960s New York. That situation is changing: as the
discipline grows and expands, new questions and new ways of answering them
start to appear. The Center, in particular, explores two developments in recent
scholarship: an increasing tendency amongst art historians to study archaeological
corpora, and a corresponding tendency amongst archaeologists to move beyond
functionalism into “art historical” topics like beholding, iconography, materials,
phenomenology, stylistics, and aesthetics. What happens when these two worlds
collide?
We define ancient in procedural terms: wherever it is from, whenever it was
made, art is ancient if our knowledge of it derives to a significant degree from
archaeological data: stratigraphic, archaeometric, typological/stylistic, even quanti-
tative. Antiquity is, in short, a function of method. Because these methods apply
to a broad range of regions and corpora, this definition makes it possible to speak
in global, comparative terms—a comparativism, however, not so much of the
objects of knowledge as of the ways of producing and ordering them. Scholars of
ancient China, Greece, and Mexico may work with radically different materials
and possess radically different research skills, yet they all use similar kinds of data,
produce facts in similar ways. In a discipline that still partitions itself according
to nation, religion, and date (we have sinologists and classicists, modernists and
Islamists), these affinities of method provide a new, “horizontal” way to organize
research. On offer, in short, is a comparativism of method.
Perhaps the most controversial, even tendentious aspect of this program is the
apparently cavalier use of the term art. Art, we are sometimes told, is a quintes-
sentially modern concept that can be applied to older or alien materials only on
pain of gross anachronism. We do not pretend to know in advance the compass
of this term or the limits of the aesthetic. On the contrary, it is only by testing the
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

viii PR EFACE

methods of art history against the materials and protocols of archaeology that we
may be in a position to discover whether our questions are well formed, our
answers cogent. Like global and ancient, in short, our use of the term art is pro-
cedural, a function of method—a usage that, in its turn, enables comparison
across cultures, times, and places.
Each volume in this series examines and compares a basic concept or category
of art historical and archaeological inquiry. Unlike the widely available hand-
books or companions to standing fields of inquiry, these books do not codify or
survey well-defined bodies of knowledge. They are, instead, exploratory: at once
primers for students seeking to expand their research horizons and provocations
to specialists. They offer, in short, theory from the ground up: an apt description,
we hope, of a truly archaeological history of art.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

CO NT E NT S

List of Illustrations xi
List of Contributors xv

Introduction1
Richard Neer

1. Three Types of Invisibility: The Acropolis of Athens 7

Richard Neer

2. What Lies Beneath: Carving on the Underside of

Aztec Sculpture 43
Claudia Brittenham

3. Concealment and Revelation: The Pola Casket and

the Visuality of Early Christian Relics 74
Jas ́ Elsner

4. The Archaeology of Passage: Reading Invisibility in

Chinese Tombs111
Wu Hung

Index147
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

L I S T O F I L L U S T RAT I O NS

1.1. Athens, Acropolis, view from the Pnyx. 8

1.2. Rogier van der Weyden, The Vision of the Magi, c.1445–8. Oil on panel.
Berlin, Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen. 9
1.3. Athens, sanctuary of Athena Nike, parapet relief: Nike unclasping
sandal. Marble, c.416 bce. Athens, Acropolis Museum. 10
1.4. Kore from the “Kore Pit” on the Athenian Acropolis. Marble,
c.520–500 bce. Athens, Acropolis Museum 671. 12
1.5. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, east pediment: Figure D (Dionysos),
front view. Marble, 447–432 bce. London: British Museum, inv.
1816,0610.93.17
1.6. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, east pediment: Figure D (Dionysos),
back view. Marble, 447–432 bce. London: British Museum, inv.
1816,0610.93.18
1.7. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, north frieze, Block II: Figure 4 (youth
with heifer). Marble, 447–432 bce. Athens, Acropolis Museum. 19
1.8. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon: angles for viewing frieze. 20
1.9. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, east porch: exposed clamp. 22
1.10. Athens, Acropolis, temple of Athena Polias (Erechtheum), with modern
restorations: view from southeast. 421–406 bce.25
1.11. Athens, Acropolis, temple of Athena Nike and bastion: view from
northwest. Late 430s–420s bce.29
1.12. Athens, Acropolis, bastion of the temple of Athena Nike: polygonal
gap in the cladding of the bastion, revealing Mycenaean masonry.
Late 430s bce.30
1.13. Delphi, sanctuary of Apollo: polygonal masonry of sanctuary wall.
Sixth century bce.31
1.14. Olympia: Nike of Paionios, commemorating the Messenian and
Naupaktian contribution to the victory of the Athenians and their allies
over the Spartans at Sphakteria in 425 bce. Marble, c.425–420 bce.
Olympia, Museum. 34
1.15. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, south frieze, Block XLIII (youth
restraining heifer). Marble, 447–432 bce. London, British Museum. 35
1.16. Athens, Acropolis, sanctuary of Athena Nike, parapet relief: Nike
restraining bull. Marble, c.425–400 bce. Athens, Acropolis Museum. 36
1.17. Athens, Acropolis, temple of Athena Polias (Erechtheum): caryatid.
Marble, 421–406 bce. London, British Museum 1816,0610.128. 37
2.1. Coiled serpent, Mexica/Aztec, c.1480–1519. British Museum
Am1849,0629.1.44
2.2. Hackmack Box, Mexica/Aztec, 1503. Museum fur Volkerkunde,
Hamburg, B 3767. 48
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xii LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS

2.3. Coatlicue, Mexica/Aztec, c.1480–1510, Museo Nacional de

Antropologia, Mexico. 50
2.4. Xiuhmolpilli or “bundle of years”, Mexica/Aztec. Museo Nacional de
Antropologia, Mexico. 56
2.5. Coiled and knotted rattlesnake, Aztec. Museo Nacional de
Antropologia, Mexico. 56
2.6. Coiled Xiuhcoatl, Mexica/Aztec, 1507. Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection PC.B.069. 58
2.7. Altars with maize cobs, Mexica/Aztec. Museo Nacional de
Antropologia and Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin. 59
2.8. Stone cactii with images of Tenoch on the underside, Mexica/Aztec
c.1400–1520. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico. 61
2.9. Feathered Serpent and Flowering Tree mural, probably from
Techinantitla apartment compound, Teotihuacan, c.100–550 ce.
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco 185.104.1a–b. 62
2.10. Coiled serpent, Teotihuacan. First–sixth century ce. Museo de Sitio de
Teotihuacan.62
2.11. Feathered serpent with Tlaltecuhtli underneath, Mexica/Aztec,
c.1400–1519. Museum der Kulturen Basel IVb 1359. 63
2.12. Offering vessel (cuauhxicalli), Mexica/Aztec, c.1400–1519. Staatliche
Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
IV Ca 1. 66
3.1. Marble statue of Flavius Palmatus from Aphrodisias in Asia Minor, early
sixth century ce. Aphrodisias Museum. 75
3.2. Bronze head of Augustus, from Meroe, Sudan, c.30 bce. British Museum. 76
3.3. Silver-gilt so-called Projecta casket from the Esquiline Treasure found in
Rome, c.350–80 ce. British Museum. 77
3.4. Silver objects from the Traprain Law hoard, containing mainly
‘hack-silver’ (cut up and ready for the melting pot) found in Edinburgh,
fourth–fifth century ce. National Museums of Scotland. 78
3.5. Silver missorium of Theodosius, folded and perhaps intended for the
melting pot, from near Merida in Spain, c.388 ce. Real Academia de
la Historia, Madrid. 79
3.6. Gold and niello pectoral cross from Pliska, Bulgaria, ninth century ce.
National Museum, Sofia. 80
3.7. The Pola casket, from the front and right. Ivory plaques and silver
brackets at the corners, as well as a silver lock and hinges, over a wooden
core. Found near Pola in Istria, early to mid-fifth century. Museo
Archeologico Nazionale, Venice. 81
3.8. The Pola casket, from the front, with the Hetoimasia and Lamb
between apostles. Venice. 82
3.9. The Pola casket, back, showing a church interior (perhaps Old St Peter’s)
with worshippers. 83
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS xiii

3.10. The Pola casket, from the left, showing a church interior with closed
door and approaching devotees. 84
3.11. The Pola casket, from the right, showing a church interior with
devotees.85
3.12. The Pola casket, lid, with Christ between Peter and Paul, palm trees,
and lambs. 86
3.13. The Pola casket, lid, conjectural restoration. 87
3.14. Stone container and lid in which the Pola casket was found, from the
Church of St Hermagoras, Samagher, Istria. 88
3.15. The Basilica of St Maria Maggiore, triumphal arch mosaic with empty
throne, 432–40 ce. Rome. 88
3.16. Marble spiral columns (probably second century ce) reused for the
shrine of St Peter in the Vatican, first half of the fourth century ce,
and reused again in the Reniassance Basilica of St Peter’s. 90
3.17. Mosaic of Theodora and her entourage, from the Presbytery of
the Church of San Vitale, c.545–9 ce. Ravenna. 94
4.1. Cross-section and plan of Mawangdui Tomb 1 at Changsha, Hunan.
Western Han, early second century bce.113
4.2. Plan of Leigudun Tomb 1 at Suixian, Hubei. Early Warring States
period, fifth century bce.115
4.3. Marquis Yi’s outer coffin from Leigudun Tomb 1. 116
4.4. Marquis Yi’s inner coffin from Leigudun Tomb 1. 117
4.5. Drawing of a detail of the lacquer painting on Marquis Yi’s inner coffin. 118
4.6. Pottery coffin for a child from Zhengzhou, Henan, Yanshao culture.
Neolithic, fifth millennium bce.119
4.7. Jade bi-disk. Neolithic period, Liangzhu culture, third millennium bce.123
4.8. The “jade body” of Prince Liu Sheng of the Zhongshan principality,
from Mancheng Tomb 1, Hebei. Western Han, 113 bce.125
4.9. Detail of Dou Wan’s “jade body” from Mancheng Tomb 2, Hebei.
Western Han, 104 bce.125
4.10. The “jade head” of Prince Liu Yan of the Zhongshan principality,
excavated in Dingzhou, Hebei. Eastern Han, first century ce.126
4.11. Lacquer painting on the front side of a coffin from Shazitang,
Changsha, Hunan. Western Han, 157 bce (?). 128
4.12. Mawangdui Tomb 1: (a) top view, (b) cross section. Located at
Changsha, Hunan. Western Han, second century bce.129
4.13. Bi-disk placed on the front top of the innermost coffin in Mawangdui
Tomb 1. 130
4.14. Drawing of the silk painting from Mawangdui Tomb 1. Arrows indicate
three “ground levels” which devide the painting into four sections. 131
4.15. Detail of the silk painting from Mawangdui Tomb 1. 132
4.16. Drawing of the lacquer painting on the “red” coffin from Mawangdui
Tomb 1: (a) a narrow side, (b) a long side. 133
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xiv LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS

4.17. A diagram showing the relationship between the bi-disk and the
two dragons in the silk painting from Mawangdui Tomb 1. 134
4.18. A miniature screen from Mawangdui Tomb 1: (a) front side,
(b) back side. 136
4.19. A mural in Zhang Shiqing’s tomb (Tomb 1) at Xuanhua, Hebei.
Liao dynasty, 1116 ce.142
4.20. Drawing of a mural in Houshiguo Tomb 1 at Mixian, Henan.
Eastern Han, mid-second century ce.142

Whilst every effort has been made to secure permission to reproduce the illustrations, we may
have failed in a few cases to trace the copyright holders. If contacted, the publisher will be
pleased to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

L I S T O F C ONT RI B UT O RS

Claudia Brittenham is Associate Professor of Art History and the College at the
University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the art of Mesoamerica, especially
Central Mexico and the Maya area, with particular interests in the materiality of
art and the politics of style. She is the author of The Murals of Cacaxtla: The
Power of Painting in Ancient Central Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2015),
The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak
(University of Texas Press, 2013; co-authored with Mary Miller), and Veiled
Brightness: A History of Ancient Maya Color (University of Texas Press, 2009;
co-authored with Stephen Houston, Cassandra Mesick, Alexandre Tokovinine,
and Christina Warinner).
Jaś Elsner is Professor of Late Antique Art at the University of Oxford and
Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Archaeology and Art at
Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He has been a Visiting Professor in Art History
at the University of Chicago since 2003, and also at the Divinity School since
2014, and was Senior Research Keeper in the Empires of Faith Project on art
and religion in late antiquity at the British Museum from 2013 to 2018. Since
2009 he has been an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences and in 2017 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
He works on art and its many receptions (including ritual, religion, pilgrimage,
viewing, description, collecting) in antiquity and Byzantium, including into
modernity, with strong interests in comparativism, global art history, and the
critical historiography of the discipline.
Richard Neer is Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service
Professor in Art History, Cinema & Media Studies and the College at the
University of Chicago, where is also Director of the Franke Institute for the
Humanities. From 2010 to 2018 he was the Executive Editor of the journal
Critical Inquiry, where he continues to serve as co-editor. He has published
widely on Greek art, early modern French painting, stylistics, and mid-20th
century cinema. His most recent books are; Art and Archaeology of the Greek
World: A New History, 2500–100 bce (Thames & Hudson, second, expanded
edition, 2018); Davidson and His Interlocutors, co-edited with Daniele Lorenzini
(special issue of Critical Inquiry, Winter 2019); and Pindar, Song, and Space:
Towards a Lyric Archaeology, co-authored with Leslie Kurke (Johns Hopkins,
2019).
Wu Hung is Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art
History and the College at the University of Chicago, and also Director of the
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

xvi List of Contributors

Center for the Art of East Asia and Consulting Curator of the Smart Museum of
Art. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and
the American Philosophical Society, and sits on the boards and advisory
committees of many research institutes and museums in both the United States
and China. He has published widely on both traditional and contemporary Chinese
art, experimenting with different ways to integrate these conventionally separate
phases into new kinds of art historical narratives, as exemplified by two of his
most recent books, A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and
Visual Culture (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Zooming In: Histories of
Photography in China (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Several of his ongoing
projects follow this direction to explore the interrelation between art medium,
pictorial image, and architectural space, the dialectical relationship between
absence and presence in Chinese art and visual culture, and the relationship
between art discourse and practice.

The contributors to this volume are the founding members of the Center for
Global Ancient Art at the University of Chicago.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Introduction
Richard Neer

What conditions must be met, what has to be in place, for an artifact or a work
of art to be visible as such? At some level the answer is simple: the lights must be
on. Quickly, however, the issues become more complex and turn out to vary
from discipline to discipline. Not everything is visible at every time, which means
that not every research program can see the same things. Material conditions are
certainly important, but so are perceptual capacities, technologies of visualization,
protocols of classification, and a great deal more.
Archaeology is, among other things, the science of making things visible.
It does so by digging them out of the ground; what time has hidden, the archae-
ologist reveals. The discipline is, as a result, keenly attuned to the material
conditions under which such visibility becomes possible. Those conditions can
be institutional, practical, and technological—funding, permits, and tools, be
they picks and shovels or ground penetrating radar. But the conditions that
archaeology investigates can also be historical, in the sense that, even in the dis-
tant past, visibility was neither uniform nor given. Historical agents, no less than
time, may do the work of concealment: burying things, hiding them, rendering
them variously obscure. It follows that archaeologists excavate more than arti-
facts. Equally, they excavate the conditions of each artifact’s potential visibility:
the material conditions under which entities in a past world could be conspicu-
ous and obtrusive, or recede into an unremarkable background. In short, they
excavate relations no less than things—hence, by extension, a potential stratifica-
tion in who saw what and at what time.
Art history, on the other hand, tends to take visibility for granted. Integral to
the discipline is a vast infrastructure of imaging and autopsy, from ArtSTOR to
high-quality printing to travel grants—all committed to what Michael Fried has
called “the primordial convention” that pictures and sculptures are meant to be
beheld.1 This commitment exceeds the requirements of empirical research: even

1
Fried 1998, 33. For discussion of this phrase, see Melville 1996, 178–80.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

2 R ICH A R D NEER

the most thorough technical documentation and the most meticulous description
will, by broad consensus, be no substitute for seeing the object with one’s own
eyes. Procedurally, archaeologists can use type-specimens to stand in for large
classes of object, but art historians typically attend to each and every instance and
its specific look (even mechanical prints and photographs come in editions and
impressions). It is as though there were something about the object of study that
required beholding, in the sense of autopsy. This “to-be-seen-ness” may seem an
essential, definitional criterion of the art historical object, but Fried’s insight is
that the visibility in question counts as essential only within specific historical
circumstances. Attending to the ways in which such works articulate a relation to
beholders helps us “to historicize essence,” that is, to produce “a narrative of the
shifting depths over time of the need for one or more basic conventions within
a pictorial or sculptural tradition.”2 Beholding—hence visibility in an extended
sense, the very interface of sensibility and comportment—is not a presupposition
but an object of art historical research.
The present volume documents four recent experiments in the historicization
of essence, under the aegis of the Center for Global Ancient Art in the
Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. Such experiments are,
in themselves, nothing new; the historical determination of the visible has been
one of art history’s major preoccupations since the days of Aloïs Riegl and Erwin
Panofsky and goes back ultimately to the Aesthetics of Hegel.3 New, however, is
the way that these experiments situate themselves at the intersection of the two
modes of visibility outlined above: the archaeological and the art historical. The
relation of disciplinary conditions of visibility to historical ones is, in each case, a
specific topic of reflection.4 Such reflection is, arguably, only possible within a
mongrel subdiscipline like archaeological art history, which might be defined as
the application of art historical research questions to corpora formed by strati-
graphic and archaeometric analysis. Constitutively interdisciplinary—or, better,
constitutively undisciplined—this subfield cuts across the traditional ethnic,
religious, and chronological categories that segregate the history of art into pagan
and Christian, Chinese and Roman, Maya and Greek. United around shared
problems of method, this second-order reflection is cheerfully parasitic on

2
Fried 1998, 33. Italics original.
3
For Panofsky and the historicization of the senses, see Wood 1991. For Riegl, see Olin 1992. For an
analysis of the Hegelian legacy in recent art history, see Pippin 2013. A particularly good recent treatment
of the historicization of the senses in art historical discourse is Davis 2011.
4
A pioneering work in this regard is Alpers 1983, on how new technologies of viewing (notably,
microscopes) produced new ways of construing truthfulness in early modern painting. Joel Snyder’s
account of how the apparatus of photography produced new kinds of visual fact is also extremely germane:
see e.g. Snyder 1980; 2002. Outside art history proper, see the discussion of scientific illustration in
Galison and Daston 2010. Bringing these topics into art criticism, see Bourdieu 1984; Rancière 2000.
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/07/19, SPi

INTRODUCTION 3

(hence, respectful of ) traditional, corpus-building scholarship, even as it aspires

to a new formation. The goal is nothing less than a triple comparativism: between
the academic present and the historical past; between the protocols of art history
and those of archaeology; and between the various area-studies subfields that
define ­current research.
This concern with the conditions under which a picture, a glyph, a coffin, or a
building is “to-be-seen” produces a series of essays that address the interface of
revelation and concealment. The question of invisibility—of artifacts coming to
light and receding into obscurity—turns out to be no less important than visibility
itself. For Claudia Brittenham, the question turns on the carved undersides of
certain Aztec sculpture: glyphs and other texts set where no eyes could see them.
Brittenham discusses such works in light of recent literature on absconding, that
is, the intentional concealment of images.5 But she also adduces Aztec poetry
as an analogy to sculptural practice. This literature can represent concepts and
things by elaborate circumlocutions or kennings, which often have a binary
structure: a couplet pairing two terms that, in tandem, represent a larger concep-
tual whole. For the phrase to be meaningful it necessarily combines the two ken-
nings in a regular, rule-bound manner. Brittenham argues that Aztec sculpture
works the same way: visible and hidden combine like a couplet, in an interplay of
seeing and knowing, of what the eye apprehends and what the mind understands
to be invisible and yet present all the same. The field of the visible is not just
informed but structured by all that passes stipulatively unseen; there is no “to-be-
seen-ness” without a concomitant “to-be-unseen-ness.”
Jaś Elsner is likewise concerned with absconding, but in a very different con-
text: a specific object and its unique conditions of discovery. The object is a late
antique box of wood, ivory, and silver found beneath the altar of a church near
Pola in Istria. As so often in the archaeological disciplines, the very circumstance
that requires excavation also denudes the artifact of secondary documentation.
Although the Pola casket was deliberately interred as a reliquary, we do not know
whether this role represents its primary function or was an adventitious, second-
ary reuse. The casket, in any event, is a hidden box that contains hidden relics;
Elsner describes its figural décor in a tour de force of close reading, a semiology
of absence that shows how the casket both narrates and performs the apophasis
of deity. Such close reading is arguably more common in the archaeological
wings of art history than it is in the study of later, better documented epochs; the
absence of secondary documentation means that scholars rely especially heavily
on the object as a source of data. Perhaps the boldest wager of Elsner’s paper is
that the distinction of primary versus secondary use really does not matter very
much; whether originally intended to do so or not, the Pola casket did provide a

5
Wu, Hay, and Pellizzi 2009.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Doctor Dolittle
in the Moon
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Doctor Dolittle in the Moon

Author: Hugh Lofting

Release date: April 17, 2024 [eBook #73411]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: J.B. Lippingcott Company, 1928

Credits: Al Haines, Pay McCoy & the online Distributed Proofreaders

Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOCTOR

DOLITTLE IN THE MOON ***
Title Page
 Copyright, 1956, by
Josephine Lofting

Copyright, 1928, by
Hugh Lofting

All rights reserved including that of translation

into foreign languages

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 28-22386

Contents
CHAPTER PAGE

1 We Land Upon a New World 1

2 The Land of Colors and Perfumes 7
3 Thirst! 13
4 Chee-Chee the Hero 21
5 On the Plateau 26
6 The Moon Lake 33
7 Tracks of a Giant 39
8 The Singing Trees 46
9 The Study of Plant Languages 53
10 The Magellan of the Moon 59
11 We Prepare to Circle the Moon 65
12 The Vanity Lilies 72
13 The Flower of Many Scents 79
14 Mirrors for Flowers 86
15 Making New Clothes 93
16 Monkey Memories of the Moon 100
17 We Hear of “The Council” 108
18 The President 117
19 The Moon Man 125
20 The Doctor and the Giant 135
21 How Otho Bludge Came to the Moon 143
22 How the Moon Folk Heard of Doctor Dolittle 151
23 The Man Who Made Himself a King 159
24 Doctor Dolittle Opens His Surgery on the Moon 167
25 Puddleby Once More 175

ILLUSTRATIONS
 PAGE

“Zip!--The spring was made” 5

“By smelling he could tell if they were safe to eat” 8
“The Doctor had brought a compass” 10
“Jumping was extraordinarily easy” 12
“It was different from any tree I have ever seen” 14
“The doctor kept glancing up uneasily” 16
“Polynesia soared into the air” 19
“I remember Chee-Chee trickling something cool between my 20
lips”
“Some of the fruits were as big as a trunk” 22
“ ‘I climbed a tree’ ” 24
“We approached the bluff on whose brow the vegetation 27
flourished”
The Umbrella Tree 28
“ ‘Yes,’ said she, ‘I was awake several times’ ” 30
“ ‘You bet they were not!’ grunted Polynesia” 31
“We used a long pole to punt with” 37
“ ‘What do you think, Doctor?’ he stammered” 40
“An enormous footprint” 42
“There was more movement in the limbs of the trees” 44
“It was a sort of basin” 47
“Spellbound we gazed up at them” 50
“For quite a long while he sat watching certain shrubs” 51
“Seeing a giant shadow disappear into the gloom” 55
“He seemed to have brought everything he could need” 57
“The faithful monkey would come to us every three hours with 60
his strange vegetables”
“It was natural to spring a step that measured six or seven 62
feet”
“We rigged up weather-vanes” 63
“Mostly they were on bare knolls” 66
“ ‘You mean you think it was he who sent the signals?’ ” 68
“ ‘I don’t know, Stubbins,’ said he, frowning” 70
“We always took care to leave landmarks behind us” 73
“Certainly the plant life became more elaborate and lively” 75
“The flowers would be about eighteen inches across” 77
“Chee-Chee just fainted away at the first sample” 80
“ ‘Are you ready, Stubbins?’ ” 82
“He struck a light” 84
“He passed his hand all around it” 87
“He held them before the lilies” 89
“These we rigged up on sticks” 91
“ ‘Tommy, you seem to be getting enormously tall’ ” 94
“His height had increased some three inches” 96
“ ‘We look like a family of Robinson Crusoes’ ” 98
“ ‘Let me think,’ said Chee-Chee” 101
“Leaning back munching a piece of yellow yam” 103
“A terrible explosion followed” 106
“It was a rocky gulch” 109
“There was no doubt that they were on the watch” 112
“Proceeded with his conversation with the vines” 113
“A species of big lizard overran the Moon” 115
“where the globe of the Earth glowed dimly” 118
“Every single seed was carefully dug up by long-billed birds” 121
“Still more birds left the concealment of the creepers” 123
“With a very serious look on her old face” 126
“Others were unbelievably large” 128
“It was human!” 131
“ ‘Look!--the right wrist--look!’ ” 133
“ ‘Stubbins!--I say, Stubbins!’ ” 137
“ ‘Very poor hospitality, I call it’ ” 139
“I watched Chee-Chee’s head nodding sleepily” 141
“ ‘I lived on roots’ ” 147
“ ‘The piece fell into one of our lakes’ ” 149
“The bird was introduced to the Doctor” 152
“ ‘I had the birds bring me reports of your movements’ ” 155
“ ‘I set the pile off with a live ember’ ” 157
“ ‘I could whistle short conversations’ ” 161
“This history had been carved in pictures on the face of a 163
rock”
“ ‘But grasshoppers!’ ” 165
“Grasshoppers with crude bandages on their gawky joints” 168
“Then he lectured his big friend” 170
“ ‘Watch out, Tommy!’ ” 172
“ ‘Don’t worry, Tommy, he’ll come back’ ” 185
 THE FIRST CHAPTER
We Land Upon a New World

I
n writing the story of our adventures in the Moon I, Thomas
Stubbins, secretary to John Dolittle, M.D. (and son of Jacob
Stubbins, the cobbler of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh), find myself
greatly puzzled. It is not an easy task, remembering day by day
and hour by hour those crowded and exciting weeks. It is true I made
many notes for the Doctor, books full of them. But that information
was nearly all of a highly scientific kind. And I feel that I should tell
the story here not for the scientist so much as for the general reader.
And it is in that I am perplexed.
For the story could be told in many ways. People are so different
in what they want to know about a voyage. I had thought at one time
Jip could help me; and after reading him some chapters as I had first
set them down I asked for his opinion. I discovered he was mostly
interested in whether we had seen any rats in the Moon. I found I
could not tell him. I didn’t remember seeing any; and yet I am sure
there must have been some—or some sort of creature like a rat.
Then I asked Gub-Gub. And what he was chiefly concerned to
hear was the kind of vegetables we had fed on. (Dab-Dab snorted at
me for my pains and said I should have known better than to ask
him.) I tried my mother. She wanted to know how we had managed
when our underwear wore out—and a whole lot of other matters
about our living conditions, hardly any of which I could answer. Next I
went to Matthew Mugg. And the things he wanted to learn were
worse than either my mother’s or Jip’s: Were there any shops in the
Moon? What were the dogs and cats like? The good Cats’-meat-Man
seemed to have imagined it a place not very different from Puddleby
or the East End of London.
No, trying to get at what most people wanted to read concerning
the Moon did not bring me much profit. I couldn’t seem to tell them
any of the things they were most anxious to know. It reminded me of
the first time I had come to the Doctor’s house, hoping to be hired as
his assistant, and dear old Polynesia the parrot had questioned me.
“Are you a good noticer?” she had asked. I had always thought I was
—pretty good anyhow. But now I felt I had been a very poor noticer.
For it seemed I hadn’t noticed any of the things I should have done
to make the story of our voyage interesting to the ordinary public.
The trouble was of course attention. Human attention is like
butter: you can only spread it so thin and no thinner. If you try to
spread it over too many things at once you just don’t remember
them. And certainly during all our waking hours upon the Moon there
was so much for our ears and eyes and minds to take in it is a
wonder, I often think, that any clear memories at all remain.
The one who could have been of most help to me in writing my
impressions of the Moon was Jamaro Bumblelily, the giant moth who
carried us there. But as he was nowhere near me when I set to work
upon this book I decided I had better not consider the particular
wishes of Jip, Gub-Gub, my mother, Matthew or any one else, but
set the story down in my own way. Clearly the tale must be in any
case an imperfect, incomplete one. And the only thing to do is to go
forward with it, step by step, to the best of my recollection, from
where the great insect hovered, with our beating hearts pressed
close against his broad back, over the near and glowing landscape
of the Moon.

Any one could tell that the moth knew every detail of the country
we were landing in. Planing, circling and diving, he brought his wide-
winged body very deliberately down towards a little valley fenced in
with hills. The bottom of this, I saw as we drew nearer, was level,
sandy and dry.
The hills struck one at once as unusual. In fact all the mountains
as well (for much greater heights could presently be seen towering
away in the dim greenish light behind the nearer, lower ranges) had
one peculiarity. The tops seemed to be cut off and cup-like. The
Doctor afterwards explained to me that they were extinct volcanoes.
Nearly all these peaks had once belched fire and molten lava but
were now cold and dead. Some had been fretted and worn by winds
and weather and time into quite curious shapes; and yet others had
been filled up or half buried by drifting sand so that they had nearly
lost the appearance of volcanoes. I was reminded of “The
Whispering Rocks” which we had seen in Spidermonkey Island. And
though this scene was different in many things, no one who had ever
looked upon a volcanic landscape before could have mistaken it for
anything else.
The little valley, long and narrow, which we were apparently
making for did not show many signs of life, vegetable or animal. But
we were not disturbed by that. At least the Doctor wasn’t. He had
seen a tree and he was satisfied that before long he would find
water, vegetation and creatures.
At last when the moth had dropped within twenty feet of the
ground he spread his wings motionless and like a great kite gently
touched the sand, in hops at first, then ran a little, braced himself
and came to a standstill.
We had landed on the Moon!
By this time we had had a chance to get a little more used to the
new air. But before we made any attempt to “go ashore” the Doctor
thought it best to ask our gallant steed to stay where he was a while,
so that we could still further accustom ourselves to the new
atmosphere and conditions.
This request was willingly granted. Indeed the poor insect
himself, I imagine, was glad enough to rest a while. From
somewhere in his packages John Dolittle produced an emergency
ration of chocolate which he had been saving up. All four of us
munched in silence, too hungry and too awed by our new
surroundings to say a word.
The light changed unceasingly. It reminded me of the Northern
Lights, the Aurora Borealis. You would gaze at the mountains above
you, then turn away a moment, and on looking back find everything
that had been pink was now green, the shadows that had been violet
were rose.
Breathing was still kind of difficult. We were compelled for the
moment to keep the “moon-bells” handy. These were the great
orange-colored flowers that the moth had brought down for us. It was
their perfume (or gas) that had enabled us to cross the airless belt
that lay between the Moon and the Earth. A fit of coughing was
always liable to come on if one left them too long. But already we felt
that we could in time get used to this new air and soon do without
the bells altogether.

“Zip!—The spring was made”

The gravity too was very confusing. It required hardly any effort to
rise from a sitting position to a standing one. Walking was no effort at
all—for the muscles—but for the lungs it was another question. The
most extraordinary sensation was jumping. The least little spring
from the ankles sent you flying into the air in the most fantastic
fashion. If it had not been for this problem of breathing properly
(which the Doctor seemed to feel we should approach with great
caution on account of its possible effect on the heart) we would all
have given ourselves up to this most light-hearted feeling which took
possession of us. I remember, myself, singing songs—the melody
was somewhat indistinct on account of a large mouthful of chocolate
—and I was most anxious to get down off the moth’s back and go
bounding away across the hills and valleys to explore this new world.
 But I realize now that John Dolittle was very wise in making us
wait. He issued orders (in the low whispers which we found
necessary in this new clear air) to each and all of us that for the
present the flowers were not to be left behind for a single moment.
They were cumbersome things to carry but we obeyed orders. No
ladder was needed now to descend by. The gentlest jump sent one
flying off the insect’s back to the ground where you landed from a
twenty-five-foot drop with ease and comfort.
Zip! The spring was made. And we were wading in the sands of a
new world.
 THE SECOND CHAPTER
The Land of Colors and Perfumes

W
e were after all, when you come to think of it, a very odd
party, this, which made the first landing on a new world. But
in a great many ways it was a peculiarly good combination.
First of all, Polynesia: she was the kind of bird which one
always supposed would exist under any conditions, drought, floods,
fire or frost. I’ve no doubt that at that time in my boyish way I
exaggerated Polynesia’s adaptability and endurance. But even to
this day I can never quite imagine any circumstances in which that
remarkable bird would perish. If she could get a pinch of seed (of
almost any kind) and a sip of water two or three times a week she
would not only carry on quite cheerfully but would scarcely even
remark upon the strange nature or scantiness of the rations.
Then Chee-Chee: he was not so easily provided for in the matter
of food. But he always seemed to be able to provide for himself
anything that was lacking. I have never known a better forager than
Chee-Chee. When every one was hungry he could go off into an
entirely new forest and just by smelling the wild fruits and nuts he
could tell if they were safe to eat. How he did this even John Dolittle
could never find out. Indeed Chee-Chee himself didn’t know.
Then myself: I had no scientific qualifications but I had learned
how to be a good secretary on natural history expeditions and I knew
a good deal about the Doctor’s ways.
Finally there was the Doctor. No naturalist has ever gone afield to
grasp at the secrets of a new land with the qualities John Dolittle
possessed. He never claimed to know anything, beforehand, for
certain. He came to new problems with a child-like innocence which
made it easy for himself to learn and the others to teach.
 “By smelling he could tell if they were safe to eat”

Yes, it was a strange party we made up. Most scientists would

have laughed at us no doubt. Yet we had many things to recommend
us that no expedition ever carried before.
As usual the Doctor wasted no time in preliminaries. Most other
explorers would have begun by planting a flag and singing national
anthems. Not so with John Dolittle. As soon as he was sure that we
were all ready he gave the order to march. And without a word
Chee-Chee and I (with Polynesia who perched herself on my
shoulder) fell in behind him and started off.
I have never known a time when it was harder to shake loose the
feeling of living in a dream as those first few hours we spent on the
Moon. The knowledge that we were treading a new world never
before visited by Man, added to this extraordinary feeling caused by
the gravity, of lightness, of walking on air, made you want every
minute to have some one tell you that you were actually awake and
in your right senses. For this reason I kept constantly speaking to the
Doctor or Chee-Chee or Polynesia—even when I had nothing
particular to say. But the uncanny booming of my own voice every
time I opened my lips and spoke above the faintest whisper merely
added to the dream-like effect of the whole experience.
 However, little by little, we grew accustomed to it. And certainly
there was no lack of new sights and impressions to occupy our
minds. Those strange and ever changing colors in the landscape
were most bewildering, throwing out your course and sense of
direction entirely. The Doctor had brought a small pocket compass
with him. But on consulting it, we saw that it was even more
confused than we were. The needle did nothing but whirl around in
the craziest fashion and no amount of steadying would persuade it to
stay still.
Giving that up, the Doctor determined to rely on his Moon maps
and his own eyesight and bump of locality. He was heading towards
where he had seen that tree—which was at the end of one of the
ranges. But all the ranges in this section seemed very much alike.
The maps did not help us in this respect in the least. To our rear we
could see certain peaks which we thought we could identify on the
charts. But ahead nothing fitted in at all. This made us feel surer than
ever that we were moving toward the Moon’s other side which
earthly eyes had never seen.

“The Doctor had brought a compass”

“It is likely enough, Stubbins,” said the Doctor as we strode along

lightly forward over loose sand which would ordinarily have been
very heavy going, “that it is only on the other side that water exists.
Which may partly be the reason why astronomers never believed
there was any here at all.”
For my part I was so on the lookout for extraordinary sights that it
did not occur to me, till the Doctor spoke of it, that the temperature
was extremely mild and agreeable. One of the things that John
Dolittle had feared was that we should find a heat that was
unbearable or a cold that was worse than Arctic. But except for the
difficulty of the strange new quality of the air, no human could have
asked for a nicer climate. A gentle steady wind was blowing and the
temperature seemed to remain almost constantly the same.
We looked about everywhere for tracks. As yet we knew very
little of what animal life to expect. But the loose sand told nothing,
not even to Chee-Chee, who was a pretty experienced hand at
picking up tracks of the most unusual kind.
Of odors and scents there were plenty—most of them very
delightful flower perfumes which the wind brought to us from the
other side of the mountain ranges ahead. Occasionally a very
disagreeable one would come, mixed up with the pleasant scents.
But none of them, except that of the moon-bells the moth had
brought with us, could we recognize.
On and on we went for miles, crossing ridge after ridge and still
no glimpse did we get of the Doctor’s tree. Of course crossing the
ranges was not nearly as hard traveling as it would have been on
Earth. Jumping and bounding both upward and downward was
extraordinarily easy. Still we had brought a good deal of baggage
with us and all of us were pretty heavy-laden; and after two and a
half hours of travel we began to feel a little discouraged. Polynesia
then volunteered to fly ahead and reconnoiter but this the Doctor
was loath to have her do. For some reason he wanted us all to stick
together for the present.
 “Jumping was extraordinarily easy”

However, after another half hour of going he consented to let her

fly straight up so long as she remained in sight, to see if she could
spy out the tree’s position from a greater height.