Ms Fr 247 f.3 The Creation, God Introducing Adam and Eve, from 'Antiquites Judaiques', c.1470-76, Jean Fouquet, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France

Every once and a while I’ll come upon an antiquarian painting, print, fresco, sculpture or other art piece that peaks my interest. This is one of them.

This is an illustration by Jean Fouquet from a french translation manuscript of Josephus‘ Jewish Antiquities.  It is entitled, “The Creation, God Introducing Adam and Eve,” and dates to 1470-76 C.E.  Currently it is maintained at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, France.

There are several things that are interesting about this illustration:

• God is portrayed in the center, joining the right hands of Adam and Eve in a sacred handclasp, likely the dextrarum iunctio, a symbol of the eternal marriage of the two.
• Angels on both sides of the group seem to clothe Adam and Eve in the sacred garments worn by God.
• The Garden of Eden is symbolized as a walled city/fortress, with the rivers beginning at a fountain and exiting through the walls.
• Since this is also representative of the Creation, we note God and his angels at the top holding the instruments or tools of creation, including God holding a compass and one of the angels a square. (See Isa. 44:13)
• Is God represented here twice, or are there 2 Gods?
• God is depicted as a man, in both cases.

You can see a similar representation in a 16th century sculpture called The Garden of Eden or Love.

Anything else interesting that you see in this illustration?  Does anyone know anything else about this particular work, or similar ones?

Update (4/20/09): I found a scan of the entire page from a book entitled “Jehan Foucquet, native of Tours” by Trenchard Cox (page 88).  You can see the full page image here.  It is interesting to note that in this book the title of the illustration is “The Marriage of Adam and Eve.”

Update (4/20/09): I found another very similar illumination from the same time period.  This one is entitled “The Marriage of Adam and Eve” from “Des Proprietes De Chozes” by Jean Corbechon around 1415 C.E.  You can see very similar symbolism here.

The marriage of Adam and Eve, from 'Des Proprietes De Chozes' by Jean Corbechon, c.1415.

Update (4/20/09): Here is a detail of an engraving by Jean Duvet cerca 1540-1555 which depicts the same – “The Marriage of Adam and Eve.”  You can see the full engraving here.

Detail from engraving "The Marriage of Adam and Eve" by Jean Duvet, cerca 1540-1555.

The Creation, God Introducing Adam and Eve – An Illustration by Jean Fouquet

Sustaining Church officers during the solemn assembly of April 2008 General Conference

I have been thinking recently about the power, significance, and symbolism of using our arms, particularly our right arm or hand.  I’m not sure what it is that gives this power to the way we use our arms and hands, but there is a fundamental force that comes from using them.  It could be that we use our arms and hands to accomplish most of what we do in a day; they are our main tools of action.  We use our arms and hands to get dressed, eat, drive, use a computer, handle objects, express ourselves, shake hands, signal to people, communicate, and do many of the things we do every day.  But there is something else that makes our arms and hands powerful, especially when we raise them up. 

I’ve written before about the use of the hands in many symbolic ways.  It can be seen in art, in marriage, commencement ceremonies, shaking hands, presidential inaugurations, trial oaths, Hinduism and Buddhism (very interesting in its own right), the origin of letters, and prayer.  We seal a deal by shaking hands.  We often use an uplifted hand to signal “STOP,” or to call attention in public places.  We raise our hand to ask a question or give a comment in the classroom or other meetings.  Raising the hand can also be a form of identification, of picking an individual from a group.

I came across an interesting quote from President Joseph Fielding Smith this morning about the use of the right hand in gospel ordinances:

The custom, evidently by divine direction, from the very earliest time, has been to associate the right hand with the taking of oaths, and in witnessing or acknowledging obligations. The right hand has been used, in preference to the left hand, in officiating in sacred ordinances where only one hand is used.

The earliest reference we have to the superiority of the right hand over the left, in blessing, is found in the blessing of Jacob to his two grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh, when he placed his hand “wittingly” upon the heads of the boys (Gen. 48:13-14).

Earlier, when Abraham sent his servant to Abraham’s own kindred to find a wife for Isaac, he had the servant place his hand under his (Abraham’s) thigh, and swear to him that he would accomplish his mission (Gen. 24:1-9). Evidently, this was the servant’s right hand.

The Lord said through Isaiah: “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea. I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness” (Isa. 41:10).

In the Psalms we read: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool” (Ps. 110:1; Matt. 22:44; Matt. 25:33-46; Acts 7:55; Rom. 8:34; 1 Pet. 3:22).

It is the custom to extend the right hand in token of fellowship (Gal. 2:9).  The right hand is called the dexter, and the left, the sinister; dexter means right and sinister means left. Dexter, or right, means favorable or propitious. Sinister is associated with evil, rather than good, Sinister means perverse.

We take the sacrament with the right hand. We sustain the authorities with the right hand. We make acknowledgment with the right hand raised.

I thought it insightful after the sustaining of President Monson in the April 2008 General Conference that Elder Hales made this remark:

I, like you, appreciated the participation in the solemn assembly. But I thought I might give one point of doctrine and help. When we raised our hands to the square in the solemn assembly, it was not just a vote in that we gave of ourselves a private and personal commitment, even a covenant, to sustain and to uphold the laws, ordinances, commandments, and the prophet of God, President Thomas S. Monson. I so appreciated participating with you and raising my right hand to the square.

Power in the Right Hand

An ancient painting of Nüwa and Fuxi unearthed in Xinjiang, holding the tools of creation - compass and square.

Hugh Nibley gave a lecture in 1975 on “Sacred Vestments” which was later transcribed and included in the collected works volume Temple and Cosmos (pgs. 91-132).  The entire paper is fascinating, and highly recommended reading.  One of the things he wrote about were certain Chinese artifacts which had been found depicting two mythological gods, Nüwa and Fuxi, and the tools they hold:

Most challenging are the veils from Taoist-Buddhist tombs at Astana, in Central Asia, originally Nestorian (Christian) country, discovered by Sir Aurel Stein in 1925… We see the king and queen embracing at their wedding, the king holding the square on high, the queen a compass. As it is explained, the instruments are taking the measurements of the universe, at the founding of a new world and a new age. Above the couple’s head is the sun surrounded by twelve disks, meaning the circle of the year or the navel of the universe. Among the stars depicted, Stein and his assistant identified the Big Dipper alone as clearly discernable. As noted above, the garment draped over the coffin and the veil hung on the wall had the same marks; they were placed on the garment as reminders of personal commitment, while on the veil they represent man’s place in the cosmos. (pg. 111-12)

Nibley included drawings of this depiction found on veils in the Astana Tombs in Xinjiang, China, with a caption that reads:

In the underground tomb of Fan Yen-Shih, d. A.D. 689, two painted silk veils show the First Ancestors of the Chinese, their entwined serpect bodies rotating around the invisible vertical axis mundi.  Fu Hsi holds the set-square and plumb bob … as he rules the four-cornered earth, while his sister-wife Nü-wa holds the compass pointing up, as she rules the circling heavens.  The phrase kuci chü is used by modern Chinese to signify “the way things should be, the moral standard”; it literally means the compass and the square. (pg. 115)

See the photos at the end of the post for more examples of this icon.  The veil redrawn in Temple and Cosmos is shown photographed in the second row, fourth from the left. 

Wikipedia notes, “Nüwa and Fuxi were pictured as having snake like tails interlocked in an Eastern Han dynasty (206 – 220 A.D.) mural in the Wuliang Temple in Jiaxiang county, Shandong province.”  It also notes the various roles of Nüwa (and sometimes with Fuxi) in Chinese mythology:

• Creator
• Woman/Man
• Mother
• Goddess
• Wife
• Sister
• Tribal leader (emperor)
• Maintainer
• Repairer
• Sun god/moon god
• Adam and Eve

Some have even suggested that “Nüwa” might be related to “Noah” from the Genesis account, with some parallels between the accounts, such as Nüwa’s sealing of the sky with five colored stones connected with Noah’s rainbow.

Another description of Nüwa and Fuxi and their tools is found in a book entitled The Magic Square: Cities in Ancient China by Alfred Schinz:

It appears from these legends that civilization, i.e. ordered human life, begins with two personages, both portrayed as being semi-human and with mermaid tails.  Nüwa and Fuxi, originally sister and brother, later became wife and husband after they had invented proper marriage procedures and family names to prevent marriages between people from the same family.  Nüwa, in her own legend, had restored order between heaven and earth after a horrible catastrophe had caused heaven to tilt to the north so that it no longer covered all of the earth.  This may refer to the first observation of the oblique elliptic and the angle of the pole star.  Nüwa found it necessary to reestablish the four cardinal points, which she did, thereby creating the prerequisites for further observations.  In the oldest pictures of her she carries a compass, the instrument related to heavenly observations.  Her brother Fuxi became the first legendary emperor, which also implies the establishment of government, of law and order… On another, more practical level he is said to have invented axes for splitting wood, the carpenter’s square, ropes for hunting and fishing nets.  It is worthy of special attention that the two words for compass and square, gui ju, used together denote -the rule, custom, usage- and -good behavior-, i.e., keeping order.  Furthermore, it should be observed that the male-female system, the yang-yin philosophy, is expressed here in a complex manner, first as Fuxi and Nüwa, second as compass (male) and square (female), and third as Nüwa (female) with compass (male) and Fuxi (male) with square (female).  The compass-square dichotomy is similar to the heaven-earth, yang-yin, relationship, which in this case means that man (Fuxi) establishes harmonious order between heaven and earth.  This is also expressed in the Chinese character for king, wang, the upper and lower line indicating heaven and earth and the middle line man, all three connected by the vertical line.  This represents the position and function of the ruler; it is he who establishes and keeps order by placing himself in a balanced and harmonious position between heaven and earth, so that yang and yin cooperate in a beneficial way.

[Caption] Fuxi and his sister Nüwa, he with the carpenter’s square and she with the pair of compasses.  From the decoration incised in the wall of the Wu Lang tombs in Jiaxiang, Shandong, second century AD.  The Chinese words for carpenter’s square, ju, and a pair of compasses, gui, together form the expression to establish order.  This is what, according to their legends, Fuxi and Nüwa did.  The carpenter’s square also stands for the square that is the symbol of the earth, while the pair of compasses represent the circle, the symbol of heaven.  Fuxi, the male (yang), gives order to the earth (yin), and Nüwa, the female (yin), gives order to the heaven (yang).

A book entitled The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam by Victor J. Katz and Annette Imhausen relates a practical tradition about the use of these tools in Chinese history:

Here Fu Xi – the first of the “Three Sovereigns” – is shown on the right holding a ju or carpenter’s square.  In some versions of this legend Fu Xi is said to have invented both the carpenter’s square and the compass, or gui – which is held in the above depiction by his consort Nü Wa (on the left).  According to the Chronicles of the famous Chinese historian Sima Qian, the Emperor Yu of Xia (who reigned in the twenty-first century BCE), when attending to floods, carried with him “a plumbline in his left hand and a gnomon and compass in his right” in order to do the surveying required to bring the floods under control [Li and Du 1987, 3].

The Silk Road by Susan Whitfield and Ursula Sims-williams connects the concepts of the compass and the square with the circle and the square:

In traditional Chinese cosmology the earth was square and the heavens round and thus Fuxi holds a set square to draw the former, and Nüwa a pair of compasses to draw the circle of the earth.

Noted by Mark Edward Lewis in Writing and Authority in Early China, these symbols were used to represent cosmic order, a link between heaven and earth, and a favorable environment for the deceased:

This role of linking Heaven to Earth also figures in the depictions of Fu Xi and Nü Wa.  First, in Han tombs their elongated, serpent bodies stretch from the bottom of the register to the top, and in later depictions this vertical ascent becomes even clearer.  In Sichuan sarcophagi they play the iconographic role of the dragons on the Mawangdui banners who physically link the earthly realm to that of Heaven.  This idea is reinforced through the regular inclusion of two other iconogrpahic traits.  Fu Xi and Nü Wa are often depicted with the sun and moon, and they are shown holding a carpenters square (Fu Xi) and a drawing compass (Nü Wa).  The former are metonyms for Heaven and the celestial equivalents of yin and yang.  The latter suggests the linking of square Earth to the round Heaven.  Most scholars agree that the role of the intertwined Fu Xi and Nü Wa was to depict the interaction of yin and yang that underlies cosmic order and thereby secure an auspicious environment for the denizen of the tomb.

Santillana and Dechend offer more explanation for the figures of Nüwa and Fuxi:

The Chinese picture illustrates in true archaic spirit (which means that only hints are given, and the spectator has to work out for himself the significance of the details) the surveying of the universe.  The two characters surrounded by constellations are Fu Hsi and Nu Kua, i.e., the craftsman god and his paredra, who measure the “squareness of the earth” and the “roundness of heaven” with their implements, the square with the plumb bob hanging from it, and the compass.  The intertwined serpent-like bodies of the deities indicate clearly enough, although in a peculiar “projection,” circular orbits intersecting each other at regular intervals. 

In another place some Chinese commentators have noted the uses of these tools in construction or building:

All “great instruments” were invented by the ancients to help lesser men “first rule the self and then rule others.”  Although all are needed in construction, by no means do all these tools work in the same way.  Level and line determine straight horizontal and vertical lines, while compass and square are needed to form perfect circles and corners.  By analogy, each of the social institutions, including ritual, has its own function in building civilization, with each addressing a separate human need.  It is characteristic of the sage-ruler that he always knows which tool to apply to the specific problem at hand.

There are probably hundreds of other sources which describe these symbols in Chinese tradition and mythology.  You can find more by doing a Google Books search for “nuwa square compass.”

I’ve done some image searching and these two figures are almost always depicted holding the same symbols in their hands, and which have been described by many different scholars as the tools of creation and divine order.  See the images below.

Nüwa and Fuxi in Chinese Mythology: Compass & Square