Aspect Adjustment on the Jonah Ossuary

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So Robert Cargill posted another theory about the ball base of the figure on the Jonah Ossuary, which I believe is on the right track.

When I read over it, it suddenly hit me: Perspective.

So I did a bit of perspective adjustment, myself… and guess what I found?

Below are the steps I took, as well as the assumptions I’ve made:

Step 1:

The original image, labeled “no cgi.”

 Step 2:

I rotated it so that the border at the bottom was flat.
I believe that this was the intention of the artist
and is a safe assumption that it was meant to be a baseline.

I also marked the a stroke on the inscription
that I assume was meant to be vertical.
It runs right down the center of the figure.

 Step 3:

I then, adjusted the aspect so that the two lines were perpendicular.

 Step 4:

What does the “ball” at the base look like NOW?

 My Conclusion:

Something like this is my guess.
The base of a vessel.

Peace,
-Steve

UPDATE: This article may have disappeared for about 10-15 minutes due to a mistake I made with the new blogger interface. Needless to explain, it’s back. 🙂

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Further developments on the shape of the “head of Jonah” now show it to be quite flat, and that the image is much more vessel-like than fish like when taken in its proper aspect and size. See:

The entire figure corrected for aspect ratio and distortion:

http://aramaicdesigns.blogspot.com/2012/03/little-bit-more-perspective-patio-tomb.html

How many of the photographs and reproductions aren’t faithful representations of what is actually on the ossuary:

http://aramaicdesigns.blogspot.com/2012/04/unfaithful-representation.html

7 thoughts on “Aspect Adjustment on the Jonah Ossuary”

  3. Ditto to Bob and Jim. Thank you. I do think it’s extraordinary that anyone could imagine a ‘fish’. The ancient Greek images of fish, dolphins and whales (neither being fish) that I’ve studied in art, are quite beautiful and pretty realistic whereas I see no fish in this vase.

  4. Thanks everyone. 🙂

    The more I look at the “CGI composite” the more I feel that the individual who actually did the composting did not know much about aspect correction at all.

    The only correction that was made to the perspective was a little skewing, and even that left both the mouth and base of the vessel (or in jonah-ichthyoid topology the “tail” and “Jonah’s head”) biased heavily in opposite directions.

    Peace,
    -Steve

  5. Steve, what am I missing here. When I look at your final adjusted photo and compare it to the base of a vessel I don’t see any resemblance whatsoever. In size, shape, and markings it is completely different.

    Steph, have you looked at fish from this period and region, especially those on ossuaries?

  6. James, is there actually a good online source for seeing fish images on ossuaries or other conemporary art from the area? I’ve only seen one picture posted in the blog posts I’ve seen. For that matter, depictions of pottery and nephesh monuments would be helpful as well, since I Haven’t seen that many of those around, either.

  7. Dr. Tabor,

    What you are missing is part of “Jonah’s head.” 🙂

    The adjustment reveals a demisphereoid shape, which matches the shape of the base of contemporary vessels.

    Finding a demisphereoid *head*, on the other hand, generally is not a pleasant thing as it implies either part of it is a) removed or b) compacted. 🙂

    Peace,
    -Steve

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