TITLE:
Animal Motifs and Mythical Myth: The Myth Association to the Identity of the Ancient People
AUTHORS:
Al-Thamari Faeza, Al Zidjali Zahra
KEYWORDS:
Animal Motifs, Symbol, Mythical Animals, Ancient Civilizations, Intellectual Ideology
JOURNAL NAME:
Art and Design Review,
Vol.12 No.2,
May
31,
2024
ABSTRACT: The current study aims to uncover the symbolic meanings of animal motifs and analyze the superstitious myth that is generated by the symbols of animals. The descriptive analysis is taken as a method for analyzing the symbols of mythical animals that have been immortalized in many ancient cultures to confirm the aspects of identity, as well as the various cultures of people for revealing self-identity when using such symbolic drawings. From this standpoint, the study seeks to delve into the role of animal motifs and superstitious myths in revealing the identity and intellectual ideology of the ethnic classifications of many ancient societies. The methodology of the current study lies in the descriptive analysis and making comparisons between a number of symbolic animal figures that were found and linked in their places of presence to the identity and cultures of the ancient societies belonging to them, and then they were collected to know the indications and beliefs prevailing at them in an old period and to know the nature of living practices and the way of peoples’ life, intellectual ideology, and religious beliefs. It reveals what other ancient civilizations took from intellectual and mixed civilizations in order to fuse them in other forms and meanings by adding psychological and personal expressions that were independent in their sanctity from the origin of the civilizations that were taken from them. The study proved the existence of a tremendous cultural mixture embodied in the ancient individual’s tendency to instinctively dive into a number of myths, especially those that appeared in the civilizations of the Near and Far East in general, but these symbols were reformulated with all their connotations implicitly in order to take the mold of decorative and symbolic arts.