Over the previous month, a Thai child pygmy hippo named Moo Deng has captured the hearts of thousands and thousands. For many people, photos of the plump creature have crammed our screens with hours of pleasure as her squishy determine distracts us from the horrors within the information. Is her meteoric rise on account of her adorably rosy cheeks? Or is it as a result of she’s a form of Grumpy Cat, along with her screams and leg-chomping (which have veered into barely regarding meme territory) the excellent match for the chaos of 2024? Maybe it’s as an alternative the truth that she is a extremely harmful mammal in a bite-sized — some would even say scrumptious — kind.
If we glance to artwork historical past, we discover that Moo Deng is much from the primary hippo to enchant audiences close to and much, each in and out of doors of captivity. Simply as depictions of Moo Deng vary from candy to spooky, artists have likewise taken a spread of approaches when illustrating a species that’s cute to behold from afar, however not a lot up shut. Let’s revisit a couple of of this potato-shaped sensation’s ancestors, who waddled so she might zoom.
Hippopotamus (“William”) (c. 1961–1878 BCE), Historical Egypt, Center Kingdom
When taking a look at Historical Egypt’s storied, usually sweet-natured hippo statuettes, you won’t know that the animals had been broadly feared. Right this moment, hippos account for tons of of fatalities throughout Africa yearly. However in Historical Egypt, they posed extra threats than their monumental bites alone: They might additionally upend boats on the Nile and, as hungry herbivores, demolish hard-won fields of grain.
Throughout the New Kingdom epoch (c. 1550–1070 BCE), hippos had been related to the fearsome and typically evil god Seth. However within the time of the Center Kingdom some 2 hundred years earlier, traits reminiscent of hippos’ behavior of diving beneath the water for minutes at a time and rising gloriously once more earned them a unique which means: new life. That is the period of “William,” the brilliant blue ceramic statue that acts because the unofficial mascot of the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork. Adorned with lotus vegetation, which additionally symbolize rebirth, William measures slightly below 5 inches tall (~11.3 centimeters). His legs, now restored, could have been initially damaged off to forestall him from attacking the individual with whom he was buried. Maybe artists rendered hippos like William as endearing for the same objective: to disarm their very own concern.
Figurine of the Pregnant Hippo Goddess Taweret, Egypt, Late Interval–Ptolemaic Interval (664–30 BCE)
Simply as Moo Deng and her mom Jona heat our hearts with their nuzzles, Historical Egyptians, too, observed that hippo mothers have shut and loving relationships with their infants. This Late-Kingdom figurine reveals Taweret, the goddess defending moms and their kids, as a pregnant lady with the physique of a hippo in statues and carvings. Whereas the goddess took on this manner centuries earlier (which is definitely a chimera of hippo, lion, and crocodile), she solely grew to become broadly commemorated within the later Historical Egyptian eras, the place, finally, virtually each family saved some determine of her to guard their younger.
Jacob Van Maerlant’s “Iphotamus” in Der Naturen Bloeme (c. 1340–1350 CE)
Oh, Medieval European artists! We by no means tire of your fantastical interpretations of animals you solely heard of by means of a globe-trotting recreation of phone. To be truthful, what would you do in case you had been the illuminator for Dutch poet Jacob van Maerlant’s Der Naturen Bloeme (c. 1350), tasked with drawing a “water horse” that additionally appears to be like like a “dolphin”? Whereas that is the one illustration truly labeled “iphotamus” — an iteration of “hippopotamus” derived from the Greek phrases for “water” and “horse” — it’s simply one in all many occasions the artist tried to depict a big amphibious creature in Maerlant’s huge manuscript. Don’t doubt the Medieval artisan, nonetheless: Shirin Fozi, affiliate curator within the Division of Medieval Artwork and The Met Cloisters, advised Hyperallergic final yr that these artists usually knew very effectively that they had been drawing one thing ridiculous — a self-awareness mirrored in lots of Moo Deng memes right this moment.
Adriaen Coenen, Visboek (1579)
By the 1570s, European artists began to get it proper. Dutch fishmonger Adriaen Coenen made his dwelling within the ocean, working as a fisherman and salvage grasp. His 410-page Visboek, which means “fish e-book,” was accomplished in 1579 after three years of analysis. Among the illustrations depict creatures he would have seen in actual life, whereas others are devoted imitations of engravings produced elsewhere, all accompanied by ornate borders and detailed textual content. This will likely have been a ardour venture of his, an try and share his love of the world’s waters and its creatures in order that, as he wrote, “whoever reads or research it / Might unfold the phrase to / One other that he might even see and listen to.” Amongst these watercolor and ink artworks of whales, flounders, and fantastical creatures is a blue hippo taking a chunk out of a long-tailed reptile — maybe a foreshadowing of Moo Deng’s coming, all the way down to her wide-eyed glare as she calmly chomps down on her zookeeper mates’ limbs.
Kalabari Otobo Masks
The Kalabari folks, who’ve historically lived within the delta of the Niger River, proceed the traditional craft of carving otobo masks, named for the hippopotamus, which they additionally poetically check with as “the beast who holds up the flowing tide.” In contrast to different depictions all through historical past, the dancers who put on these masks make no bones about an indignant hippo’s ferocity. Dancers carrying the otobo masks emulate a harmful water spirit by means of aggressive actions — viewers members would do effectively to keep away from frightening them.
Peter Paul Rubens, “The Hippopotamus and Crocodile Hunt” (1616)
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Flemish Baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens’s 1616 depiction of a hunt for crocodiles and hippopotamuses close to the Nile reveals a veritable cyclone of destruction, combining his period’s pursuits in pure historical past with violent looking scenes, classical themes, and Orientalist portray. It’s onerous to think about that candy little Moo Deng is expounded to the fearsome beast on the middle of the motion — though, even right here, the hippo’s side-eye might trace that it will a lot moderately be lazing in a river than preventing for its life.
The violence on this portray was echoed in its looting in the course of the Napoleonic Wars within the early 1800s, a destiny met by a number of different looking work. Of the group, solely this work was returned to its authentic dwelling in Munich, the place it’s now held by the Alte Pinakothek.
Michal Piotr Boym, Flora Sinensis
This weird illustration of two hippos comes from Michal Piotr Boym, a Polish Jesuit missionary who traveled in Mozambique within the 1640s. Maybe the deformed nature of his surprisingly charming hippos is because of the truth that he drew them from reminiscence after he settled in China. It’s troublesome to find out why the African creature made it into Flora Sinensis (1656), Boym’s tome on Chinese language vegetation and wildlife. Nevertheless it’s simply one in all his many drawings that, whereas not completely devoted to life, are nonetheless beguiling. I’d prefer to suppose that he would’ve delighted in drawing Moo Deng’s stomach rolls.
Obaysch and “The Hippopotamus Polka” (1850s)
Over a century and a half earlier than Moo Deng burst onto the scene, Obaysch was the hippo title on everybody’s lips. Within the 1850s, he made historical past as the primary hippo seen in Europe since Historical Roman occasions. Captured on the Nile and sustained on the London Zoo with gallons of cow’s milk, Obaysch was quickly visited by Queen Victoria of England and drew 1000’s of followers each day. He even impressed composer Louis St. Mars to write down “The Hippopotamus Polka,” which was printed alongside an amusing sheet music illustration by lithographer John H. Sherwin.
Man Fawkes within the Strand Journal
After two failed makes an attempt at producing viable offspring, Obaysch and his beloved Adhela (a feminine hippo later launched to his enclosure) lastly had a daughter in 1872 named for Seventeenth-century English conspirator Man Fawkes. She was visited by author Arthur Morrison and illustrator J.A. Shepard for the thirty fourth version of the Strand Journal in 1894, when, at 22 years previous, she had ballooned to huge proportions.
Morrison writes that Shepard appeared unhappy with Man Fawkes’s want to nap. “It isn’t simple to catch the hippopotamus at a second of extravagant agility,” he wrote, describing the method of sketching her as “a activity of lengthy ready, weary sitting, tiresome standing, a lot hanging about, hoping deferred, coronary heart illness, and last disappointment.”
Ultimately, nonetheless, Morrison waxed poetic in regards to the hippo, writing, “Let her however lie on it and he or she would extinguish a volcano and drive an earthquake discomfited away to some half the place the earth’s crust was much less immovably suppressed.”
Herman Jr. Poses for Frederik Willem Zürcher
In 1865, Dutch artist Frederik Willem Zürcher drew a collection of valuable sketches of a child hippo named Herman Jr. In accordance with the Metropolis Archives Amsterdam, Herman was the world’s first hippo to outlive a beginning in captivity. Born to Herman Sr. and Marguetta, additionally known as “Betsy,” he seems to have charmed his portraitist a lot as Moo Deng has for thousands and thousands right this moment. Zürcher drew Herman submerged in his little pool, lounging within the solar, and resting his smiling head on a pillow — however was it actually there, or did the artist dream of adorning the hippo’s enclosure to maintain him cozy? (If the pillow was certainly simply fanciful considering, I would definitely perceive; I daydream about all of the tutus I’d prefer to tie round Moo Deng’s chubby tummy.)
