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| Moses with Horns Chilling at the Louvre |
Have you ever seen Michelangelo's Tomb of Julius II in Rome? It includes a sculpture of Moses. He is seated with a flowing beard and horns on his head. It wasn't a joke of Michelangelo's, he actually believed Moses had horns on his head and had gotten them after he had come down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. Many people believed Moses had horns back then in the renaissance, because of an error in the English translation of the Bible. The Bible in the Latin Vulgate version said "And when Moses came down from the mount Sinai, he held the two tables of the testimony, and he knew not that his face was horned from the conversation of the Lord. (Source 1)" The word horned was translated from was "qaran" but later they changed printed horned as what it really meant: "shone." And really shouldn't they be
suspicious of the translation? Someone's face cannot really be "horned," their head can be though. And because of this translation throughout renaissance art Moses is shown with horns.
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| The Sculpture |
Sources:
1. Douay-Reims Bible + Challoner Notes;
Book of Exodus, Chapter 34: http://drbo.org/cgi-bin/d?b=drb&bk=2&ch=34&l=30&f=s#x
2. Moses and Those 'Horns' by Eloise Hart: http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/mideast/mi-elo.htm
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