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The hapless condition of headlessness may be a physical phenomenon, but it may also be a grammatical or orthographic category in linguistics, and we have dealt with both kinds on Language Log, e.g.:

• "More vitriolic rhetoric from KCNA" (10/8/17)
• "Headlessness in North Korean propaganda" (10/30/17)
• "Decapitated Democracy, Headless Liberty" (9/7/10)

Now, what shall we make of the following?

Both figures are pictured on a flat space amidst mountainous terrain.  Both have a weapon in their right hand and a shield / pail in their left hand.  Both have their right leg raised / advanced.  Both have their face on their chest and lack a head.  Etc.  I doubt very much that they could have arisen completely independently.

The Blemmye is associated with the word Scythe, an Iranian people who traversed the vast lands between Crimea and Korea.  More than any other group in the first millennium BC, which was so crucial for transeurasian exchange during the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, the Scythians were responsible for the transmission of cultural products across Eurasia.  This was due to their mastery of horse riding, advanced weaponry, and organizational and mental prowess.

This fits with the paradigm of long distance transmission of culture and language that I've been developing for decades in scores of posts, articles, and books.

Many of the items listed under "Selected readings" below refer to the Scythians.  This is a testimony to their tremendous significance for Eurasian history during the first millennium BC.

The earliest description of the demon called Xingtian comes from the Shānhǎi jīng 山海經 (Classic of Mountains and Seas), ch. 7, "Classic of Regions beyond the Seas:  West" (4th c. BC [?]).  Many of the abnormal beings in that book and that chapter come from the far west of the Central Kingdom (China), so I wouldn't be surprised if the Chinese picked up this myth from the Western Regions, which would include the Tarim Basin, Tianshan (Heavenly Mountains), and so forth.

Xingtian's name is written as Xíngtiān 刑天.  Through orthographic and phonetic confusion, it also was written as Xíngyāo 形夭.  If we try to force a meaning from the former, it would be something like "punished / mutilated [by] heaven" [?], and the latter would be something like "form (of one who has) died prematurely" [?].  Apparently, the name Xingtian is found already on the oracle bones and on the bronzes, so that would make it very early (latter part of the second millennium BC).

According to the account in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, Xingtian competed with Dì 帝 (Supreme Divinity) for supremacy.  The latter decapitated him, with the result that his head was transferred to his torso.

Now, for Blemmyae:

Various species of mythical headless men were rumoured, in antiquity and later, to inhabit remote parts of the world. They are variously known as akephaloi (Greek ἀκέφαλοι, "headless ones") or Blemmyes (Latin: Blemmyae; Greek: βλέμμυες) and described as lacking a head, with their facial features on their chest. These were at first described as inhabitants of ancient Libya or the Nile system (Aethiopia). Later traditions confined their habitat to a particular island in the Brison(e) River, or shifted it to India.

Source — includes a discussion of the unsettled etymology of the name "Blemmyes".

Here are images of Blemmyes, often with raised weapon in their right hand, the same as Xingtian.

Words related to headless figures:

akephaloi (Greek ἀκέφαλοι, "headless ones”)

Blemmyes (Latin: Blemmyae; Greek: βλέμμυες) — etymology is unknown, with many theories

See Andrzej Zaborski. 1989. "The Problem of Blemmyes–Beja:  An Etymolgy”, Beiträge zur Sudanforschung 4: 160–77.

Summary survey

The headless figure with his face on his chest (Blemmya) originated in classical Western literature.

Medieval European allusions and illustrations of such figures developed from the Greco-Roman sources that located them first in Libya (Herodotus), Ethiopia (Pliny), and later in “India."

A quick glance in Stith Thompson Folk Motif Index yields this:

F511.0.1.1. †F511.0.1.1. Headless person with eyes (eye) and mouth on breast. *Chauvin VII 87 No. 373 bis n. 2; Irish myth: *Cross; Icelandic: *Boberg. Chinese: Werner 387.

Some have suggested that the image derived from warriors who painted faces on their shields giving the impression of headless men with facial features on the chest.

Also note that Athena’s breastpiece was decorated with a horrible Gorgon face; similar decorations might’ve given an impression of faces on chests

Hypothesis on cultural affinity

If we have a complex cultural artifact consisting of multiple weirdnesses or unusual traits / features, and we find another such artifact at a distant location, even though we cannot find exemplars at a number of intervening sites, we should still not rule out the possibility that the two artifacts are somehow related.  If we find a group of such cultural artifacts at the two sites, we should take seriously the possibility that they belong to the same culture.  A good example of this would be Small River Cemetery No. 5 in the far northeast of the Tarim Basin near Lop Nor and the so-called Northern Cemetery (Beifangmudi) situated 600 kilometers to the southwest near the Khotan / Hotan River, which share dozens of distinctive cultural traits — despite the fact that no similar sites between them have yet been discovered, and the two sites themselves have only recently been excavated (Small River Cemetery in 2002-2005 and the Northern Cemetery roughly surveyed about a decade later after extensive looting that ruined the integrity of the site).

"Silk Road Symposium: The Northern Cemetery: Epigone or Progenitor of Small River Cemetery No. 5?", lecture by Victor H. Mair, University of Pennsylvania Museum (3/19/11)

Selected readings

• "The importance of archeology for historical linguistics" (5/1/20)
• "The importance of archeology for historical linguistics, part 2" (5/11/20)
• "The Linguistic Diversity of Aboriginal Europe" (1/6/09)
• "Archeological and linguistic evidence for the wheel in East Asia" (3/11/20)
• "Of horse riding and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (4/21/19)
• "Horses, soma, riddles, magi, and animal style art in southern China" (11/11/19)
• "Indo-European 'cow' and Old Sinitic Reconstructions: awesome" (1/16/20)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (3/8/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 2" (3/12/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 3" (3/16/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 4" (3/24/16)
• "Of precious swords and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 5" (3/28/16)
• "Of armaments and Old Sinitic reconstructions, part 6" (12/23/17) — particularly pertinent, and also draws on art history as well as archeology; deals with a very special type of shield (note that headless men are often depicted as bearing a shield)
• "An early fourth century AD historical puzzle involving a Caucasian people in North China" (1/25/18)
• "Of shumai and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (7/19/16)
• "Of felt hats, feathers, macaroni, and weasels" (3/13/16)
• "Of dogs and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (3/7/18)
• "Of jackal and hide and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/16/18)
• "Of reindeer and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (12/23/18)
• "Know your Ossetians" (2/17/20)
• "'Mulan' is a masculine, non-Sinitic name" (7/15/19)
• "Blue-Green Iranian 'Danube'" (10/26/19)
• Pita Kelekna, The Horse in Human History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)
• David W. Anthony, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2007).
• C. Scott Littleton, "Were Some of the Xinjiang Mummies 'Epi-Scythians'? An Excursus in Trans-Eurasian Folklore and Mythology." In Victor H. Mair, The Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Peoples of Eastern Central Asia (Washington D.C. and Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Man and the University of Pennsylvania Museum, 1998), vol. 2, pp. 746-766.
• Victor H. Mair, "Old Sinitic *Myag, Old Persian Maguš, and English Magician", Early China, 15 (1990), 27–47.

[Thanks to Monika Zin, Adrienne Mayor, and Susan Huang]

September 28, 2020 @ 12:58 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Grammar, Language and archeology, Language and art, Orthography

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