Connect the Dots | "Ammit"
One of my favourites I made in a while, from the perspective of what it communicates to execution. I’ve done something similar in the past but was never fully pleased, on the execution side. It lacked finesse, lacked perspective, felt more like a minimalist tattoo attempt…and I’m not that into minimalism, as you might imagine.
The name Ammit came at the end, I considered naming it “Vampire” but when I learned about this creature, it felt more appropriate. To quote Wikipedia:
Ammit (/ˈæmɪt/; Ancient Egyptian: ꜥm-mwt, "devourer of the dead"; also rendered Ammut or Ahemait) was a demoness and goddess in ancient Egyptian religion with a body that was part lion, hippopotamus, and crocodile—the three largest "man-eating" animals known to ancient Egyptians. A funerary deity, her titles included "Devourer of the Dead", "Eater of Hearts", and "Great of Death". Ammit lived near the scales of justice in Duat, the Egyptian underworld. In the Hall of Two Truths, Anubis weighed the heart of a person against the feather of Ma'at, the goddess of truth, which was depicted as an ostrich feather (the feather was often pictured in Ma'at's headdress). If the heart was judged to be not pure, Ammit would devour it, and the person undergoing judgment was not allowed to continue their voyage towards Osiris and immortality.
My earlier, 2016 attempt at this drawing. Before I had the time to be bothered with dots.
My mother remarked that the whole thing is quite dark and her observational skills have not let her down yet again but there is a point to that. An image like this just couldn’t be light, it would defeat or at least go against the very message it is shouting. It is dark, foreboding and menacing, it’s frightening and unsettling, it should speak to that very nature which we fear…mostly in ourselves.
I think the tragedy in this is that, we will all look to someone or think of somebody who we associate this devil to. How many will look inwards and analyse a possible, tangible possibility that it is them who are the Ammits of our world and devour the souls of their close ones by not dealing with themselves?
Would you be able to live with yourself if you knew you were this to someone? Would you rationalize it and brush it off, atributing the whole thing and blaming it on the accuser? Would you realize that that very act would show that it really might be you?
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
If you are interested in this drawing as a print, following the link below. Thank you for reading.