Winnowing Oar
The Winnowing Oar (athereloigos - Greek ἀθηρηλοιγός) is an object that appears in Books XI and XXIII of Homer's Odyssey.[1] In the epic, Odysseus is instructed by Tiresias to take an oar from his ship and to walk inland until he finds a "land that knows nothing of the sea", where the oar would be mistaken for a winnowing fan. At this point, he is to offer a sacrifice to Poseidon, and then at last his journeys would be over.
In popular culture
- In 2003 the artist Conrad Shawcross created a work, Winnowing Oar, based on the object. Sculpted in oak, spruce and ash, it is an imaginary tool with a winnowing fan at one end and an oar blade at the other.[2] It formed part of the Shawcross' 2004 Continuum exhibition at the National Maritime Museum.[3]
gollark: What isn't?
gollark: Plus, they are generally fiddly and annoying.
gollark: The most marginally useful use of them I've seen is a similar thing - L-systems for procedural generation.
gollark: Er, no, those aren't actually seriously used much.#
gollark: Turtle graphics? What?
References
- The Odyssey, Perseus Project
- Winnowing Oar, Conrad Shawcross, Victoria Miro Gallery
- Continuum, NMM
External links
- An essay on the winnowing-fan and its meaning
- Lance Hosey, "Poseidon's Oar," Space and Culture, February 1, 2005
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