[Avodah] Shape of Luchos

[Simon Montagu]

On 9/5/06, Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 10:50:11PM -0400, Zvi Lampel wrote:
> : Some weeks ago I spent a Shabbos in the Yeshiva of Staten Island,
> : whose Aron has a depiction with the curved tops. But I then noticed that
> : going along the bottom of the luchos was a solid gold-colored curve. It
> : occurred to me that perhaps it was really a corrupted depiction ...
> :                of an open book, the way one would draw it--two curves
> : at the top and two at the bottom.
>
> I thought that it's pretty well accepted that the current image
> of the luchos is a product of Michaelangelo's creativity. (See
> <http://tinyurl.com/5ee84> for image of statue in question.)
>

It's much earlier than Michelangelo. An article in the first volume of
the Hebrew University's "Journal of Jewish Art" by Ruth Mellinkoff
says that the earliest known depiction of curved-top tablets is in a
manuscript from the first half of the 11th century CE.

She also says that the curved-top form is originally a representation
of a "diptych" or set of two writing tablets, so RZL's conjecture is
apparently not far away from da'at gedolim :)