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Image 54: Wooden carved ceiling boss in Speyton Church. England, dated to c.1451 and showing the Three Hares motif.
The camel is the animal usually associated with travel on the Silk Road. However the same image of three rabbits or hares running in a circle and each sharing an ear is found in late 6th/early 7th-century Buddhist cave temples at Dunhuang, on a Mongol coin dating to 1281-2, and in many medieval churches in Europe and England, from a floor tile dating to c.1300 in Chester Cathedral (cat. 246) to a carved wooden roof boss in Spreyton Church dated to 1451. The migration of this motif from one end of the Silk Road in China to England, via Central Asia shows interaction between peoples along the trading routes passed on ideas and images.
Photograph by Chris Chapman
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