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Bay 105b - Lot / Abraham (Gen 19-20)
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(All images © Dr Stuart Whatling)
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![]() ![]() Lot's escape from Sodom (Genesis 19):
13-14 - Lot welcomes the angels to his home (Gen19:1-3)09 - An angel warns Lot to flee Sodom (Gen 19:12-13) 10 - Lot tries without success to warn his sons-in-law (Gen 19:14) 11-12 - The destruction of Sodom (Gen 19:24-26) 07 - Lot's daughters ply him with wine (Gen 19:32-33) 08 - Lot procreates with his daughters (Gen 19:33-35) King Abimelech steals Abraham's wife (Genesis 20):
06 - Abimelech sends for Sarah (Gen 20:2)05 - Abimelech's men take Sarah from Abraham (Gen 20:2) 04 - Abimelech gives Abraham a thousand pieces of silver (Gen 20:16) | ||
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A relatively well-preserved window, with only three panels lost and a few others in the wrong position (see below for a
suggested re-arrangement). The border is larger than normal (leaving only two small narrative panels per register) and
unusually rich, with the vaguely hexagonal medallions defined by a meandering knot-work pattern.
Of the surviving panels, the upper eight tell the story of Lot's flight from Sodom, the loss of his wife and his incestuous
coupling with his two youngest daughters. The remaining three tell of Abraham's arrival in Gerrar, where the King,
Abimelech, believing Sarah to be Abraham's sister, takes her for his own wife - until God warns him in a dream that she is the
prophet's wife and that to touch her would mean death for the King. The chastened Abimelech returns Sarah to Abraham
unsullied and with a substantial compensation payment.
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![]() ![]() Proposed original arrangement
Rearranging the panels into the narrative sequence suggested above on the basis of the hypothetical identification of all the
surviving scenes also gives a more satisfactory resolution to the meander pattern used to frame the medallions. The registers
now alternate between frames with a cusp on the outer edge and frames with a cusp on the inner edge - far more in keeping with the
aesthetic principles of medieval knot-work patterns than the current arrangement. Perhaps encouraged by the meandering knot-work
border, the reading sequence is broadly boustrophedonic.
One can guess at what the missing panels might have contained. The panels marked 01 and 02 would either have been the conclusion to
Genesis 19 (perhaps one each for the birth of Lot's two incestuously-conceived sons, Moab and Benammi) or else the start of Genesis 20
(Abraham and Sarah travelling from Mamre to Gerar). Given the general popularity of dreams in medieval visual narratives, panel 03
would almost certainly have shown the Lord appearing to Abimelech to warn him of his error (Gen 20:3-7).
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