Off with Their Heads: Illustrations of Blemmyes (ca. 1175–1724)
No matter that a headless tribe of people never existed, their inclusion in ancient histories made them popular fodder for later bestiary and travelogue traditions. Beginning with their appearance in the late-tenth century Marvels of the East, the Blemmyes often look just as confused as we are — staring out at the viewer, as if trying to understand where, exactly, their neck went wrong. In these illustrations, Blemmyes frequently keep equally strange bedfellows. The thirteenth-century Rutland Ps