Every Tool has a Heart
“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. That word is love”
Sophocles (496-406 BC)
Why do so many tools have a nicely carved or engraved heart prominently displayed or discreetly hidden by a handle? What does this symbol represent? Where did it originate?
A coin from Cyrene in a shape of Silphium Pod
7th to 3rd century BC
In fact, every single tool created by a journeyman, a worker or a master, if made by hand, contains the heart of the artisan who made it. Some hearts are pointy and sharp like the ones from various tools shown in Figure 159; others are round and generous. Some are perfectly symmetrical with S curves; others are elongated and stretched into a curvy tip. They are known as “bleeding hearts” as shown in Figure 160.
The question is: Why has this particular shape been chosen to represent romantic love? The human heart definitely is a seat of emotion and the beating of the heart can be felt from one’s own to others. Of course, the heart also represents life while it beats and death when it stops. Yet the question remains as to why the very special and somewhat universal shape that - with the exception of the so-called bleeding heart - does not resemble the actual shape of the human heart?
Man must have realized what the actual shape of his heart was from the first dissections performed on mammals and later on his own species. It appears, however, that first representations of the heart during the Middle Ages in tools, paintings, and sculpture predate the first dissection and advent of surgery. The heart symbol had to have another origin and it can actually be found in ancient history, but in one country only: Cyrenaïca.
Born in the 7th century, Cyrenaïca was a very strategically situated country along the Mediterranean Sea, on the Northern shore of Africa between Egypt and Carthage. Today, its ruins lay in Northern Libya in a portion of deserted land. In the year 631 BC, the Greeks from the Island of Thera sent a large contingent under the leadership of Aristotle to establish a safe conduct on the shore of the African continent where an important trade route already existed between Egypt and the South Western end of the Roman Empire. In general, for trade, the South Coast of the Mediterranean Sea was safer than the more inhabited Northern shore. Aristotle created five cities in this new province and the country became known as Pentapolis (the five cities, in Greek) or Cyrenaïca, after the name of the capital, Cyrene. The nymph Cyrene had been established as the patron of the city, according to the local legend, after she had won the love of the god Apollo. Aristotle ruled the new country as king Battus the Stammerer, followed by his son and another six generations of his descendants. Battus’ dynasty, the Battiadae, ruled Pentapolis until 440 BC. As part of a major trade route, Cyrene developed into a structured city with paved streets, monuments, and cemeteries. A single plant, the Sylphium, made Cyrenaïca one of the wealthiest countries from the 7th century BC until the 1st century AD. The plant only grew in the Cyrenaïca country and could never be successfully transplanted elsewhere in spite of numerous attempts in Greece and Egypt, notably.
The flower seeds of Sylphium had two special properties....