About AD 280-90
Marble
Late Roman (Early Christian), Asia Minor
After disobeying God’s command, the Old Testament prophet Jonah was cast into the sea and swallowed by a sea monster, seen in the sculpture to to left. He spent three days praying inside the beast before being cast ashore. On the right, the beast spits Jonah out of its mouth.
Although the word whale is used in modern versions of the Jonah story, the biblical book of Jonah refers to a "great fish". This sculpture has depicted his fearsome creature in the form of a ketos, an ancient Greek sea monster. The ketos (Latinized as cetus) is commonly depicted as fishlike and serpentine with a long snout, long ears, fins, and flippers.
The Cleveland Museum of Art, John L. Severance Fund
