The distant descendant of Banksy’s Flower Thrower

An intensely focused figure, fashioned from darkest shadow, shifts his weight to his back foot as he prepares to leverage the full elastic force of his body’s frame to unleash what is clenched in his cocked fist. His taut posture and tense concentration are as compelling as they are at odds with the imagined fragrance of the fragile flower he’s clutching.

No, I’m not talking about Banksy’s famous Flower Thrower (aka Flower Bomber, or Love is in the Air), a powerfully poignant portrait of a masked protestor on the verge of hurling a bouquet of brightly coloured blossoms.

The figure (or figurine) that I have in mind, a votive statue of the Phoenician god Melqart, prefigures by some 14 centuries the fully flexed physique of Banksy’s pseudo-self-portrait, which appeared in 2003 in a Palestinian town near Bethlehem, a stone’s throw from the wall that separates Israel from the West Bank territories of Palestine.

According to myths current in the ancient civilization to the north of Palestine, Melqart, founder of the city-state of Tyre, was charged both with ruling the underworld and with protecting the Universe – holding dominion over both the living and the dead.

To convey Melqart’s hybrid nature, he was typically depicted brandishing both a battle axe and a lotus flower, an ancient symbol of hope and rebirth. Look closely at the pocked and tarnished bronze statue of the god that stands forever poised to strike in the collection of Seville’s Archaeological Museum and all you see that time has roughly frisked him, confiscating his symbolic props, leaving him a little out of sorts – more flailing than fearsome – cutting shapes in the stale gallery air.

With Melqart rendered empty-handed, we’re left to speculate about which fist gripped the axe and which the flowers. It seems logical, of course, that the arm raised above his head, steadying for thrust, was likely the one that wielded the sharpened weapon.

But I can’t help hoping, imagining in my mind’s eye, that it’s the other way around –that Melqart is waving across millennia with his right hand a big, beautiful lotus blossom to his distant descendant, the Flower Thrower. All I can say for sure is this: I’d rather be hit in the face with a bouquet of painted flowers hurled by a masked silhouette than watch with bleeding eyes the horrors of war unfold before us.

How Banksy Saved Art History is published by Thames and Hudson, distributed by Jonathan Ball Publishers