History of juggling
This tomb belonged to Baqet III, a provincial governor of Menat-Khufu (present day Minya) during the later years of the Eleventh Dynasty of Egypt.
[2] Brooklyn Museum associate curator Dr. Robert Bianchi suggests that the appearance of jugglers in the Beni Hassan tomb may be "an analogy between balls and circular mirrors, as round things were used to represent solar objects, birth and death.
[8] Roughly translated, Chapter 8 of the Liezi, an ancient collection of Daoist sayings, reads as follows: The passage states that Lanzi juggled the jian, a straight, double-edged sword which was used during the Spring and Autumn period.
According to Jian Zhao in The Early Warrior and the Birth of the Xia, Lanzi was a general term for itinerant entertainers in pre-Qin and Han times.
[citation needed] In his Symposium, set in 421 BC, the Greek historian Xenophon describes the appearance of a dancing girl at a dinner presided over by Socrates.
A monument with an inscription to Septumia Spica in the collection of the Museum of Roman Civilization depicts two relief carvings of a man toss juggling five balls while manipulating two more with his feet.
[15] A similar relief carving in Maffei's Museum Veronense of a consul giving the signal for the circus games to begin includes a detail showing a boy toss juggling five balls.
C. vi, folio 30 v.[24]), from an eleventh century book on the life of Christ, shows an attendant of King David juggling three balls with his right hand and three knives with his left.
[25] William the Conqueror's minstrel Taillefer is recorded as performing a simple juggling trick with his sword at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, throwing and catching it, and then killing an English soldier.
[citation needed] The Boke of Saint Albans, published in England in 1486, mentions a “Neverthriving of Jugglers” as part of a list of collective nouns.
[31] One example, quoted from George Dorsey, describes a game played by Shoshone women who juggled up to four balls made of mud, cut gypsum, or rounded water-worn stones.
[33] A similar game called hiko, involving throwing limes, gourds, or tuitui nuts in the shower pattern has been played by young girls in Tonga for centuries.
Adolf Behrend, the German Gentleman juggler Salerno builds a set of clubs with electric lights inside which changed colors as he juggles them.
1930-1950 – Europe and North America Variety and Vaudeville shows start to decline in popularity due to competition from motion picture theatres, radio and television.
