A Comm for Historymemes

Oooh, so not being a medievalist, this one took me a while. One of the most popular books of the late Middle Ages in Europe was the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, a book of "popular theology" that basically analogized old testament events to new, to show that the former predicted the latter and Christianity was obviously true.

One of the Old Testament pages was about Amel-Marduk, a son of Nebuchadnezzar II, who usurped his brother (and was in turn usurped), but was said to have exhumed his father's corpse and dismembered it, leaving it to the birds. I have run out of steam trying to find the specific manuscript the meme image comes from (somebody else probably could find it), but the iconography is unmistakable.

My childhood just came rushing back to me:

Sing a song of sixpence, a pocketful of rye, four and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie was opened, the birds began to sing "Now wasn't that a dainty dish to set before a king?" The king was in his counting house counting out his money, the queen was in the parlor eating bread and honey, the maid was in the garden hanging out the clothes when down came a blackbird and pecked off her nose.

I thought the king lost his head in that one but apparently not