Here is a man, perfected, a veritable god in man's image. Seated yet alert, his head turned attentively for the slightest feel of need. He waits, watching, his arms holding protectively those precious tablets of the Law. Then, we sense the crowd's uneasiness. Our eyes join theirs raised upwards toward the head of Moses.
Confusion lingers today.
And they saw that the face of Moses when he came out was horned, but he covered his face again, if at any time he spoke to them. Some authorities, and reliable ones, refuse to discount Michelangelo's classical erudition. Recalling how, as a youth in the garden of Lorenzo de' Medici, he had listened enrapt as scholars discussed the deeper aspects of Greek philosophy. How even then beauty of thought and of form had so fascinated him that throughout his life he endeavored in his art to reconcile and interpret the inner meaning of Neoplatonism, Christian faith, and mythology. To these men it is apparent that Michelangelo purposefully and carefully carved those two ram horns in recognition of, and dramatically to call attention to, the mysterious and universal truths which the Moses story hints at repeatedly.