The museum sign indicates that this limestone sculpture of a chimera is from the 3rd to 4th century China. "Their appearance in Chinese art signifies an artistic exchange that came with the opening of the Silk Route in the 2nd century B.C."
Wikipedia (
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"The Chimera ... also Chimaera (Chimæra); Greek: ??µa??a, Chímaira) was, according to Greek mythology, a monstrous fire-breathing hybrid creature of Lycia in Asia Minor, composed of the parts of more than one animal. It is usually depicted as a lion, with the head of a goat arising from its back, and a tail that might end with a snake's head,[1] and was one of the offspring of Typhon and Echidna and a sibling of such monsters as Cerberus and the Lernaean Hydra.
The term chimera has come to describe any mythical or fictional animal with parts taken from various animals, or to describe anything composed of very disparate parts, or perceived as wildly imaginative, implausible, or dazzling...
Use for Chinese mythological creatures
Some western scholars of Chinese art, starting with Victor Segalen, use the word "chimera" generically to refer to winged leonine or mixed species quadrupeds, such as bixie, tianlu, and even qilin."