My last post gave an account of a visit to Antinoupolis in Egypt in 1715. But without the illustrations! Well, I have spent several days now, attempting to locate online a copy of Father Sicard’s Letter to the Count of Toulouse which had undamaged illustrations in it. Not all copies were bound with illustrations, I note.
The text of the letter is printed in the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses series, which is an utter mess of original volumes of letters, jumbled all anyhow, plus reprints in different orders, etc etc. Somebody ought to draw up a table of this series in its various versions. It is NOT fun, attempting to locate something.
Today, using the Europeana portal, I had a lucky break, and discovered the existence of a separate volume of plates for the series! A copy is held at Gallica here. It indicates the volume and the page numbers.
So, finally, here are Father Sicard’s three illustrations!
and
and finally the column of Alexander Severus:
It’s wonderful to have all this stuff online, but there is still plenty for researchers to do, in simply locating it all!
Delightful – thank you! In this copy, the second engraved ‘Aurelius’ correctly has lambda, while the first alpha for lambda! (Maybe I shall get round to collating all the examples of the Greek inscription you have provided, for the fun of it…)
I wish that I could have located the first edition.
Hello Richard, Many thanks. My colleagues and I are preparing a large volume on the results of a detailed archaeological survey we conducted mapping the Via Nova Hadriana from Antinoopolis to Berenike between 1996 and 2000. We will definitely use these illustrations that Sicard produce and credit you for finding them.
Regards,
Steve Sidebotham
Professor Emeritus
University of Delaware
You’re very welcome, although there’s no need to mention me! The drawings are great, aren’t they? If you look at this linkM/a>, you’ll get my posts on Antinoupolis, many of which have pictures, and a link to where I got them!
Delighted to hear about your project. If you drop me a line when it comes out, I’ll post about it!