Here are a few more miscellaneous items which I squirreled away as I saw them, some as long ago as 2018. I thought that I would delve into these further, but I never did. Now that people are deleting their Twitter accounts, it’s worthwhile to preserve some of these.
Ancient books were written on rolls of papyrus. These were naturally piled end on, so there was a need to know what was in each roll without pulling it out and unrolling it. The answer was to glue a parchment tag on the end, which hung down and had the books title on it. Rather like the spine of a modern book. This was called a “sillybos” – spelling varies – and the British Library has some. The attached article is also very good.
@BLMedieval: Rare survival of an ancient ‘library tag’ from a 1,800-year-old private library (Papyrus 2056). In ancient libraries, titles were put on hanging leather labels attached to papyrus scrolls. See here.
There’s a translation of The Life of Symeon the Holy Fool by Leontius of Neapolis, and it is online in an awkward format:
Jonathan Parkes Allen (@Mar_Musa): The late antique Life of St. Symeon the Holy Fool, which would help provide a paradigm for early modern holy fools, is the subject of a wonderful study by Derek Krueger (which includes a translation of the Life), available as a free e-book.
From Twitter here, linking to a now vanished website here. This made the interesting claim that:
Most of the popular myths about the origins of Halloween can be traced back to two nineteenth century British authors: Sir John Rhys and Sir James Frazer, who speculated about connections between Halloween and pagan Celtic rituals.
Someone has produced a tiny pocket-book paperback of the Psalms from the Vulgate, which fits in the palm of your hand. It’s a trivial price, and available from Lulu here.
Ever come across the “peg-calendars” of antiquity, where a piece of wood went in to mark the day?
@TimeTravelRome: This is a parapegma – a Roman timekeeping device showing days of the lunar calendar, market “nundinal” days, and “regular” planetary weekdays.
The “Infancy Gospel of James” was in the news in 2018:
Tuomas Levänen @TuomasLevanen: Brand new public domain translation of “Infancy Gospel of James” by Mattison – I guess we blame M.R.James for James instead of Jacob. Here.
Photographs of inscriptions are ever-useful:
Dr Chris Naunton @chrisnaunton: Fitting to end a trip down the Nile visiting ancient monuments with this graffito inscribed on the inner walls of the gateway of Hadrian at #Philae: the last known inscription in hieroglyphs. It dates to 394 by which time #Egypt, under the Romans’, had largely become Christian.
The Roman Society made their publications freely accessible:
Roman Society @TheRomanSoc: Great news! Most of our monographs can now be downloaded for free. The Britannia series is here doi.org/10.5284/1049651 and the JRS series here doi.org/10.5284/1049645 Happy reading!
One of the many losses of the Thirty Years War was the library of Lorsch, founded in the Dark Ages and full of important stuff. Fortunately the loot was carried to Heidelberg, and formed part of the settlement of the war. Much of it ended up in the Vatican. The Bibliotheca Laureshamensis Digital team have been trying to reunite the other scattered books through a virtual library. Sadly the Tertullian of Lorsch seems to be gone for good.
Just because we have artefacts in a museum does not mean that we see them even as the excavators did:
Lisa Brody @LR_Brody: Even the extraordinary amount of pigment preserved on the sculpture from Dura can be better understood through copies made in the field by Herbert Gute. All excavation archives available at Artstor’s Shared Shelf Commons. Link.
There’s lots more in my folder, but that’s probably enough for now! My thanks to all those who freely shared their knowledge online.