Month: September 2020

Cuneiform examples

Judith Kilborn

Here are examples of cuneiform from Sumeria, Iran, and Mexico. I couldn’t find the dates for a few of them, but cuneiform appeared between 4000 BC and the year 0.

Archivio Fotografico – CittĂ  del Messico, 16 febbraio: Interno del Museo Nazionale di Antropologia (Museo Nacional de Antropologia, MNA)

 

Circa 3500 B.C. “Digitising Iran’s cuneiform collection,” https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/arts-blog/digitising-irans-cuneiform-collection

Mexico City, FEB 16: National Museum of Anthropology (Museo Nacional de Antropologia, MNA) on FEB 16, 2017 at Mexico City

Wax tablets

Judith Kilborn

Here are a few examples of wax tablets—one Greek and two Roman. The first two (the Roman examples) come from

 

Roman writing tablets, 1st – 2nd century AD (Public Domain)

 

Newly Discovered Ancient Roman Writing Tablets Provide Snapshots of Roman-Era London

The last example is Greek:

1400-1200 from Knossos, Mycenae, Greece, from the Musée archéologique de MycÚnes. Found at altmarius, http://altmarius.ning.com/profiles/blogs/antiquite-entre-culture-orale-et-culture-ecrite-des-frontieres-mo. Creative Commons License.

The St. John’s Bible

Judith Kilborn

Mary just posted a video about the production of the St. John’s Bible out at the university. The Bible is lovely. Here are a scattering of images that St. John’s posted on its website when they announced its publication:


Suffering Servant, Donald Jackson, Copyright 2006, The Saint John’s Bible and the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, USA.  Used by permission.  All rights reserved.

 

Examples of Book of Hours

Judith Kilborn

Here are some lovely images from various Medieval codexes. According to the Brittanica (https://www.britannica.com/topic/book-of-hours-prayer-book),

Book of hours, devotional book widely popular in the later Middle Ages. The book of hours began to appear in the 13th century, containing prayers to be said at the canonical hours in honour of the Virgin Mary. The growing demand for smaller such books for family and individual use created a prayerbook style enormously popular among the wealthy. The demand for the books was crucial to the development of Gothic illumination. These lavishly decorated texts, of small dimensions, varied in content according to their patrons’ desires.

The illustration for May from Les TrÚs Riches Heures du duc de Berry, manuscript illuminated by the Limbourg brothers, 1416; in the Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.Courtesy of the Musée Condé, Chantilly, Fr.; photograph, Giraudon/Art Resource, New York
Here are other examples from a simple Google Image search. As you see, the illustrations are lovely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Danish-made Malling-Hansen Writing Ball

Judith Kilborn

In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr talks about the Danish-made Malling-Hansen Writing Ball that Friedrich Nietzsche used as his vision was failing and he was worried about having to give up his writing (17). Here’s an image of this Writing Ball from John Farrier’s “Early Typewriter: The Malling-Hansen Writing Ball,” http://www.neatorama.com/2010/10/18/early-typewriter-the-malling-hansen-writing-ball/).

Malling Hansen’s Skrivekugle (Writing Ball), 1865

The Writing Ball’s inventor, Rasmus Hans Johan Malling-Hansen, who patented this device in 1871, was the director of the Denmark’s institute for the hearing impaired in Copenhagen. You can read more about the device at the Neatoshop website.