1.
The Joshua Roll
–
The Roll is in the form of a continuous horizontal scroll or rotulus, common in Chinese art, but all but unique in surviving examples of medieval Christian art. It is made of several joined pieces of vellum, is 31 cm high and about 10 metres long. At roughly this time, the Byzantine empire was enjoying success in its campaigns in the Holy Land. It was originally painted in grisaille, by artists, with partial coloring added later in a separate stage. The lettering is in majuscule and minuscule forms and its origins have been much debated by art historians, and the roll is considered to be one of the most important and difficult problems of Byzantine art. The images are clearly related to later manuscripts of the Octateuch or first eight books of the Old Testament, but where. Steven Wander, professor at the University of Connecticut, claims the images are slanted at ten degrees, macedonian Renaissance Castelseprio - Frescoes in a related style Utrecht Psalter Leo Bible Walther, Ingo F. and Norbert Wolf. Codices Illustres, The worlds most famous illuminated manuscripts,400 to 1600, köln, TASCHEN,2005 Wander, Steven H. 843-1261, a catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Joshua Roll
–
Portion of the Joshua Roll; scenes before the battle at
Gibeon - the moon and sun are seen at the right.
The Joshua Roll
–
A
facsimile mounted on its rollers
2.
Vatican Library
–
The Vatican Apostolic Library, more commonly called the Vatican Library or simply the Vat, is the library of the Holy See, located in Vatican City. Formally established in 1475, although it is older, it is one of the oldest libraries in the world. It has 75,000 codices from throughout history, as well as 1.1 million printed books, the Vatican Library is a research library for history, law, philosophy, science and theology. The Vatican Library is open to anyone who can document their qualifications, photocopies for private study of pages from books published between 1801 and 1990 can be requested in person or by mail. In March 2014, the Vatican Library began an initial project of digitising its collection of manuscripts. The Vatican Secret Archives were separated from the library at the beginning of the 17th century, scholars have traditionally divided the history of the library into five periods, Pre-Lateran, Lateran, Avignon, Pre-Vatican and Vatican. The Pre-Lateran period, comprising the initial days of the library, only a handful of volumes survive from this period, though some are very significant. However, in year, the Lateran Palace was burnt. The Avignon period was during the Avignon Papacy, when seven successive popes resided in Avignon and this period saw a great growth in book collection and record keeping by the popes in Avignon, between the death of Boniface and the 1370s when the Papacy returned to Rome. The Pre-Vatican period ranged from about 1370 to 1446, the library was scattered during this time, with parts in Rome, Avignon and elsewhere. In 1451, bibliophile Pope Nicholas V sought to establish a library at the Vatican. Pope Nicholas also expanded his collection by employing Italian and Byzantine scholars to translate the Greek classics into Latin for his library, the knowledgeable Pope already encouraged the inclusion of pagan classics. Nicolas was important in saving many of the Greek works and writings during this period that he had collected while traveling. In 1455, the collection had grown to 1200 books, of which 400 were in Greek language. Nicholas death in 1455 prevented the completion of his vision of a library, but it was finished in 1475 by his successor Pope Sixtus IV. During the papacy of Sixtus IV, acquisitions were made in theology, philosophy, the number of manuscripts is variously counted as 3,500 in 1475 or 2,527 in 1481, when librarian Bartolomeo Platina produced a signed listing. At the time it was the largest collection of books in the Western world, during his reign, Pope Julius II commissioned the expansion of the building. Around 1587, Pope Sixtus V commissioned the architect Domenico Fontana to construct a new building for the library and it was after this the library became known as the Vatican Library
Vatican Library
–
Pope Sixtus IV Appoints Bartolomeo Platina Prefect of the Vatican Library, fresco by
Melozzo da Forlì, 1477, now in the
Vatican Museums.
Vatican Library
–
Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana (Vatican Apostolic Library)
Vatican Library
–
Ancient Roman sculpture, maybe of
Saint Hippolytus of Rome, found in 1551 at Via Tiburtina, Rome, and now at the Vatican Library
Vatican Library
–
The Sistine Hall of the Vatican Library.
3.
Illuminated manuscript
–
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented with such decoration as initials, borders and miniature illustrations. Comparable Far Eastern and Mesoamerican works are described as painted, islamic manuscripts may be referred to as illuminated, illustrated or painted, though using essentially the same techniques as Western works. This article covers the technical, social and economic history of the subject, for an art-historical account, the earliest surviving substantive illuminated manuscripts are from the period 400 to 600, produced in the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Roman Empire. The significance of these works lies not only in their inherent artistic and historical value, had it not been for the monastic scribes of Late Antiquity, most literature of Greece and Rome would have perished in Europe. As it was, the patterns of textual survivals were shaped by their usefulness to the severely constricted literate group of Christians, the majority of surviving manuscripts are from the Middle Ages, although many survive from the Renaissance, along with a very limited number from Late Antiquity. The majority of manuscripts are of a religious nature. However, especially from the 13th century onward, a number of secular texts were illuminated. Most illuminated manuscripts were created as codices, which had superseded scrolls, a very few illuminated manuscript fragments survive on papyrus, which does not last nearly as long as vellum or parchment. Most medieval manuscripts, illuminated or not, were written on parchment, beginning in the late Middle Ages manuscripts began to be produced on paper. Illuminated manuscripts continued to be produced in the early 16th century, Manuscripts are among the most common items to survive from the Middle Ages, many thousands survive. They are also the best surviving specimens of medieval painting, indeed, for many areas and time periods, they are the only surviving examples of painting. There are a few examples from later periods, the type of book that was most often heavily and richly illuminated, sometimes known as a display book, varied between periods. In the first millennium, these were most likely to be Gospel Books, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Romanesque period saw the creation of many huge illuminated complete Bibles – one in Sweden requires three librarians to lift it. Many Psalters were also illuminated in both this and the Gothic period. Finally, the Book of Hours, very commonly the personal book of a wealthy layperson, was often richly illuminated in the Gothic period. Other books, both liturgical and not, continued to be illuminated at all periods, the Byzantine world also continued to produce manuscripts in its own style, versions of which spread to other Orthodox and Eastern Christian areas. See Medieval art for other regions, periods and types, reusing parchments by scraping the surface and reusing them was a common practice, the traces often left behind of the original text are known as palimpsests. The Gothic period, which saw an increase in the production of these beautiful artifacts, also saw more secular works such as chronicles
Illuminated manuscript
–
In the strictest definition of illuminated manuscript, only manuscripts with gold or silver, like this
miniature of
Christ in Majesty from the
Aberdeen Bestiary (folio 4v), would be considered illuminated.
Illuminated manuscript
–
The decoration of this page from a French
Book of Hours, ca.1400, includes a miniature, initials and borders
Illuminated manuscript
–
A 13th-century manuscript illumination, the earliest known depiction of
Thomas Becket 's assassination
Illuminated manuscript
–
The 11th century Tyniec Sacramentary was written with gold on purple background.
4.
Book of Esther
–
The Book of Esther, also known in Hebrew as the Scroll, is a book in the third section of the Jewish Tanakh and in the Christian Old Testament. It relates the story of a Hebrew woman in Persia, born as Hadassah but known as Esther, the story forms the core of the Jewish festival of Purim, during which it is read aloud twice, once in the evening and again the following morning. Esther is the book in the Bible that does not explicitly mention God. The biblical Book of Esther is set in the Persian capital of Susa in the year of the reign of the Persian king Ahasuerus. Assuming that Ahasuerus is indeed Xerxes I, the events described in Esther began around the years 483–482 BCE, and concluded in March 473 BCE. The Book of Esther consists of an introduction in chapters 1 and 2, the action in chapters 3 to 9,19. The plot is structured around banquets, a word that occurs twenty times in Esther and only 24 times in the rest of the Hebrew bible. This is appropriate given that Esther describes the origin of a Jewish feast, the feast of Purim, the books theme, rather, is the reversal of destiny through a sudden and unexpected turn of events, the Jews seem destined to be destroyed, but instead are saved. The story begins with Ahasuerus, ruler of the Persian Empire, holding a banquet, initially for his court and dignitaries and afterwards for all inhabitants of the capital city. On the seventh day, Ahasuerus orders the queen, Vashti, to come, furious, Ahasuerus has her removed from her position and makes arrangements to choose a new queen from a selection of beautiful young women from throughout the empire. One of these is the Jewish orphan, Esther, after the death of her parents, she was fostered by her cousin, Mordecai. She finds favour in the Kings eyes, and is crowned his new queen, shortly afterwards, Mordecai discovers a plot by two courtiers, Bigthan and Teresh, to assassinate Ahasuerus. The conspirators are apprehended and hanged, and Mordecais service to the King is duly recorded, Ahasuerus appoints Haman as his viceroy. Mordecai, who sits at the gates, falls into Hamans disfavour. Having discovered that Mordecai is Jewish, Haman plans to not just Mordecai. She invites him to a feast in the company of Haman, during the feast, she asks them to attend a further feast the next evening. Meanwhile, Haman is again offended by Mordecai and, at his wifes suggestion, has a built to hang him. Ahasuerus is informed that Mordecai never received any recognition for this, to his surprise and horror, the King instructs Haman to do so to Mordecai
Book of Esther
–
A 13th/14th-century
scroll of the Book of Esther from
Fez,
Morocco, held at the
Musée du quai Branly in
Paris. Traditionally, a scroll of Esther is given only one roller, fixed to its lefthand side, rather than the customary two (see below).
Book of Esther
–
Tanakh (Judaism)
Book of Esther
–
The opening chapter of a hand-written scroll of the Book of Esther, with reader's pointer
Book of Esther
–
Scroll of Esther (Megillah)
5.
Seville
–
Seville is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville, Spain. It is situated on the plain of the river Guadalquivir, the inhabitants of the city are known as sevillanos or hispalenses, after the Roman name of the city, Hispalis. Its Old Town, with an area of 4 square kilometres, the Seville harbour, located about 80 kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean, is the only river port in Spain. Seville is also the hottest major metropolitan area in the geographical Western Europe, Seville was founded as the Roman city of Hispalis. It later became known as Ishbiliya after the Muslim conquest in 712, in 1519, Ferdinand Magellan departed from Seville for the first circumnavigation of the Earth. Spal is the oldest known name for Seville and it appears to have originated during the Phoenician colonisation of the Tartessian culture in south-western Iberia and, according to Manuel Pellicer Catalán, meant lowland in the Phoenician language. During Roman rule, the name was Latinised as Hispalis, nO8DO is the official motto of Seville. It is popularly believed to be a rebus signifying the Spanish No me ha dejado, meaning It has not abandoned me, the eight in the middle represents a madeja, or skein of wool. The emblem is present on the flag and features on city property such as manhole covers. Seville is approximately 2,200 years old, the passage of the various civilisations instrumental in its growth has left the city with a distinct personality, and a large and well-preserved historical centre. The city was known from Roman times as Hispalis, important archaeological remains also exist in the nearby towns of Santiponce and Carmona. The walls surrounding the city were built during the rule of Julius Caesar. Following Roman rule, there were successive conquests of the Roman province of Hispania Baetica by the Vandals, the Suebi, Seville was taken by the Moors, Muslims from North of Africa, during the conquest of Hispalis in 712. It was the capital for the kings of the Umayyad Caliphate, the Moorish urban influences continued and are present in contemporary Seville, for instance in the custom of decorating with herbaje and small fountains the courtyards of the houses. However, most buildings of the Moorish aesthetic actually belong to the Mudéjar style of Islamic art, developed under Christian rule and inspired by the Arabic style. Original Moorish buildings are the Patio del Yeso in the Alcázar, the city walls, in 1247, the Christian King Ferdinand III of Castile and Leon began the conquest of Andalusia. The decisive action took place in May 1248 when Ramon Bonifaz sailed up the Guadalquivir, the city surrendered on 23 November 1248. The citys development continued after the Castilian conquest in 1248, Public buildings constructed including churches, many of which were built in the Mudéjar style, and the Seville Cathedral, built during the 15th century with Gothic architecture
Seville
–
Clockwise from top:
St. Mary of the See Cathedral and
Giralda,
Plaza de España in the
Maria Luisa Park,
Metropol Parasol, the Isabel II ("
Triana ") bridge and the
Torre del Oro.
Seville
–
Flag
Seville
–
View of the
Giralda from the Patio de Banderas (Courtyard of Flags), historic square with remains of Roman, Moorish and Castilian periods.
Seville
–
Cathedral of Saint Mary from Constitución Avenue
6.
Spain
–
By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spains capital and largest city is Madrid, other urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago, in the Middle Ages, the area was conquered by Germanic tribes and later by the Moors. Spain is a democracy organised in the form of a government under a constitutional monarchy. It is a power and a major developed country with the worlds fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP. Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the span is the Phoenician word spy. Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean the land where metals are forged, two 15th-century Spanish Jewish scholars, Don Isaac Abravanel and Solomon ibn Verga, gave an explanation now considered folkloric. Both men wrote in two different published works that the first Jews to reach Spain were brought by ship by Phiros who was confederate with the king of Babylon when he laid siege to Jerusalem. This man was a Grecian by birth, but who had given a kingdom in Spain. He became related by marriage to Espan, the nephew of king Heracles, Heracles later renounced his throne in preference for his native Greece, leaving his kingdom to his nephew, Espan, from whom the country of España took its name. Based upon their testimonies, this eponym would have already been in use in Spain by c.350 BCE, Iberia enters written records as a land populated largely by the Iberians, Basques and Celts. Early on its coastal areas were settled by Phoenicians who founded Western Europe´s most ancient cities Cadiz, Phoenician influence expanded as much of the Peninsula was eventually incorporated into the Carthaginian Empire, becoming a major theater of the Punic Wars against the expanding Roman Empire. After an arduous conquest, the peninsula came fully under Roman Rule, during the early Middle Ages it came under Germanic rule but later, much of it was conquered by Moorish invaders from North Africa. In a process took centuries, the small Christian kingdoms in the north gradually regained control of the peninsula. The last Moorish kingdom fell in the same year Columbus reached the Americas, a global empire began which saw Spain become the strongest kingdom in Europe, the leading world power for a century and a half, and the largest overseas empire for three centuries. Continued wars and other problems led to a diminished status. The Napoleonic invasions of Spain led to chaos, triggering independence movements that tore apart most of the empire, eventually democracy was peacefully restored in the form of a parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Spain joined the European Union, experiencing a renaissance and steady economic growth
Spain
–
Lady of Elche
Spain
–
Flag
Spain
–
Altamira Cave paintings, in
Cantabria.
Spain
–
Celtic castro in
A Guarda,
Galicia.
7.
Papyrus
–
The word papyrus /pəˈpaɪrəs/ refers to a thick precursor to modern paper made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of papyrus joined together side by side and rolled up into a scroll, the plural for such documents is papyri. Papyrus is first known to have used in ancient Egypt. It was also used throughout the Mediterranean region and in Kingdom of Kush, the Ancient Egyptians used papyrus as a writing material, as well as employing it commonly in the construction of other artifacts such as reed boats, mats, rope, sandals, and baskets. Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the fourth millennium BCE, the earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012 and 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf, an ancient Egyptian harbor located on the Red Sea coast. The papyrus rolls describe the last years of building the Great Pyramid of Giza, in the first centuries BCE and CE, papyrus scrolls gained a rival as a writing surface in the form of parchment, which was prepared from animal skins. Sheets of parchment were folded to form quires from which book-form codices were fashioned, early Christian writers soon adopted the codex form, and in the Græco-Roman world, it became common to cut sheets from papyrus rolls to form codices. Codices were an improvement on the scroll, as the papyrus was not pliable enough to fold without cracking. Papyrus had the advantage of being cheap and easy to produce. Unless the papyrus was of quality, the writing surface was irregular. Its last appearance in the Merovingian chancery is with a document of 692, the latest certain dates for the use of papyrus are 1057 for a papal decree, under Pope Victor II, and 1087 for an Arabic document. Its use in Egypt continued until it was replaced by more inexpensive paper introduced by Arabs who originally learned of it from the Chinese, by the 12th century, parchment and paper were in use in the Byzantine Empire, but papyrus was still an option. Papyrus was made in several qualities and prices, pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville described six variations of papyrus which were sold in the Roman market of the day. These were graded by quality based on how fine, firm, white, grades ranged from the superfine Augustan, which was produced in sheets of 13 digits wide, to the least expensive and most coarse, measuring six digits wide. Materials deemed unusable for writing or less than six digits were considered commercial quality and were pasted edge to edge to be used only for wrapping, until the middle of the 19th century, only some isolated documents written on papyrus were known. They did not contain literary works, the first modern discovery of papyri rolls was made at Herculaneum in 1752. Until then, the papyri known had been a few surviving from medieval times. The English word papyrus derives, via Latin, from Greek πάπυρος, Greek has a second word for it, βύβλος
Papyrus
–
Papyrus (P. BM EA 10591 recto column IX, beginning of lines 13-17)
Papyrus
–
An official letter on a papyrus of the
third century B.C.
Papyrus
–
A section of the Egyptian
Book of the Dead written on papyrus
Papyrus
–
Bill of sale for a donkey, papyrus; 19.3 by 7.2 cm, MS Gr SM2223, Houghton Library, Harvard University
8.
Parchment
–
Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of kids, lambs and it may be called animal membrane by libraries and museums that wish to avoid distinguishing between parchment and the more restricted term vellum. Today the term parchment is often used in non-technical contexts to refer to any animal skin, particularly goat, sheep or cow, that has been scraped or dried under tension. Vellum in theory refers exclusively to calfskin, and is used to denote a quality of material. The term parchment originally referred only to the skin of sheep and, occasionally, the word parchment evolved from the name of the city of Pergamon which was a thriving center of parchment production during the Hellenistic period. This account, originated in the writings of Pliny the Elder, is dubious because parchment had been in use in Anatolia, in the 2nd century BC a great library was set up in Pergamon that rivaled the famous Library of Alexandria. Writing on prepared animal skins had a history, however. H. Ibscher, and preserved in the Cairo Museum, a roll of the Twelfth Dynasty now in Berlin, the text now in the British Museum. Though the Assyrians and the Babylonians impressed their cuneiform on clay tablets, early Islamic texts are also found on parchment. In the later Middle Ages, especially the 15th century, parchment was largely replaced by paper for most uses except luxury manuscripts, new techniques in paper milling allowed it to be much cheaper than parchment, it was still made of textile rags and of very high quality. With the advent of printing in the fifteenth century, the demands of printers far exceeded the supply of animal skins for parchment. Although most copies of the Gutenberg Bible are on paper, some were printed on parchment,12 of the 48 surviving copies, in 1490, Johannes Trithemius preferred the older methods, because handwriting placed on parchment will be able to endure a thousand years. But how long will printing last, which is dependent on paper and it lasts for two hundred years that is a long time. In fact high quality paper from this period has survived 500 years or more very well, the heyday of parchment use was during the medieval period, but there has been a growing revival of its use among artists since the late 20th century. Although parchment never stopped being used it had ceased to be a choice for artists supports by the end of 15th century Renaissance. This was partly due to its expense and partly due to its working properties. When the water in paint media touches parchments surface, the collagen melts slightly, forming a bed for the paint
Parchment
–
Central European (Northern) type of finished parchment made of
goatskin stretched on a wooden frame
Parchment
–
Latin
Grant written on fine parchment or
vellum with
seal dated 1329
Parchment
–
A 1385 copy of the
Sachsenspiegel, a German legal code, written on parchment with straps and clasps on the binding
Parchment
–
A Sefer
Torah, the traditional form of the
Hebrew Bible, is a scroll of parchment.
9.
Paper
–
Paper is a thin material produced by pressing together moist fibres of cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets. It is a material with many uses, including writing, printing, packaging, cleaning. The modern pulp and paper industry is global, with China leading its production, the oldest known archaeological fragments of the immediate precursor to modern paper, date to the 2nd century BC in China. The pulp papermaking process is ascribed to Cai Lun, a 2nd-century AD Han court eunuch, with paper as an effective substitute for silk in many applications, China could export silk in greater quantity, contributing to a Golden Age. Because of papers introduction to the West through the city of Baghdad, in the 19th century, industrial manufacture greatly lowered its cost, enabling mass exchange of information and contributing to significant cultural shifts. In 1844, the Canadian inventor Charles Fenerty and the German F. G. Keller independently developed processes for pulping wood fibres, before the industrialisation of the paper production the most common fibre source was recycled fibres from used textiles, called rags. The rags were from hemp, linen and cotton, a process for removing printing inks from recycled paper was invented by German jurist Justus Claproth in 1774. Today this method is called deinking and it was not until the introduction of wood pulp in 1843 that paper production was not dependent on recycled materials from ragpickers. The word paper is etymologically derived from Latin papyrus, which comes from the Greek πάπυρος, although the word paper is etymologically derived from papyrus, the two are produced very differently and the development of the first is distinct from the development of the second. Papyrus is a lamination of natural plant fibres, while paper is manufactured from fibres whose properties have changed by maceration. To make pulp from wood, a chemical pulping process separates lignin from cellulose fibres and this is accomplished by dissolving lignin in a cooking liquor, so that it may be washed from the cellulose, this preserves the length of the cellulose fibres. Paper made from chemical pulps are also known as wood-free papers–not to be confused with paper, this is because they do not contain lignin. The pulp can also be bleached to produce paper, but this consumes 5% of the fibres, chemical pulping processes are not used to make paper made from cotton. There are three main chemical pulping processes, the process dates back to the 1840s and it was the dominant method extent before the second world war. Most pulping operations using the process are net contributors to the electricity grid or use the electricity to run an adjacent paper mill. Another advantage is that this process recovers and reuses all inorganic chemical reagents, soda pulping is another specialty process used to pulp straws, bagasse and hardwoods with high silicate content. There are two major mechanical pulps, thermomechanical pulp and groundwood pulp, in the TMP process, wood is chipped and then fed into steam heated refiners, where the chips are squeezed and converted to fibres between two steel discs. In the groundwood process, debarked logs are fed into grinders where they are pressed against rotating stones to be made into fibres
Paper
–
Different types of paper:
carton,
tissue paper
Paper
–
Hemp wrapping paper, China, circa 100 BC.
Paper
–
The microscopic structure of paper:
Micrograph of paper
autofluorescing under
ultraviolet illumination. The individual fibres in this sample are around 10
µm in diameter.
Paper
–
Card and paper stock for
crafts use comes in a wide variety of textures and colors.
10.
Boustrophedon
–
Boustrophedon /ˌbuːstrəˈfiːdən/ is a kind of bi-directional text, mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions. Every other line of writing is flipped or reversed, with reversed letters, rather than going left-to-right as in modern European languages, or right-to-left as in Arabic and Hebrew, alternate lines in boustrophedon must be read in opposite directions. Also, the characters are reversed, or mirrored. It was a way of writing in stone in Ancient Greece. By analogy, the term may be used in areas to describe this kind of alternation of motion or writing. For example, it is used to describe the print head motion of certain dot matrix printers. In that case, while the print head moves in opposite directions on alternate lines, the Hungarian folklorist Gyula Sebestyén writes that ancient boustrophedon writing resembles how the Hungarian rovás-sticks of old Hungarian writing were made by shepherds. The notcher holds the stick in his left hand, cutting the letters with his right hand from right to left. When the first side is complete, he flips the stick over vertically, when unfolded horizontally, the final result is writing which starts from right to left, and continues from left to right in the next row, with letters turned upside down. Sebestyén states that the ancient boustrophedon writings were copied from such wooden sticks with cut letters, the wooden boards and other incised artifacts of Rapa Nui also bear a boustrophedonic script called Rongorongo, which remains undeciphered. In Rongorongo the text in alternate lines was rotated 180 degrees rather than mirrored, the Luwian language had a hieroglyph version, hieroglyphic Luwian, that read boustrophedon. The Hieroglyphic Luwian is read boustrophedon, with the direction of any individual line pointing into the front of the animals or body parts constituting certain hieroglyphs. However, unlike Egyptian hieroglyphs with their numerous ideograms and logograms which show an easy directionality, a modern example of boustrophedonics is the numbering scheme of sections within survey townships in the United States and Canada. In both countries, survey townships are divided into a 6-by-6 grid of 36 sections, public Land Survey System, Section 1 of a township is in the northeast corner, and the numbering proceeds boustrophedonically until Section 36 is reached in the southeast corner. Canadas Dominion Land Survey also uses boustrophedonic numbering, but starts at the southeast corner, Rongorongo is the current theory of the first written language on Easter Island. It is believed to be written in boustrophedonics, yet no accurate translation has been deciphered, Rongorongo shares many characteristics with other Polynesian languages groups. The term is used by postmen in the United Kingdom to describe street numbering which proceeds serially in one direction then turns back in the other and this is in contrast to the more common method of odd and even numbers on opposite sides of the street. In art history, it means that you read from bottom left in a series of pictures
Boustrophedon
–
Ancient Greek boustrophedon inscription,
Gortyn code, Crete, 5th century BC
Boustrophedon
–
The
Forum inscription (one of the oldest known Latin inscriptions) is written boustrophedon, albeit irregularly: reading from top to bottom, lines 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14, 16 run from right to left; lines 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 13, and 15, from left to right; 8, 9, and 16 are upside down. (From a rubbing by
Domenico Comparetti.)
Boustrophedon
–
Notice in Avoiuli script written using boustrophedon
11.
Torah
–
The Torah is the central reference of Judaism. It has a range of meanings and it can most specifically mean the first five books of the twenty-four books of the Tanakh, and it usually includes the rabbinic commentaries. In rabbinic literature the word Torah denotes both the five books and the Oral Torah, the Oral Torah consists of interpretations and amplifications which according to rabbinic tradition have been handed down from generation to generation and are now embodied in the Talmud and Midrash. According to the Midrash, the Torah was created prior to the creation of the world, traditionally, the words of the Torah are written on a scroll by a scribe in Hebrew. A Torah portion is read publicly at least once every three days in the presence of a congregation, reading the Torah publicly is one of the bases for Jewish communal life. The word Torah in Hebrew is derived from the root ירה, the meaning of the word is therefore teaching, doctrine, or instruction, the commonly accepted law gives a wrong impression. Other translational contexts in the English language include custom, theory, guidance, the earliest name for the first part of the Bible seems to have been The Torah of Moses. This title, however, is neither in the Torah itself. It appears in Joshua and Kings, but it cannot be said to refer there to the entire corpus, in contrast, there is every likelihood that its use in the post-Exilic works was intended to be comprehensive. Other early titles were The Book of Moses and The Book of the Torah, Christian scholars usually refer to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible as the Pentateuch, a term first used in the Hellenistic Judaism of Alexandria, meaning five books, or as the Law. The Torah starts from the beginning of Gods creating the world, through the beginnings of the people of Israel, their descent into Egypt, and it ends with the death of Moses, just before the people of Israel cross to the promised land of Canaan. Interspersed in the narrative are the teachings given explicitly or implicitly embedded in the narrative. This is followed by the story of the three patriarchs, Joseph and the four matriarchs, God gives to the patriarchs a promise of the land of Canaan, but at the end of Genesis the sons of Jacob end up leaving Canaan for Egypt due to a regional famine. They had heard there was a grain storage and distribution facility in Egypt. Exodus begins the story of Gods revelation to his people of Israel through Moses, Moses receives the Torah from God, and teaches His laws and Covenant to the people of Israel. It also talks about the first violation of the covenant when the Golden Calf was constructed, Exodus includes the instructions on building the Tabernacle and concludes with its actual construction. Leviticus begins with instructions to the Israelites on how to use the Tabernacle, leviticus 26 provides a detailed list of rewards for following Gods commandments and a detailed list of punishments for not following them. Numbers tells how Israel consolidated itself as a community at Sinai, set out from Sinai to move towards Canaan, even Moses sins and is told he would not live to enter the land
Torah
–
Sefer Torah at old
Glockengasse Synagogue (reconstruction),
Cologne
Torah
–
Silver Torah Case,
Ottoman Empire Museum of Jewish Art and History
Torah
–
Reading of the Torah
Torah
–
Tanakh (Judaism)
12.
History of scrolls
–
A scroll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing. The history of scrolls dates back to ancient Egypt, Scrolls were the first form of editable record keeping texts, used in Eastern Mediterranean ancient Egyptian civilizations. Parchment scrolls were used by early civilizations before the codex or bound book with pages and was invented by the Latins in the 1st century AD. Nevertheless, scrolls were more highly regarded than codices until well into Roman times where they were written in single latitudinal column. The Hebrew tradition assumes that the Torah was copied by Moses onto a scroll made from skin of a kosher animal, rather than papyrus as in Dynastic Egypt. Since there is no evidence for Moses and the events related in the Torah. The meticulous process of hand-copying a scroll takes about 2,000 person-hours, throughout the centuries, Jewish scribes have adhered to the following guidelines, A Torah Scroll is disqualified if even a single letter is added or deleted. The scribe must be a learned, pious Jew, who has special training. All materials must conform to specifications, and be prepared specifically for the purpose of writing a Torah Scroll. The scribe may not write one letter into a Torah Scroll from memory. The scribe must say every word out loud before copying it from the correct text, every letter must have sufficient white space surrounding it. If one letter touches another in any spot, it invalidates the entire scroll. If a single letter is so marred that it cannot be read at all, or resembles another letter, whether due to the writing, or a hole, tear or smudge, this invalidates the entire scroll. Each letter must be sufficiently legible so that even an ordinary schoolchild could distinguish it from other, the scribe must put precise space between words, so that one word will not look like two words, or two words look like one word. The scribe must not alter the design of the sections, and must conform to particular line-lengths, a Torah Scroll in which any mistake has been found, cannot be used, and must be fixed within 30 days, or buried. The Torah scroll contains 304,805 letters, other books of the Tanakh are also written in scroll form, as well as the small mezuzah scrolls found in the door frames of most orthodox, conservative and reform Jewish households. Some Jewish families own their own Megillah scroll for use during Purim, there is a difference between the כְּתִיב, what is and must be written, and the קְרֵי, what is read. The Jewish communities in these countries used the techniques to manufacture scrolls
History of scrolls
–
Scroll of the
Book of Esther,
Seville,
Spain
History of scrolls
–
Song Dynasty copy of the Wise and Benevolent Women, original by
Gu Kaizhi, 13th century,
Palace Museum.
History of scrolls
–
Hanging scrolls of
calligraphy on display,
Shanghai
13.
Roman portraiture
–
Roman portraiture was one of the most significant periods in the development of portrait art. Originating from Ancient Rome, it continued for almost five centuries, Roman portraiture is characterised by unusual realism and the desire to convey images of nature in the high quality style often seen in Ancient Roman art. Some busts even seem to show clinical signs, several images and statues made in marble and bronze have survived in small numbers. Roman funerary art includes many such as married couple funerary reliefs. Portrait sculpture from the Republican era tends to be more modest, realistic. Since most emperors from Augustus on were deified, some images are somewhat idealized, the Romans also depicted warriors and heroic adventures, in the spirit of the Greeks who came before them. The origin of the realism of Roman portraits may be, according to some scholars and these death masks were taken from bodies and kept in a home altar. Besides wax, masks were made from bronze, marble and terracotta, the molds for the masks were made directly from the deceased, giving historians an accurate representation of typically Roman features. In the days of the Republic, full-size statues of political officials, such an honor was provided by the decision of the Senate, usually in commemoration of victories, triumphs and political achievements. These portraits were usually accompanied by a dedicatory inscription, if the person commemorated with a portrait was found to have committed a crime, the portrait would be destroyed. Development of the Roman portrait was associated with increased interest in the individual, at the heart of the artistic structure of many Roman portraits is the clear and rigorous transfer of unique features of the model, while still keeping the general style very similar. Roman portraiture of the Imperial period includes works created throughout the provinces, often combining Greek, Roman, imagines Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Il problema del ritratto, in Larte classica, Editori Riuniti, Rome 1984. Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli e Mario Torelli, Larte dellantichità classica, Etruria-Roma, Utet, pierluigi De Vecchi & Elda Cerchiari, I tempi dellarte, volume 1, Bompiani, Milan 1999
Roman portraiture
–
Portrait of
Lucius Verus
Roman portraiture
–
Veristic portrait bust of an old man, head covered (
capite velato), either a priest or
paterfamilias (marble, mid-1st century BC)
Roman portraiture
–
L. Calpurnius Piso Pontifex, late 1st century BC–early 1st century AD
Roman portraiture
–
Husband and wife from Pompeii, 20–30 AD (
Portrait of Paquius Proculo)
14.
Fresco
–
Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster. Because of the makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours, many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later, new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, if the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. This area is called the giornata, and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, if mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area—or to change them later, a secco. An indispensable component of this process is the carbonatation of the lime, the eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark outlining of his central figures within his frescoes, in a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has fallen off. One of the first painters in the period to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist, a secco or fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a medium, such as egg. Blue was a problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli. By the end of the century this had largely displaced buon fresco
Fresco
–
Fresco in the church Mariä Verkündigung in Fuchstal,
Bavaria, Germany from Thomas Springer
Fresco
–
Fresco
Sistine Chapel in the
Vatican, Rome, Italy.
Fresco
–
Etruscan fresco of Velia Velcha from the
Tomb of Orcus,
Tarquinia.
Fresco
–
Fresco of "
Sappho " from
Pompeii, c. 50 CE.
15.
Pompeii
–
Pompeii was an ancient Roman town-city near modern Naples, in the Campania region of Italy, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the area, was mostly destroyed and buried under 4 to 6 m of volcanic ash. Researchers believe that the town was founded in the seventh or sixth century BC by the Osci or Oscans. It came under the domination of Rome in the 4th century BC, by the time of its destruction,160 years later, its population was estimated at 11,000 people, and the city had a complex water system, an amphitheatre, gymnasium, and a port. The eruption destroyed the city, killing its inhabitants and burying it under tons of ash, the site was lost for about 1,500 years until its initial rediscovery in 1599 and broader rediscovery almost 150 years later by Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre in 1748. The objects that lay beneath the city have been preserved for centuries because of the lack of air and these artefacts provide an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city during the Pax Romana. During the excavation, plaster was used to fill in the voids in the ash layers that once held human bodies and this allowed archaeologists to see the exact position the person was in when he or she died. Pompeii has been a tourist destination for over 250 years, today it has UNESCO World Heritage Site status and is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy, with approximately 2.5 million visitors every year. Pompeii in Latin is a second declension plural, the ruins of Pompeii are located near the modern suburban town of Pompei. It stands on a formed by a lava flow to the north of the mouth of the Sarno River. Today it is some distance inland, but in ancient times was nearer to the coast, Pompeii is about 8 km away from Mount Vesuvius. It covered a total of 64 to 67 hectares and was home to approximately 11,000 to 11,500 people on the basis of household counts and it was a major city in the region of Campania. Three sheets of sediment have been found on top of the lava that lies below the city and, mixed in with the sediment, archaeologists have found bits of bone, pottery shards. Carbon dating has placed the oldest of these layers from the 8th–6th centuries BC, the other two strata are separated either by well-developed soil layers or Roman pavement, and were laid in the 4th century BC and 2nd century BC. It is theorized that the layers of the sediment were created by large landslides. The town was founded around the 7th-6th century BC by the Osci or Oscans and it had already been used as a safe port by Greek and Phoenician sailors. According to Strabo, Pompeii was also captured by the Etruscans, and in recent excavations have shown the presence of Etruscan inscriptions. Pompeii was captured for the first time by the Greek colony of Cumae, allied with Syracuse, in the 5th century BC, the Samnites conquered it, the new rulers imposed their architecture and enlarged the town
Pompeii
–
View into a street of Pompeii
Pompeii
–
The Temple of Jupiter with
Vesuvius in the distance
Pompeii
–
Pompeii, Italy. Pompeii - Forum and Vesuvius. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection
Pompeii
–
Illustrated reconstruction, from a
CyArk /
University of Ferrara research partnership, of how the
Temple of Apollo may have looked before Mt. Vesuvius erupted
16.
Laurel wreath
–
A laurel wreath is a circular wreath made of interlocking branches and leaves of the bay laurel, an aromatic broadleaf evergreen, or later from spineless butchers broom or cherry laurel. In Greek mythology, Apollo is represented wearing a wreath on his head. Whereas ancient laurel wreaths are most often depicted as a horseshoe shape, in common modern idiomatic usage it refers to a victory. In some countries the laurel wreath is used as a symbol of the masters degree, the wreath is given to young masters at the university graduation ceremony. The word laureate in poet laureate refers to the laurel wreath, the medieval Florentine poet and philosopher Dante Alighieri, a graduate of the Sicilian School, is often represented in paintings and sculpture wearing a laurel wreath. In Italy, the term laureato is used in to refer to any student who has graduated, right after the graduation ceremony, or laurea in Italian, the student receives a laurel wreath to wear for the rest of the day. This tradition originated at the University of Padua and has spread in the last two centuries to all Italian universities, at Connecticut College in the United States, members of the junior class carry a laurel chain, which the seniors pass through during commencement. It represents nature and the continuation of life from year to year, at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, USA, laurel has been a fixture of commencement traditions since 1900, when graduating students carried or wore laurel wreaths. In 1902, the chain of laurel was introduced, since then, tradition has been for seniors to parade around the campus, carrying. The mountain laurel represents the bay used by the Romans in wreaths. At Reed College in Portland, Oregon, United States, members of the senior class receive laurel wreaths upon submitting their senior thesis in May, the tradition stems from the use of laurel wreaths in athletic competitions, the seniors have crossed the finish line, so to speak. In Sweden, those receiving a doctorate or a doctorate at the Faculty of Philosophy. In Finland, in University of Helsinki a laurel wreath is given during the ceremony of conferral for masterss degree, doctors wear special kind of Doctoral hat. The laurel wreath is a motif in architecture, furniture. The laurel wreath is seen carved in the stone and decorative works of Robert Adam, and in Federal, Regency, Directoire. In decorative arts, especially during the Empire period, the wreath is seen woven in textiles, inlaid in marquetry. Alfa Romeo added a wreath to their logo after they won the inaugural Automobile World Championship in 1925 with the P2 racing car. Laurel wreaths are used in heraldry
Laurel wreath
–
A golden laurel wreath, origin: probably
Cyprus, 4th—3rd century BC.
Laurel wreath
–
A laurel wreath decorating a memorial at the
Folketing, the national parliament of Denmark.
Laurel wreath
–
Ovid with laurel wreath, common in poets.
Laurel wreath
–
Alexander Garden Grille
17.
Roman Empire
–
Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
Roman Empire
–
The
Augustus of Prima Porta (early 1st century AD)
Roman Empire
–
Aureus of
Augustus, the first
Roman Emperor.
Roman Empire
–
A segment of the ruins of Hadrian's Wall in northern England
Roman Empire
–
A 5th-century
papyrus showing a parallel Latin-Greek text of a speech by
Cicero
18.
Ancient Egyptian civilization
–
Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is one of six civilizations to arise independently, Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh Narmer. In the aftermath of Alexander the Greats death, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter and this Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province. The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture, the predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world and its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history, nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the climate of Northern Africa became increasingly hot and dry. In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was less arid than it is today. Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazing ungulates, foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, and this is also the period when many animals were first domesticated. The largest of these cultures in upper Egypt was the Badari, which probably originated in the Western Desert, it was known for its high quality ceramics, stone tools. The Badari was followed by the Amratian and Gerzeh cultures, which brought a number of technological improvements, as early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes. In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan, establishing a power center at Hierakonpolis, and later at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile. They also traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the desert to the west. Royal Nubian burials at Qustul produced artifacts bearing the oldest-known examples of Egyptian dynastic symbols, such as the crown of Egypt. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines. During the last predynastic phase, the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a system of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language. The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early Sumerian-Akkadian civilisation of Mesopotamia, the third-century BC Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the long line of pharaohs from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a system still used today
Ancient Egyptian civilization
–
The
Great Sphinx and the
pyramids of Giza are among the most recognizable symbols of the civilization of ancient Egypt.
Ancient Egyptian civilization
–
A typical Naqada II jar decorated with gazelles. (Predynastic Period)
Ancient Egyptian civilization
–
The
Narmer Palette depicts the unification of the Two Lands.
19.
Israelites
–
The Israelites were a Semitic-speaking people of the ancient Near East, who inhabited a part of Canaan during the tribal and monarchic periods. The ancient Israelites are considered to be an outgrowth of the indigenous Canaanite populations that inhabited the Southern Levant, Syria, ancient Israel. In the period of the monarchy it was only used to refer to the inhabitants of the northern kingdom. The Israelites were also known as the Hebrews and the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the Jews are named after and also descended from the southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah, particularly the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and partially Levi. The word Jews is found in 2 Kings, Chronicles, and in passages in the Book of Jeremiah, the Book of Zechariah. The Kingdom of Israel, often called the Northern Kingdom of Israel, contained all the tribes except for the tribes of Judah, following its conquest by Assyria, these ten tribes were allegedly dispersed and lost to history, and they are henceforth known as the Ten Lost Tribes. Jewish tradition holds that Samaria was so named because the mountainous terrain was used to keep Guard for incoming enemy attacks. According to Samaritan tradition, however, the Samaritan ethnonym is not derived from the region of Samaria, thus, according to Samaritan tradition, the region was named Samaria after them, not vice versa. In Modern Hebrew, the Samaritans are called Shomronim, while in Samaritan Hebrew they call themselves Shamerim, in Judaism, an Israelite is, broadly speaking, a lay member of the Jewish ethnoreligious group, as opposed to the priestly orders of Kohanim and Levites. In texts of Jewish law such as the Mishnah and Gemara, the term יהודי, meaning Jew, is rarely used, Samaritans commonly refer to themselves and to Jews collectively as Israelites, and they describe themselves as the Israelite Samaritans. The name Israel first appears in the Hebrew Bible in Genesis 32,29, the Hebrew Bible etymologizes the name as from yisra to prevail over or to struggle/wrestle with, and el, God, the divine. The name Israel first appears in non-biblical sources c.1209 BCE, the inscription is very brief and says simply, Israel is laid waste and his seed is not. The inscription refers to a people, not to an individual or a nation-state, in modern Hebrew, bnei yisrael can denote the Jewish people at any time in history, it is typically used to emphasize Jewish religious identity. From the period of the Mishna the term Yisrael acquired a narrower meaning of Jews of legitimate birth other than Levites. In modern Hebrew this contrasts with the term Yisraeli, a citizen of the modern State of Israel, the term Hebrew has Eber as an eponymous ancestor. It is used synonymously with Israelites, or as a term for historical speakers of the Hebrew language in general. Today, Jews and Samaritans both recognize each other as communities with an authentic Israelite origin, the terms Jews and Samaritans largely replaced the title Children of Israel as the commonly used ethnonym for each respective community. The name Yahweh, the god of the later Israelites, may indicate connections with the region of Mount Seir in Edom, the Canaanites were also the first people, as far as is known, to have used an alphabet
Israelites
–
Mosaic of the 12 Tribes of Israel, from a synagogue wall in Jerusalem
Israelites
–
The
Merneptah stele. While alternative translations exist, the majority of
biblical archaeologists translate a set of hieroglyphs as "Israel", representing the first instance of the name Israel in the historical record.
Israelites
–
Landscape of
Samaria in the territory of
Ephraim
20.
Codex
–
A codex is a book constructed of a number of sheets of paper, vellum, papyrus, or similar materials, with hand-written contents. The book is bound by stacking the pages and fixing one edge. Some codices are continuously folded like a concertina, the alternative to paged codex format for a long document is the continuous scroll. Examples of folded codices include the Maya codices, sometimes people use the term for a book-style format, including modern printed books but excluding folded books. The Romans developed the form from wooden writing tablets, the codexs gradual replacement of the scroll—the dominant book form in the ancient world—has been called the most important advance in book making before the invention of printing. The codex transformed the shape of the book itself, and offered a form that lasted for centuries, the spread of the codex is often associated with the rise of Christianity, which adopted the format for use with the Bible early on. In fact, any combination of codices and scrolls with papyrus and parchment is technically feasible, the codex began to replace the scroll almost as soon as it was invented. In Egypt, by the century, the codex outnumbered the scroll by ten to one based on surviving examples. By the sixth century, the scroll had almost vanished as a medium for literature, technically, even modern paperbacks are codices, but publishers and scholars reserve the term for manuscript books produced from Late antiquity until the Middle Ages. The scholarly study of manuscripts from the point of view of the bookbinding craft is called codicology. The study of ancient documents in general is called paleography, the Romans used precursors made of reusable wax-covered tablets of wood for taking notes and other informal writings. Two ancient polyptychs, a pentatych and octotych, excavated at Herculaneum used a connecting system that presages later sewing on of thongs or cords. Julius Caesar may have been the first Roman to reduce scrolls to pages in the form of a note-book. At the turn of the 1st century AD, a kind of folded parchment notebook called pugillares membranei in Latin became commonly used for writing in the Roman Empire, theodore Cressy Skeat theorized that this form of notebook was invented in Rome and then spread rapidly to the Near East. Codices are described in works by the Classical Latin poet. He wrote a series of five couplets meant to accompany gifts of literature that Romans exchanged during the festival of Saturnalia. ”Early codices of parchment or papyrus appear to have widely used as personal notebooks. The parchment notebook pages were commonly washed or scraped for re-use and consequently, writings in a codex were often considered informal, as early as the early 2nd century, there is evidence that a codex—usually of papyrus—was the preferred format among Christians. In the library of the Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum, however, in the Nag Hammadi library, hidden about AD390, all texts are codices
Codex
–
The
Codex Gigas, 13th century, Bohemia.
Codex
–
Codices largely replaced scrolls similar to this.
Codex
–
Reproduced Roman-style
wax tablet, from which the codex evolved
Codex
–
Early medieval bookcase containing about ten codices depicted in the
Codex Amiatinus (ca. 700)
21.
Book
–
A book is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other materials, fastened together to hinge at one side, with text and/or images printed in ink. A single sheet within a book is a leaf, and each side of a leaf is a page, a set of text-filled or illustrated pages produced in electronic format for reading on a computer screen, smartphone or e-reader device is known as an electronic book, or e-book. The term books may refer the body of works of literature. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals, in novels and sometimes other types of books, a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books. An avid reader or collector of books or a lover is a bibliophile or colloquially. A shop where books are bought and sold is a bookshop or bookstore, Books are also sold in some department stores, drugstores and newspaper vendors. Books can also be borrowed from libraries, google has estimated that as of 2010, approximately 130,000,000 distinct titles had been published. In some wealthier nations, printed books are giving way to the usage of electronic or e-books, the word book comes from Old English bōc, which in turn comes from the Germanic root *bōk-, cognate to beech. Similarly, in Slavic languages буква is cognate with beech, in Russian and in Serbian and Macedonian, the word букварь or буквар refers specifically to a primary school textbook that helps young children master the techniques of reading and writing. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood, similarly, the Latin word codex, meaning a book in the modern sense, originally meant block of wood. When writing systems were created in ancient civilizations, a variety of objects, such as stone, clay, tree bark, metal sheets, the study of such inscriptions forms a major part of history. The study of inscriptions is known as epigraphy, the Ancient Egyptians would often write on papyrus, a plant grown along the Nile River. At first the words were not separated from other and there was no punctuation. Texts were written right to left, left to right. The technical term for that last type of writing is boustrophedon, a tablet might be defined as a physically robust writing medium, suitable for casual transport and writing. See also stylus, the instrument used to write on a tablet, clay tablets were flattened and mostly dry pieces of clay that could be easily carried, and impressed with a stylus. They were used as a medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age. Tablets were used by traders to record sales of such as bushels of grain
Book
–
Books
Book
–
Sumerian language cuneiform script
clay tablet, 2400–2200 BC
Book
–
Egyptian papyrus showing the god
Osiris and the weighing of the heart.
Book
–
A Chinese
bamboo book meets the modern definition of Codex
22.
Latins
–
Latins referred originally to an Italic tribe in ancient central Italy. As Roman power spread Latin culture, Latins came to mean anyone who lives in a Latinized culture, the original Latins were an Italic tribe inhabiting central Italy, in present-day Lazio. In the late 15th–16th centuries, a millennium after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Portugal, Spain, in consequence, by the mid-19th century, the former American colonies of these nations became known as Latin America and this regions inhabitants as Latin Americans. The Latins were an ancient Italic people of the Latium region in central Italy, although they lived in independent city-states, they spoke a common language, held common religious beliefs, and shared a sense of kinship, expressed in the myth that all Latins descend from Latinus. Latinus was worshiped on Mons Albanus during a festival attended by all Latins, including those from Rome. The Latin cities extended common rights of residence and trade to one another, romes territorial ambitions united the rest of the Latins against it in 341 BC, but in the end Rome won in 338 BC. Consequently, some of the Latin states were incorporated within the Roman state, others became Roman allies and enjoyed certain privileges. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, many Europeans held on to the Latin identity, more specifically, in the sense of the Romans, as members of the Empire. In the Eastern Roman Empire, and the broader Greek-Orthodox world and it was generally a negative characterization, especially after the 1054 schism. Latins is still used by the Orthodox church communities, but only in a theological context, the Holy Roman Empire was founded centuries after the fall of Rome but brandished the name of the Roman people and honoured the king with the title King of the Romans. Despite this, the Holy Roman Empire was largely a Germanic affair with German kings, strong Roman legal and cultural traditions characterize these nations. Latin Europe is a subdivision of Europe, along with Germanic Europe. The Latin European-influenced region of the Americas came to be called Latin America in the 19th century, the French Emperor Napoleon III is often credited with this naming. The term is used to refer to Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, namely Hispanic America. The majority of Latin Americans have Latin European ancestry, notably Italian, Spanish, French, Latin peoples Latin Rights Latin Union Distinguishing the terms, Latins and Romans
Latins
–
Ligures
23.
Manuscript
–
A manuscript is any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to being mechanically printed or reproduced in some automated way. More recently, it is understood to be a written, typed, or word-processed copy of a work. Before the arrival of printing, all documents and books were manuscripts, manuscripts are not defined by their contents, which may combine writing with mathematical calculations, maps, explanatory figures or illustrations. Manuscripts may be in form, scrolls or in codex format. Illuminated manuscripts are enriched with pictures, border decorations, elaborately embossed initial letters or full-page illustrations. The traditional abbreviations are MS for manuscript and MSS for manuscripts, while the forms MS. ms or ms. for singular, and MSS. mss or mss. for plural are also accepted. The second s is not simply the plural, by an old convention, it doubles the last letter of the abbreviation to express the plural, just as pp. means pages. Before the invention of printing in China or by moveable type in a printing press in Europe. Historically, manuscripts were produced in form of scrolls or books, manuscripts were produced on vellum and other parchment, on papyrus, and on paper. In Russia birch bark documents as old as from the 11th century have survived, in India, the palm leaf manuscript, with a distinctive long rectangular shape, was used from ancient times until the 19th century. Paper spread from China via the Islamic world to Europe by the 14th century, when Greek or Latin works were published, numerous professional copies were made simultaneously by scribes in a scriptorium, each making a single copy from an original that was declaimed aloud. Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash preserved some of the Roman library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, ironically, the manuscripts that were being most carefully preserved in the libraries of antiquity are virtually all lost. Originally, all books were in manuscript form, in China, and later other parts of East Asia, woodblock printing was used for books from about the 7th century. The earliest dated example is the Diamond Sutra of 868, in the Islamic world and the West, all books were in manuscript until the introduction of movable type printing in about 1450. Manuscript copying of books continued for a least a century, as printing remained expensive, private or government documents remained hand-written until the invention of the typewriter in the late 19th century. In the Philippines, for example, as early as 900AD, specimen documents were not inscribed by stylus and this type of document was rare compared to the usual leaves and bamboo staves that were inscribed. However, neither the leaves nor paper were as durable as the document in the hot
Manuscript
–
Christ Pantocrator seated in a capital "U" in an
illuminated manuscript from the Badische Landesbibliothek, Germany.
Manuscript
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10th-century minuscule manuscript of
Thucydides 's
History of the Peloponnesian War
Manuscript
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Armenian Manuscript
Manuscript
24.
Kingdom of Scotland
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The Kingdom of Scotland was a state in northwest Europe traditionally said to have been founded in 843, which joined with the Kingdom of England to form a unified Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. Its territories expanded and shrank, but it came to occupy the third of the island of Great Britain. It suffered many invasions by the English, but under Robert I it fought a war of independence. In 1603, James VI of Scotland became King of England, in 1707, the two kingdoms were united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain under the terms of the Acts of Union. The Crown was the most important element of government, the Scottish monarchy in the Middle Ages was a largely itinerant institution, before Edinburgh developed as a capital city in the second half of the 15th century. The Scottish Crown adopted the conventional offices of western European courts, Parliament also emerged as a major legal institution, gaining an oversight of taxation and policy, but was never as central to the national life as its counterpart in England. In the 17th century, the creation of Justices of Peace, the continued existence of courts baron and the introduction of kirk sessions helped consolidate the power of local lairds. Scots law developed into a system in the Middle Ages and was reformed and codified in the 16th and 17th centuries. Under James IV the legal functions of the council were rationalised, in 1532, the College of Justice was founded, leading to the training and professionalisation of lawyers. David I is the first Scottish king known to have produced his own coinage, Early Scottish coins were virtually identical in silver content to English ones, but from about 1300 their silver content began to depreciate more rapidly than the English coins. At the union of the Crowns in 1603 the Scottish pound was fixed at only one-twelfth the value of the English pound, the Bank of Scotland issued pound notes from 1704. Scottish currency was abolished by the Act of Union, Scotland is half the size of England and Wales in area, but has roughly the same length of coastline. Geographically Scotland is divided between the Highlands and Islands and the Lowlands, the Highlands had a relatively short growing season, which was further shortened during the Little Ice Age. From Scotlands foundation to the inception of the Black Death, the population had grown to a million, following the plague and it expanded in the first half of the 16th century, reaching roughly 1.2 million by the 1690s. Significant languages in the kingdom included Gaelic, Old English, Norse and French. Christianity was introduced into Scotland from the 6th century, in the Norman period the Scottish church underwent a series of changes that led to new monastic orders and organisation. During the 16th century, Scotland underwent a Protestant Reformation that created a predominately Calvinist national kirk, there were a series of religious controversies that resulted in divisions and persecutions. The Scottish Crown developed naval forces at various points in its history, Land forces centred around the large common army, but adopted European innovations from the 16th century, and many Scots took service as mercenaries and as soldiers for the English Crown
Kingdom of Scotland
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James VI, whose inheritance of the thrones of England and Ireland created a dynastic union in 1603
Kingdom of Scotland
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Flag
Kingdom of Scotland
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Coronation of
Alexander III of Scotland at
Scone Abbey; beside him are the
Mormaers of Strathearn and
Fife while his genealogy is recited by a royal poet.
Kingdom of Scotland
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The
Regiam Majestatem is the oldest surviving written digest of Scots law.
25.
Herculaneum papyri
–
The Herculaneum papyri are more than 1,800 papyri found in Herculaneum in the 18th century, carbonized by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79. The papyri, containing a number of Greek philosophical texts, come from the only surviving library from antiquity that exists in its entirety, most of the works discovered are associated with the Epicurean philosopher and poet Philodemus of Gadara. In 1752, workmen of the Bourbon royal family accidentally discovered what is now known as the Villa of the Papyri, there may still be a lower section of the Villas collection that remains buried. In the 18th century, the first digs began, the excavation appeared closer to mining projects, as mineshafts were dug, and horizontal subterranean galleries were installed. Workers would place objects in baskets and send them back up, with the backing of Charles III of Spain, Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre headed the systematic excavation of Herculaneum with Karl Jakob Weber. Due to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79AD, bundles of scrolls were carbonized by the heat of the pyroclastic flows. This intense parching took place over a short period of time, in a room deprived of oxygen, resulting in the scrolls carbonisation into compact. They were then preserved by the layers of cement-like rock and it is uncertain how many papyri were originally found as many of the scrolls were destroyed by workmen or when scholars extracted them from the volcanic tuff. The official list amounts to 1,814 rolls and fragments, the inventory now comprises 1826 papyri More than 340 are almost complete, about 970 are partly decayed and partly decipherable, and more than 500 are merely charred fragments. In 1802, King Ferdinand IV of Naples offered six rolls to Napoleon Bonaparte in a diplomatic move, in 1803, along with other treasures, the scrolls were transported by Francesco Carelli. Upon receiving the gift, Bonaparte then gave the scrolls to Institut de France under charge of Gaspard Monge, in 1810, eighteen unrolled papyri were given to George IV, four of which he presented to the Bodleian Library, the rest are now mainly in the British Library. In 1802, King Ferdinand IV of Naples appointed Rev. John Hayter to assist the process, from 1802 to 1806, Hayter unrolled and partly deciphered some 200 papyri. These copies are held in Bodleian Library, where they are known as the Oxford Facsimiles of the Herculaneum Papyri, in January 1816, Pierre-Claude Molard and Raoul Rochette led an attempt to unroll one papyrus with a replica of Abbot Piaggios machine. However, the scroll was destroyed without any information being obtained. In 1877, a papyrus was brought to a laboratory in the Louvre, an attempt to unravel it was made with a small mill, but it was unsuccessful and was partially destroyed - leaving a quarter intact. By the middle of the 20th century, only 585 rolls or fragments had been completely unrolled, of the unrolled papyri, about 200 had been deciphered and published, and about 150 only deciphered. The bulk of the manuscripts are housed in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. In 1969, Marcello Gigante founded the creation of the International Center for the Study of the Herculaneum Papyri, using the Oslo method, the CISPE team separated individual layers of the papyri
Herculaneum papyri
–
Map of Villa of the Papyri.
Herculaneum papyri
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Herculaneum papyrus 1425 (De poem), drawn by Giuseppe Casanova, ca. 1807
Herculaneum papyri
Herculaneum papyri
–
A copy of identifiable text of papyrus 152-157
26.
Hanging scroll
–
A hanging scroll is one of the many traditional ways to display and exhibit East Asian painting and calligraphy. Hanging scrolls are generally intended to be displayed for periods of time and are then rolled up to be tied and secured for storage. The hanging scrolls are rotated according to season or occasion, the painting surface of the paper or silk can be mounted with decorative brocade silk borders. In the composition of a scroll, the foreground is usually at the bottom of the scroll while the middle and far distances are at the middle. The traditional craft involved in creating a hanging scroll is considered an art in itself, mountings for East Asian paintings can be divided into a few types, such as handscrolls, hanging scrolls, album leaves, and screens amongst others. In the hanging scroll the actual painting is mounted on paper, and provided at the top with a stave, to which is attached a hanging cord, in China, scrolls originated in their earliest form from literature and other texts written on bamboo strips and silk banners. The earliest hanging scrolls are related to and developed from silk banners in early Chinese history and these banners were long and hung vertically on walls. Such silk banners and hanging scroll paintings were found at Mawangdui dating back to the Han Dynasty, by the time of the Tang Dynasty, the aesthetic and structural objectives for hanging scrolls were summarized, which are still followed to this day. During the early Song Dynasty, the scrolls became well suited to the art styles of the artists, consequently hanging scrolls were made in different sizes. The hanging scroll provides an artist with a format to display his art on a wall. It is one of the most common types of scrolls for East Asian painting, horizontal hanging scrolls are also very frequently used and a common form. The hanging scroll is different from the handscroll in that the latter is not hung, the handscroll is a long narrow scroll for displaying a series of scenes in Chinese painting. Thin strip paintings Narrow strip paintings intended for rooms and spaces. Hall paintings Hall paintings are intended to be the centerpiece in the main hall and its usually quite a large hanging scroll that serves as a focal point in an interior and often has a complicated subject. Four hanging scrolls These hanging scrolls were developed from screen paintings and it features several narrow and long hanging scrolls and is usually hung next to each other on a wall, but can also be hung on its own. The subjects have related themes, such as the flowers of the four seasons, the Four Gentlemen, panoramic screen The panoramic screen consists of several hanging scrolls that have continuous images, in which part of subject continues further in another scroll. These hanging scrolls cover large areas of a wall and usually do not have a border in between, couplet A couplet is two hanging scrolls placed side by side or accompanying a scroll in the middle. These are with poetic calligraphy in vertical writing and this style came to popularity during the Ming Dynasty
Hanging scroll
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Chinese hanging scrolls of calligraphy on display,
Shanghai
Hanging scroll
–
Chinese hanging scroll of a painting on display in the
Shanghai Museum
Hanging scroll
–
Section of a painting displaying a Xuanhezhuang hanging scroll
27.
Handscroll
–
The handscroll is a long narrow scroll for displaying a series of scenes in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean painting and calligraphy. The handscroll presents an artwork in the form and can be exceptionally long, usually measuring up to a few meters in length. Handscrolls are generally viewed starting from the right end and this kind of scroll is intended to be viewed flat on a table while admiring it section for section during the unrolling as if traveling through a landscape. In this way, this allows for the depiction of a continuous narrative or journey. Scroll painting is a painting done on a roll of paper that could be rolled up. In Bengal in India local village scroll painters and potters began developing a new style of art. The handscroll originated from ancient Chinese text documents, from the Spring and Autumn period through the Han dynasty, bamboo or wooden slips were bound and used to write texts on. During the Eastern Han period, the use of paper and silk as handscrolls became more common, the handscroll was the one of the main formats for texts up until the Tang dynasty. Since the Three Kingdoms, the became a standard form for mounting artwork. New styles were developed over time, a handscroll has a backing of protective and decorative silk with a small title label on it. The front of a scroll usually consists of a frontispiece at the side, the artwork itself in the middle. The right side of the scroll, to where the frontispiece was located, is known as the heaven, vertical strips are used to separate the different sections. Most handscrolls display only one painting, although several short paintings can also be mounted on the scroll, on the right end of a scroll is a wooden stave, which serves as a support to a scroll. A silk cord and a fastener is attached to the stave, a wooden roller is attached on the left end and forms an axis to help roll up a scroll. Emakimono, a Japanese horizontal picture scroll Digital Scrolling Paintings Project MoreInfo, Formats
Handscroll
–
Artwork section of a handscroll, Early Autumn by
Song loyalist painter
Qian Xuan.
Handscroll
–
The extant nine scenes of the
Admonitions of the Court Instructress, scene 4 at the right to scene 12 at the left
Handscroll
–
Panorama of
Along the River During Qingming Festival by
Zhang Zeduan (1085 — 1145)
Handscroll
–
Eight Flowers by
Qian Xuan (1235-1305)
28.
Paleography
–
Palaeography or paleography is the study of ancient and historical handwriting. The discipline is important for understanding, authenticating, and dating ancient texts, however, it cannot in general be used to pinpoint dates with high precision. Palaeography can be a skill for historians and philologists, as it tackles two main difficulties. First, since the style of an alphabet in each given language has evolved constantly. Second, scribes often used many abbreviations, usually so as to more quickly and sometimes to save space. Knowledge of individual letter-forms, ligatures, punctuation, and abbreviations enables the palaeographer to read, the palaeographer must know, first, the language of the text, and second, the historical usages of various styles of handwriting, common writing customs, and scribal or notarial abbreviations. Philological knowledge of the language, vocabulary, and grammar generally used at a time or place can help palaeographers identify ancient or more recent forgeries versus authentic documents. Knowledge of writing materials is essential to the study of handwriting. Palaeography can be used to provide information about the date at which a document was written, scholars also tend to oversimplify diachronic development, assuming models of simplicity rather than complexity. It spread from the Mediterranean coast to the borders of India, becoming popular and being adopted by many people. The Aramaic script was written in a form with a direction from right to left. One innovation in Aramaic is the matres lectionis system to indicate certain vowels, Early Phoenician-derived scripts did not have letters for vowels, and so most texts recorded just consonants. Most likely as a consequence of changes in North Semitic languages. The letter aleph was employed to write /ā/, he for /ō/, yod for /ī/, Aramaic writing and language supplanted Babylonian cuneiform and Akkadian language, even in their homeland in Mesopotamia. The wide diffusion of Aramaic letters led to its writing being used not only in monumental inscriptions, Aramaic papyri have been found in large numbers in Egypt, especially at Elephantine – among them are official and private documents of the Jewish military settlement in 5 BC. In the Aramaic papyri and potsherds, words are separated usually by a small gap, at the turn of the 3rd to 2nd centuries BC, the heretofore uniform Aramaic letters developed new forms, as a result of dialectal and political fragmentation in several subgroups. The most important of these is the so-called square Hebrew block script, followed by Palmyrene, Nabataean, Aramaic is usually divided into three main parts, Old Aramaic Middle Aramaic, and Modern Aramaic of the present day. Old Aramaic appeared in the 11th century BC as the language of the first Aramaean states
Paleography
–
William Shakespeare's will, written in
secretary hand: a script difficult for modern readers to interpret
Paleography
–
Table showing the
Mandaic alphabet (Abagada) with some of the mysteries represented by the letters
Paleography
–
Detail of the
Berlin papyrus 9875 showing the 5th column of
Timotheus' Persae, with a
coronis symbol to mark the end.
Paleography
–
The
Derveni Papyrus, a Greek Macedonian philosophical text dating around 340 BC, considered Europe's oldest manuscript
29.
Sefer Torah
–
A Sefer Torah is a handwritten copy of the Torah, the holiest book in Judaism. It must meet strict standards of production. The Torah scroll is used in the ritual of Torah reading during Jewish prayers. The text of the Torah is also printed and bound in book form for non-ritual functions. It is then known as a Chumash, and is accompanied by commentaries or translations. Torah reading from a Sefer Torah is traditionally reserved for Monday and Thursday mornings, as well as for Shabbat, the presence of a minyan is required for the reading of the Torah to be held in public during the course of the worship services. As the Torah is sung, following the often dense text is aided by a yad, according to halakha, a sefer Torah is a copy of the formal Hebrew text of the Torah hand-written on gevil or klaf by using a quill dipped in ink. Producing a sefer Torah fulfills one of the 613 commandments, an error during transcription may render the sefer Torah pasul. According to the Talmud, all scrolls must also be written on parchment that is treated with salt, flour. Scrolls not processed in this way are considered invalid, the calfskin or parchment on which the sacred Hebrew text is written is mounted into a wooden housing called עץ חיים in Hebrew. The housing has two rollers, each of which has two handles used for scrolling the text, four handles in all, most modern Sifrei Torah are written with forty-two lines of text per column. Very strict rules about the position and appearance of the Hebrew alphabet are observed, see for example the Mishnah Berurah on the subject. Any of several Hebrew scripts may be used, most of which are fairly ornate, some errors are inevitable in the course of production. If the error involves an other than the name of God. If the name of God is written in error, the page must be cut from the scroll and a new page added. The new page is sewn into the scroll to maintain continuity of the document, the old page is treated with appropriate respect, and is buried with respect rather than being otherwise destroyed or discarded. It is an honor to be chosen for this. It is a mitzvah for every Jewish male to either write or have written for him a Sefer Torah
Sefer Torah
–
Sefer Torah at old
Glockengasse Synagogue, Cologne.
Sefer Torah
–
A Sterling Silver Torah Case. In some traditions the Torah is housed in an ornamental wooden case
Sefer Torah
–
A 200-year-old Yemenite Sefer Torah, on Gevil, from the Beith Keneseth Rambam in Jerusalem. The Sofer was from the Sharabi family
Sefer Torah
–
Ingredients used in making ink for Hebrew scrolls today.
30.
Vellum
–
Vellum is prepared animal skin or membrane used as a material for writing on. Vellum is prepared for writing or printing on, to produce single pages, scrolls, vellum is generally smooth and durable, although there are great variations depending on preparation and the quality of the skin. The manufacture involves the cleaning, bleaching, stretching on a frame, to create tension, scraping is alternated with wetting and drying. A final finish may be achieved by abrading the surface with pumice, modern paper vellum is a quite different synthetic material, used for a variety of purposes, including plans, technical drawings, and blueprints. In Europe, from Roman times, the vellum was used for the best quality of prepared skin, regardless of the animal from which the hide was obtained, calf, sheep. Although the term derives from the French for calf, animal vellum can include hide from virtually any other mammal. The best quality, uterine vellum, was said to be made from the skins of stillborn or unborn animals, there has long been, however, much blurring of the boundaries between these terms. In 1519, William Horman could write in his Vulgaria, That stouffe that we wrytte upon, modern scholars and custodians increasingly use only the safe if confusing term membrane. In the usage of modern practitioners of the crafts of writing, illuminating, lettering. Vellum is a translucent material produced from the skin, often split, the skin is washed with water and lime, but not together. It is then soaked in lime for several days to soften, once clear, the two sides of the skin are distinct, the side facing inside the animal and the hair side. The inside body side of the skin is usually the lighter, the hair follicles may be visible on the outer side, together with any scarring, made while the animal was alive. The membrane can also show the pattern of the animals vein network called the veining of the sheet, any remaining hair is removed and the skin is dried by attaching it to a frame. The skin is attached at points around the circumference with cords, to prevent tearing, the maker then uses a crescent shaped knife, to clean off any remaining hairs. Once the skin is dry, it is thoroughly cleaned and processed into sheets. The number of extracted from the piece of skin depends on the size of the skin. For example, the average calfskin can provide three and half sheets of writing material. This can be doubled when it is folded into two conjoint leaves, also known as a bifolium, historians have found evidence of manuscripts where the scribe wrote down the medieval instructions now followed by modern membrane makers
Vellum
–
The
Magna Carta written in Latin on vellum, held at the
British Library
Vellum
–
A vellum
deed dated 1638, with pendent
seal attached.
Vellum
–
A
portolan chart (map) by Jacobo Russo (Giacomo Russo) of Messina (1533)
Vellum
–
A Volume Of Treatises On Natural Science, Philosophy, And Mathematics (1300) Ink on vellum.
