Curators Examined the Book of the Dead—& Found a 3,300-Year-Old Version of Wite-Out: Upon digital & infrared inspection, the team discovered the use of ancient correction fluid to trim a drawing on one of the illustrated spells
🪄 📚 📜 #BookScience
www.popularmechanics.com/science/arch...
Some sad news to report, I'm afraid... Jeff Grant, the director of legendary public information film Lonely Water, died on 13 March. He fought to include the film's horror elements, and they proved so successful that it opened the door to the shocking PIFs that we know and love. (1/2)
Image in a medieval bestiary manuscript. Between 2 lines of Latin script in black ink, a miniature within a simple rectangular frame. The top quarter is painted dark blue, like an evening sky; in the top right corner hangs an 8-pointed star or sun made of gold leaf. Below it, occupying most of the area of the image, is a region of gold leaf, burnished smooth and glossy, but embellished with occasional rounded divots punched into the gold. Almost exactly 8 centuries have passed, yet its lustrous sheen persists. Against this elegant background pose 2 large birds. Both are white, with a regular pattern of feathers picked out in black ink. The pair have slightly curved beaks, and they stride towards the right in tandem. The background bird twists its neck to stare up at the golden star above. The foreground bird bends forward, towards a cluster of 4 eggs on the ground. With its beak, it grasps 1 of the eggs tenderly. Source: folio 27 recto in British Library, Royal manuscript 12 C 19.
A successful egg-hunt?
#Easter #MedievalManuscripts #Manuscripts 📚 📜
Goodnight, denizens of Hookland
LES bookstore Bluestockings, which served Narcan & radical reads, shutting down | Gothamist
#books #bookstores 📚
gothamist.com/arts-enterta...
Medieval Libraries of Great Britain is back!
📚🥳📜 #MedievalManuscripts
mlgb.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Just gave my first keynote.
(It went well—and was fun. 🙂🤓)
#BookHistory #BookScience #MedievalManuscripts
Nearing the end of season 2 & we've hit over 100K listens on the podcast 🥂. Thanks to all of our guests for sharing their time & expertise! Thoroughly enjoyed talking medieval Ireland over the last 38 episodes, more anon! @maynoothuniversity.ie @researchireland.ie
open.spotify.com/show/1Gq9yIx...
Hooray! What a great candidate. This is such an exciting project.
And some of the images of the poor (and once beautiful, but now not usable) manuscript I'm hoping to image one day to be able to virtually restore to its once-glorious illustrations.
@sjlahey.bsky.social (I found it!)
X893 H12 (it's a Haggadah, probably illustrated by Leipnik)
A member of the UL's Conservation team planting a seeding in a flower bed.
A paper bag full of seeds ready to be planted.
Little seedlings growing in the courtyard of the UL. We see a wooden plant label that says: "The Dye Garden".
Our brand-new Dye Garden is coming to life! With guidance from colleagues across the UL, and
@cubotanicgarden.bsky.social, our Conservation team has planted traditional dye plants once used in manuscript painting. 🎨
#CambridgeUniversityLibraries #CULconservation #DyeGarden
#HappyBirthday to Lester Lawrence ‘Larry’ Lessig III (b. 1961), American legal scholar & political activist, & founder of Creative Commons @creativecommons.bsky.social 🎈🎂
… After arriving in Halifax, the pair may have continued on to Boston, yet it is possible that Jefferie briefly plied his trade in Halifax. If so, he could be #Canada ’s first printer—an honour usually bestowed upon Bartholomew Green Jr.
#books #typography #BookHistory #CdnHist 📚 📜
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Welcome to June.
In this month, in 1749, settlers heading to Halifax, Nova Scotia with Cornwallis incl. Herbert Jefferie, printer, & Thomas Blackwell, bookbinder. Whether they carried type & related equipment is unclear. …
#books #typography #BookHistory #CdnHist 📚 📜
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See also CAUT’s seven page supplement to their advisory on travel to the USA (PDF): www.caut.ca/sites/defaul...
It was an MRI machine, iirc.
CAUT (Canadian Association of University Teachers) advises academics against non-essential travel to the U.S. www.caut.ca/latest/2025/...
🥰
“You used a 3 million dollar piece of hospital equipment so you could read a novel?”
— Dr Cuddy, disapprovingly, to Dr House, who has done precisely that (“House MD”, s7e3)
I feel rather seen 😶 (yet defiant 😈💅)
#BookScience 📜📚🔬
#RIP Dr Joe Nickell (1944 Dec 01–2025 Mar 04), American skeptic and investigator of the paranormal. 😞😔
Our final 'abstract spotlight' from Medium Ævum’s 93.1 issue is on @sjlahey.bsky.social and @aboyarin.bsky.social's '‘Et dixit anglice’: unpublished vernacular verses in British Library, Harley MS 912'.
Members can log into medium.aevum/space to read the full article.
Researchers using digitized photos or manuscripts in any manner in theirresearch, are invited to participate in this anonymous survey of McGill University (forms.office.com/r/nuqD9ZJzFq, 8-10 min to complete). (1/2)
The #Vatican was back this week with 40 #Manuscripts www.wiglaf.org/vatican/2025...
Including a ton more Cappella Pontificia annual diaries, a nice 8th C Greek Lectionary, some Chinese dictionaries (including rhymes), several Avvisi, some disappointment from Sire, and more!
#MedievalSky
The codex holds a Sanskrit commentary on a Hindu legal text; this copy dates from the 17th or possibly even 16th century. #HistLaw #LegalHistory #LawBooks 📚 📜
Back at University of Toronto Engineering @uofteng.bsky.social today for an Old Books New Science Lab collaboration with Grasselli’s Geomechanics Group @civmin.bsky.social geogroup.utoronto.ca/contact-us/. We’re micro-CTing a birchbark codex. 👀 #Books #RareBooks #BookScience 📚 📜
… By 1788, the library held 2000 volumes. Despite loss of many books in a 1854 fire, in 1866 the library published a catalogue listing 6990 volumes in its collections. #books #BookHistory #CdnHist 📚 📜
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#TIH #OTD 7 Jan 1779: The Quebec Gazette announced a new subscription for a public #library at Ville de Québec—the 1st public library established in what is now #Canada. Some of the books were purchased from local members of the public, but most were brought over from Europe…
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Lower left-hand corner of a medieval manuscript leaf: folio 20 verso in Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cloisters Collection, manuscript 68.174. At top, above a very deep margin, run 9 lines of Latin text copied in brown ink, the first 3 lines indented to accommodate an enlarged decorative initial ‘E’ rendered in blue and ornamented with fine scrolling pen-work in red. Several threads of pen-work, in red and blue, extend from the initial, a few reaching to the right, over the text, but most descending down the left side of the page into the lower margin. Here, next to the pen-work and drawn in the same red and blue ink, we find 2 critters: at left, a long-necked bird with blue wings and orange feet, a crimson plume gracing his head; at right, a red wyvern—a dragon with wings in lieu of forelegs—with a thick beard and long, pointed tongue. They face each other. The bird, beak agape and eyes round with rage, raises a taloned foot to strike. The wyvern hisses, narrowing its eyes menacingly.
A Dispute? (‘The Cloisters Apocalypse’; Normandy, c.1330)
#MedievalManuscripts #Manuscripts #Critters #MedievalAnimals #Dragon #Wyvern 📚 📜
Meme of the bed of king Charles II of Navarre aflame with the king in it, based on the popular meme which shows a dog seated at a table in a room that's on fire, nonchalantly saying "This is fine!" In this version, vivid orange & yellow flames rise around the king's pillows. Under a white sheet & a red blanket, his knees are bowed. He holds his hands clasped in front of his bare chest. His eyes are closed & his head is tilted to the right. The expression on his clean shaven face is strangely serene, although he is sticking the tip of his tongue between his lips. A white cloth or towel's wrapped around his head like a turban. Above him appear the words: "This is fine!" This image is a detail from an illumination of the event in Ms. Ludwig XIII 7 (83.MP.150), fol. 274v - Bed of the King of Navarre Set on Fire - Master of the Getty Froissart (Flemish, ca. 1480–1483)
Been waiting for an excuse to break this out...
#WeirdHistory #Medieval #ThisIsFine
#AlwaysAddALT #AlwaysReadTheALT
