After two millennia, the words still strike with amazement, the visions still transport us, there are still secrets only half discovered.Most of the ancient books have been destroyed either intentionally or accidentally, hatred and forgetfulness have obliterated vast treasures of past cultures. Nonetheless, there has still been a wondrous, even miraculous survival of records. If it was all a heap of insignificant debris, it wouldn’t matter, but….
—The Hungarian Angevin Legendary Hungary, c. 1340 Probably commissioned by or for the king. The bulk of the manuscript is kept at the Vatican Libraries (MS Vat. Lat. 8541), while pages from the manuscript are preserved at the following American collection: New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M.360 (24 leaves),—Read More:http://home.hu.inter.net/~jekely/treasures.htm
The miracle of the preservation of thought through marks on a smooth surface is commemorated every week by one of the most impressive little religious ceremonies in the world. Every Sabbath in every Jewish synagogue, a hand-written copy of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, is taken out of its palace. After a reading,the book is carried through the congregation before it is returned to the ark, and every pious jew kisses it.
—The Aleppo Codex, the earliest extant manuscript of the complete Hebrew Bible, was written by a scribe named Salomon about 930 CE. It was proofread, vocalized and edited by Aaron ben Moses ben Asher who lived in Tiberias. Asher was the last of an important family of masoretes, or textual scholars of the Bible, who preserved and handed down the commonly accepted version of the Hebrew Bible from generation to generation. Since the twelfth century, when Maimonides considered it the most authoritative source of the text, the Aleppo Codex has been considered the most authoritative source for the Hebrew Bible.—Read More:http://www.historyofinformation.com/index.php?id=254
It is always handwritten with a quill pen. It is always in the form of a parchment roll. Its text is always the same as that of its predecessor, from which it was copied: the very letters are counted so that they may never vary by a jot, any more than the law of God Almighty can vary. By doing homage to the book in this way, the jews express their devotion to the name of the Creator contained in the Torah; but they also, by implication, express reverence for one of the individual’s greatest inventions: the written book.
—The Stele of Hammurabi, while a piece of sculpture technically, was not primarily ordained to be a piece of art specifically. It bares a good portion of the Hammurabi law code, a doctrine of 282 laws that set standards on correct behavior and consequences for the Babylonians. This featured copy is diorite stele and is sitting in the Lourve, incomprehensible with its Akkadian words. At the top, one of the figures is believed to be Hammurabi, possibly handing over his code of laws for approval to a certain deity. —Read More:http://culturedart.blogspot.ca/2010/12/stela-of-hammurabi.html
The Jews, like the Moslems, have always carried their sacred writings with them: the book and the people have sustained each other. But among the Greek and Latin classics there are no such sacred books: the nations for whom they were written have disappeared; theur very languages have assumed new shapes and sounds, remote, although not wholly different from the original tongues. How have the great books from the past survived through so many centuries?
First we must sadly admit that very many of them have been lost. In Greece and the Greek-speaking world, and later in the Roman world, there were many libraries and many hundreds of thousands of books. Literacy was more widespread in the second century of our era than it was in the eighteenth. The walls of Pompeii, covered with public announcements and private scribbles in three languages, show how natural and commonplace was the use of writing then. Nearly all townsfolk could read, freemen and slaves alike. Only on the farms and ranches were many people illiterate. In Egypt excavators now dig up large private book collections buried under the sand near villages where, until recent times, often few of the fellahin owned a single book, or could read it if they did.
—A detail from the Catalan Atlas, attributed to the Majorcan Jewish cartographer Abraham Cresques, 1375 Over the next two months the great domed interior of what used to be the British Museum’s reading room, where Marx researched Das Kapital and Bram Stoker (creator of Dracula) was a reader, is host to Hajj, a remarkable exhibition that celebrates the most sacred event in the Islamic calendar, the pilgrimage to Mecca. The exhibition seems more than a cultural event—a milestone, perhaps, in the public recognition and acceptance of Islam at the heart of British life. Conceived by British Museum director Neil MacGregor and the museum’s Islamic art curator Venetia Porter with assistance from the Saudi Arabian government, it is an unusual collaboration between a museum dedicated to secular learning and the current rulers of Islam’s holiest sites, who have lent many important works.—Read More:http://www.crytical.com/
Although some authors of antiquity composed only a few works, to which they gave all their life’s energy, there were many who produced an amazing number of them. The comedian Aristophanes left fifty-four plays. Aeschylus, first of the great tragic dramatists, wrote at least eighty. Livy’s history of Rome ran into one hundred and forty-two volumes; and such polygraphs were not exceptional. But of many of the most famous authors we have only a few scanty though precious relics. And while the great aforementioned writers have survived in however a meagre proportion, dozens of others have vanished almost without a trace. From quotations and allusions, we know the names of about a hundred and seventy poets of the “Old Comedy” , the group to which Aristophanes belonged, with about 1500 titles of their plays. Except Aristophanes, not one survives. The Athenians had a lot of fun, judging from the titles, in the fifth century before Christ, and it is painful to remember how much of it has vanished. Maybe we’ll get lucky and some cave or lost tunnel will be unearthed with literary treasures.
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