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Author Archives: Brent Nongbri
New Site for Posts on Codices and Codicology
Back in the summer, I mentioned that I would be starting a new research project this autumn, The Early History of the Codex: A New Methodology and Ethics for Manuscript Studies (EthiCodex). For the last few weeks, I’ve been in … Continue reading
Posted in Codices, Codicology
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The Next Book
I’m excited to say that my colleague Liv Ingeborg Lied and I recently signed a contract with Yale University Press to co-author a book tentatively titled Working with Manuscripts: A Guide. The goal of the book is to demystify manuscript … Continue reading
Posted in Working with Manuscripts
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The Dead Sea Scrolls of New Jersey
It is well known that a few of the best preserved Dead Sea Scrolls spent some time in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. The Syrian Archbishop Mar Athanasius Yeshue Samuel brought four scrolls to the US in … Continue reading
Posted in Antiquities Market, Archaeological context, Dead Sea Scrolls
Tagged Dead Sea Scrolls, qumran, Qumran Cave 1Q
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Dead Sea Scrolls at the Vatican
A visit to the Vatican Museums almost always yields something new. You can never know which rooms will be open, so occasionally there is the pleasant surprise of getting to see material that is usually hidden away. There are also … Continue reading
The Fate of the Van Kampen Collection
I’ve written before on a few occasions about the Van Kampen Collection of ancient manuscripts, a kind of predecessor of the Green Collection. In fact, it was Scott Carroll, the main architect of the Green Collection, who was also the … Continue reading
Stands for Holding Open Papyrus Rolls?
In discussions of the early codex, one often finds statements about the obvious technological superiority of the book with pages over the roll. Sometimes these claims will push further and say that rolls were not only relatively less easy to … Continue reading
Posted in Voluminology
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More Papyrus Roll Vocabulary: frons, cornua, umbilicus
In an earlier post, I raised some questions about the description of papyrus rolls. This generated some very helpful discussion in the comments. I now want to look at some of the ancient terminology for rolls. A good place to … Continue reading
Posted in Martial, Voluminology
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Buying Books in Rome circa 86 CE
The surviving writings of the satirical poet Martial provide a number of insights into Roman book culture. He has been an especially important figure in discussions of the history of the codex, as he mentions on multiple occasions portable parchment … Continue reading
Posted in Book Trade in Antiquity, Martial
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The Vocabulary of Reading a Papyrus Roll
When I was writing an earlier post that mentioned papyrus rolls, I realized that it was difficult to describe certain physical aspects of rolls. Here is what I wrote: “Normally when a papyrus roll was rolled up, the text was … Continue reading
Posted in Voluminology
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A New Project: The Early History of the Codex
A busy semester is now winding down, and I’m happy to announce that in August, I’ll be kicking off a new, five-year project: The Early History of the Codex: A New Methodology and Ethics for Manuscript Studies (EthiCodex) based here … Continue reading
Posted in Codices, Codicology, Radiocarbon analysis
9 Comments
Variant Readings 