A Model of Nag Hammadi Codex III (and Some Thoughts on Large Single-quire Codices)

Posted on July 14, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

After I started out by making a model of Nag Hammadi Codex VI, the second Nag Hammadi book that I tried to make was Codex III. Like Codex VI, Codex III is made up of a single papyrus quire, but the construction of the cover of Codex III is slightly more complicated than that of Codex VI. The quire of Codex III was composed of 40 bifolia (two of which were in reality a single folio with a stub). So, this is a considerably thicker codex than Codex VI, which contained 20 bifolia. The construction of the quire thus required more materials and more time spent cutting the bifolia to size. Continue reading →

Posted in Book binding, Book covers, Codices, Nag Hammadi | 11 Comments

The Odyssey at Olympia?

Posted on July 10, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

An interesting news report is circulating about the discovery at Olympia of an incised clay tablet containing lines from Homer’s Odyssey. The ultimate source of the story seems to be a press release from the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports, which presents the least garbled version of the report. The picture accompanying the story shows a bit of text text from Book 14, lines 8-13 of the Odyssey:

Olympia Odyssey

Incised clay tablet containing lines from the Odyssey; image source: Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports

The tablet is tentatively assigned to the third century CE. So, the headlines describing it as “the oldest written record of Homer’s Odyssey” are of course a bit of an exaggeration. I am curious to learn more about the precise context of the find and the extent of the inscription.

 

Posted in Inscriptions | 1 Comment

A Model of Nag Hammadi Codex VI

Posted on July 10, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

As I was writing my book on early Christian manuscripts, one of the most helpful things I did was take up the construction of models of ancient codices. Going through the process of assembling a codex really forced me to understand the literature about ancient books much more thoroughly. I was fortunate to have access to an excellent leather store in Denmark, where I could buy goat skins and a handful of other supplies, and for my first project, I was generously given some good quality papyrus by a friend. I decided to start with Nag Hammadi Codex VI, a single-quire codex with a fairly simple leather cover. Continue reading →

Posted in Book binding, Book covers, Codices, Nag Hammadi | 6 Comments

Addenda to the Palatine Alexamenos Graffito

Posted on July 9, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

I posted several days ago about a recent visit to the Palatine during which I was able to see the new display of the famous Alexamenos graffito and the newly opened paedagogium in which the graffito was originally found. I returned to the Palatine hill today to visit the ongoing excavations at the Horrea Agrippiana. On our way out of the site, I stopped by the paedagogium again to snap a few additional photos only to find that a new barrier had cut off access to the rooms of the paedagogium: Continue reading →

Posted in Graffiti | 1 Comment

A Marble Relief of a Priest of Cybele

Posted on July 5, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

It’s always a pleasant surprise to visit a familiar museum and find a “new” piece. It happened to me the other day at the Capitoline Museum. Earlier this year, there was an exhibition on Johann Joachim Winckelmann (actually, it was mainly on the history of the Capitoline hill in the eighteenth century). That exhibit is now over, but in a ground-floor room of the Palazzo Nuovo (in a section of the exhibit that I completely missed) were some of the didactic materials from the exhibition along with some pieces of sculpture. I was surprised to see among them the famous relief of the priest of Magna Mater: Continue reading →

Posted in Capitoline Museum, Find Stories, Sculpture | 4 Comments

The Palatine Alexamenos Graffito

Posted on June 25, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

Just about every introductory book on early Christianity will have an image, usually a drawing or a significantly enhanced photograph, of the famous “Alexamenos graffito,” a depiction of a man worshipping a crucified figure with the head of a donkey. The image, discovered in 1856 on the southwestern slope of the Palatine hill in Rome, is generally thought to evoke the experience of Christians in the Roman world in the age before Constantine. Usually assigned to some point in the third century, it is among the earliest depictions of the crucifixion of Jesus and a Christian worshipper.

Alexamenos

Detail of the Palatine Alexamenos graffito (June 2018)

Continue reading →

Posted in Graffiti | 10 Comments

More on Oxyrhynchus, the Robinson Papyri, and the Museum of the Bible

Posted on June 23, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

At Hyperallergic, Michael Press has written up a very interesting piece on some of the various projects that receive financial support from the Museum of the Bible as revealed through tax documents. The whole article is worth reading. Of specific relevance to some of the recent news about “first century” Mark is the following bit: Continue reading →

Posted in Antiquities Market, Duke Papyri, Green Collection, Oxyrhynchus Papyri | 9 Comments

Another Book Biography: The Berlin Akhmimic Proverbs Codex

Posted on June 18, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

In my last post on the use of waste papyrus in covers of ancient codices, I made reference to the Berlin Coptic Proverbs codex (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Ms. or. oct. 987, LDAB 107968). This reminded me that I had intended for some time to make a post dedicated to this book. Continue reading →

Posted in Berlin Coptic Proverbs Codex, Book binding, Book covers, Carl Schmidt, Codices | 9 Comments

1 Samuel and the Green Collection’s “Cartonnage”

Posted on June 17, 2018 by Brent Nongbri

Thanks to Matthew Hamilton for pointing out that the Green Collection papyrus containing 1 Samuel was described in the catalog accompanying the “Passages” exhibition in 2012. Matthew states that in the catalog, “the papyrus is noted as having 9 chapters [and] is dated to the early 3rd century AD.” Thus, it seems clear that in the video I mentioned in my previous post, Scott Carroll really was talking about “chapters” of the book being extracted from mummy cartonnage. Even more interesting is Matthew’s note that, according to the “Passages” catalog, the papyrus “had been pressed and sewn together and recycled for domestic use.” Continue reading →

Posted in Antiquities Market, Book covers, Codices, Green Collection, Green Collection 1 Samuel, Scott Carroll | 14 Comments

Paris Philo Codex (sort of?) Online

Posted on June 16, 2018 by Brent Nongbri
Paris Philo Codex

Bibliothèque nationale de France (Ms. Suppl. grec 1120, Philo of Alexandria

In an earlier pair of posts, I described the extant fragments of a substantial papyrus codex of the works of Philo of Alexandria that was found at Oxyrhynchus (LDAB 3540). The other major Roman-era source for Philo’s works is a shorter but much better preserved papyrus codex containing Quis rerum divinarum heres sit and De sacrificiis Abelis et Caini kept in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (Ms. Suppl. grec 1120, LDAB 3541). It is generally assigned to the roughly the same period as the Oxyrhynchus Philo (3rd century CE).

I discuss this codex at some length in my forthcoming book, so I don’t want to give away all the secrets, but I just discovered that the BnF has made some images of the codex available online at Gallica (and they have been online since January of 2017!). Continue reading →

Posted in Book covers, Codices, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Paris Philo of Alexandria | 3 Comments