Incunabula
Bibliophile. The history of writing and of the book - across ALL cultures - from cuneiform tablet to papyrus scroll to codex to Kindle. Слава Україні! 🌻
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The world's ten most beautiful libraries. 1. Strahov Monastery Library, Prague. Founded in 1143, the monastery has withstood fire & war over the years, and is notable for its magn...
The oldest surviving extensive example of Glagolitic script. The Baška tablet - a stone slab recording King Zvonimir's donation of land to a Croatian Benedictine abbey around the...
The Mar Saba monastery in the Judaean Desert was founded by Sabbas the Sanctified in 483, and has operated continuously ever since. It had a major library, home to manuscripts in A...
Before ink, before writing, at the very beginning of human graphic communication - in the caves of prehistoric Africa, Australia & Europe - there was OCHRE, a miraculous ferric oxi...
Japanese writing began with the introduction of kanji from China, which later also developed into hiragana & katakana. But - on the border of history and myth - are other strange...
Yazidism - the ancient faith of the Yazidi people - is based on belief in one God, who created the world and entrusted it into the care of a Heptad of seven Angels or heft sirr. Pr...
Garzoni's "Grammatica e vocabolario della lingua kurda", printed by the Propaganda Fide in Rome in 1787, was the first printed grammar of the Kurdish language and the first descrip...
!["The Museum of the Bible in Washington [...] returned a handwritten gospel that is more than 1,000 y...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fa_bd-pXEAAGFm-.jpg)
"The Museum of the Bible in Washington [...] returned a handwritten gospel that is more than 1,000 years old to the Greek Orthodox Church on Tuesday afternoon after determining tha...
Talking to booksellers and auctioneers in London, especially those who deal in manuscripts, not just printed books, it seems clear that a combination of Brexit and the noticeable r...
One of the great monuments of human language history: the 18th century Qianlong Pentaglot Dictionary 御製五體清文鑑 Yuzhi Wuti Qing Wenjian. Its lemmata are recorded in 5 language...
How was SAKE made in 19th century Japan? This illustrated handscroll made around 1850, nearly 7 meters long, shows the entire process in 16 consecutive painted panels. 1. Bales o...
Beautiful - but deadly.... At first sight this is a charmingly decorated Victorian binding - but this book conceals a dangerous secret: the distinctive emerald green color of the b...