The Chapultepec Stone

Stirling (1943:pp) recognized that the sculpture on the Chapultepec Stone was nearly identical to that on Cerro de las Mesas Stela 5. He states that the monument was taken from the village of San Miguel Chapultepec, in Mexico City – it is not from the apocryphal “San Miguel Chapultepec, Veracruz”, as is sometimes stated – although he suspected that it was in fact from Veracruz given its general relationship to several of the monuments at Cerro de las Mesas and to Stela 5 most specifically. 

Thanks to its deep relief and hard stone, this monument is extremely well preserved. Partly as a result, several quite acceptable photographs of it have been published in several books and articles dealing with Mesoamerican art. Stirling’s drawing of the monument is a fairly good guide to the details of the sculpture and text, but Porter’s unpublished drawing certainly improves on it. 

The Isthmian script, found on this monument, is a very early Mesoamerican writing system in use in the area of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from perhaps 500 BCE to 500 CE, although there is disagreement on these dates. It is also called the La Mojarra script and the Epi-Olmec script (‘post-Olmec script’).

Isthmian script is structurally similar to the Maya script, and like Maya uses one set of characters to represent logograms (or word units) and a second set to represent syllables.

Protoliterate Tabet

Sumerian, ca. 3100-2900 BC (late Uruk; Early Dynastic I-II) 

Red stone

From the Walters Art Museum

WB Yeats

British Museum Society Tablet

3100BC-3000BC

Late Uruk

(Source: The British Museum)

Writing Tablet

Roman, London

c. 80-120 AD

Scratched onto a wax layer, the lettering on this early 2nd century wooden writing tablet has survived. It is a deed of sale for a young female slave called Fortunata, described as ‘healthy and not liable to run away’. She cost 600 silver denarii - 2 years’ pay for a legionary soldier.

This gives us a rare glimpse into government staffing methods and the lives of Roman slaves: they could earn money and own slaves themselves. Fortunata was bought by a slave, called Vegetus Montanus, who worked in the treasury and who was, in turn, owned by another treasury slave.

Source: Museum of London

Foundation nail dedicated by Gudea of Lagash to Ningirsu for the building of the E-ninnu. Terracotta, ca. 2120 BC. May come from Tello, ancient Girsu.

“For Ningirsu, the powerful hero of Enlil, his king, Gudea, prince of Lagash, accomplished what had to be; his temple of E-innu, the shining thunder-bird, he built and restaured.”

The Rent is Due…

Ancient Babylonian bill for rent written in cuneiform.  Dated to 542 BC, currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Archaeologists find primitive writing on 5,000-year-old relics in eastern China excavation

BEIJING — Archaeologists say they have discovered a new form of primitive writing in markings on stoneware excavated from a relic site in eastern China dating about 5,000 years back. The inscriptions are about 1,400 years older than the oldest known written Chinese language and around the same age as the oldest writing in the world.

Chinese scholars are divided on whether the etchings amount to actual writing or a precursor to words that should be described as symbols, but they say the finding will help shed light on the origins of Chinese language and culture. The oldest current known Chinese writing has been found on animal bones — known as oracle bones — dating to 3,600 years ago during the Shang dynasty. Read more.

Learn about medieval handwriting

My posts contain a lot of images and references to medieval handwriting - script. Writing, of course, is the primary way of disseminating information in the age before print. Here is your chance to learn something about writing with the pen in medieval times. The University of London developed a FREE online course for medieval script, called InScribe. Among many other things, this course features four instruction films in which I discuss particular aspects of medieval books.

One of these is available publicly. In it I discuss how a medieval manner of writing developed over time. This is a fascinating process given that scribes had no Facebook or Twitter to coordinate their efforts. Still, scribes all over Europe started to change how they wrote in the same way. If you are interested, you can watch the full film (5 minutes) here. You can also download it from iTunes through the account of the School of Advanced Studies (here) - click link underneath the 1-minute preview.

Pic: Valenciennes, BM, MS 502 (c. 1100).

Nidhanpur Inscription of Bhaskar Varman

Celestial writing from Sir Thomas. Browne’s  Garden of Cyrus.

Cylinder seal from 550BCE Mesopotamia. For commemorative occasions! #rommeso #themoreyouknow

Join us for our Mesopotamia Discovery Corner on June 22nd to learn more about the history of cylinder seals and writing!

Lois Long (right) pictured in her office at the New Yorker. Early 1920s.

Long (1901-1974) was the archetypal flapper: intelligent, beautiful and daring, she wrote insightful and witty commentary about fashion and NYC nightlife in the speakeasies for the brand new magazine The New Yorker. While Victorian suffragists found the “new woman” frivolous and apolitical, the flappers voted, worked, drank, smoked, and made love. In rejecting the old social order that expected women to be virginal and morally elevated, the flappers took ownership of what had been denied their mothers: the right to be sexy.

A type of Bill Head that was favoured by the traders of the 19th Century.

H.P. Lovecraft on Cats and Cat-lovers

Well, the man loved his cats. He once wrote a long-winded but loving essay on them (and specifically, why they’re superior to dogs), which can be read here.