A lost chapter of the world’s oldest novel was found in a Tokyo home
Japan is home to some of the oldest temples and shrines in the world, but it also is the birthplace of the world’s first novel, The Tale of Gengi. According… Read more »
Beowulf authorship debate takes another turn; suggests a single author
Hwæt!* This week, the all-action, Grendel-battlin’, sea-voyagin’, crown-of-Geatland-wearin’ hero Beowulf was the subject of renewed debate. Authorship of the Scandinavian epic poem, which dates from between 1,200 and 1,300 years ago,… Read more »
Ok, so… Why Jerusalem? (Hint: It has a lot to do with a book you may have heard of.)
Last month, GQ set off a tempest in an evangelical teacup. The magazine published a feature titled “21 Books You Don’t Have to Read,” in which twenty-one different authors and GQ staffers… Read more »
Could the power of x-rays reveal ancient Greek knowledge hidden inside an inconspicuous book?
Ever heard of Claudius Galenus? He was quite a guy. Born in 131 CE, he was a Greek physician, philosopher, and writer who lived in the Roman Empire. His works and theories dominated European… Read more »
“Very close to lived experience”: Ancient Egyptian poetry with a New Zealand accent
My heart staggered, my arms spread out; trembling fell on every limb. I moved myself, leaping, to look for a hiding place. I put myself between two bushes until the traveller… Read more »
A computer scientist, a Coptic scholar, and a librarian walk into the basement of the Morgan Library…
Nicholas Wade at the New York Times wrote earlier this week about a groudbreaking archival project currently underway at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City. If all… Read more »
Greek artifact’s “possible relevance to the Homeric epics is intriguing but elusive”
While it would be “fun to believe” that an artifact recently discovered at an ancient gravesite in southwestern Greece is an early representation of the conflicts described in Homer’s Iliad… Read more »
Our reconstructions of proto-languages could be wrong
We’ve written before about the ways linguists reconstruct the long-extinct ancestors from which modern languages have evolved. This sort of methodology has been used in attempts to trace the roots of many language… Read more »
On Rosh Hashanah, the Book of Life, and the Rastafarian connection
Today marks the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year festival. If you’re celebrating — go crazy! If you’re not, but want to wish your Jewish friends well (sidenote: it… Read more »
An artist transforms Ovid’s Metamorphoses… with blood
The year is 1735. A scholar in London has just purchased a copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Eager to read this enduring Latin classic in a beautiful new edition, he opens to… Read more »