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Mateusz Fafinski

@calthalas.bsky.social

Late antiquity, early Middle Ages, manuscripts, cities and monasticism. A bit of digital humanities and maps as well. Assistant Professor at the University of Erfurt

1088 Posts6777 Follower277 Folgt
Dot Porter@leoba.bsky.social · 5d ago

Do you use digitized medieval manuscripts in any capacity? Do you have opinions about the metadata that describes them? We want to hear from you! Please take a moment to fill out our very short survey. Please repost and share with anyone you know who might be interested! forms.gle/sBPXAnoRhwe1...

Digitized Medieval Manuscripts: Metadata Preferences

A brief survey about what metadata formats people prefer to go along with their digitized medieval manuscripts. The results of this survey will be used to consider what metadata we make available thro...

forms.gle

American Medieval Podcast@americanmedieval.bsky.social · 5d ago

so for example if you wanted to support our little podcast that could, go directly to patreon.com/AmericanMedieval

American Medieval — If we've never been modern, we've always been medieval.

Get more from American Medieval on Patreon. If we've never been modern, we've always been medieval.. Support American Medieval and get exclusive access to their work.

patreon.com

Nate Bethea@inthesedeserts.bsky.social · 6d ago

Apple charges people ~20% more than the Patreon list price and they keep the difference for themselves. They also hold the proceeds of iOS app sales for 75 days, making it impossible for creators to accurately predict earnings. They basically inserted themselves in order to rip *more* people off

Dr Jo Edge 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿@hagenilda.bsky.social · 6d ago

Anyway, palaeography is essential to medieval studies, as is Latin, and if we lose these from our unis we leave medieval studies to the privately-educated and independently wealthy. Medieval studies is important: everyone deserves to spend their time on this floating rock doing what they love ❤️ /FIN

Sarah E. Bond@sarahebond.bsky.social · 6d ago

July 30, 762 CE: The founding of Baghdad. The date and topography of the city were determined by astrologers & architects hired by the Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur, thus the city itself has a horoscope (such a Leo). 🌟 Read Ali Olomi’s essay on this (edited by myself and Stephanie Wong for Public Books).

Baghdad: The Once and Future City of Stars - Public Books

The city testifies to the vast intellectual curiosity of medieval Muslims, and the splendor they translated from astrology into their designs.

publicbooks.org

Cambridge University Library@theul.bsky.social · last wk.

These papyrus fragments of Homer's Odyssey date to the 2nd century CE! They were written in Egypt – using early Greek uncial script, a well-practised formal bookhand of the time – roughly 800 years after the original versions of the Odyssey were composed (around 700–650 BCE). MS Add.4074

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Alex West@ajw87.bsky.social · last wk.

Blowguns don't appear all that often in carvings and reliefs at other sites, but a blowgunner has been cast into the copper alloy section of the "Knaud" keris, the oldest dated keris (a type of dagger of Javanese origin), which was made in the late fourteenth century.

A colour image of part of a blade, part of which is iron and the rest of which is copper alloy. Several figures have been cased into the copper alloy section, including a man drawing a bow and another smaller man next to him with a blowgun or blowgun. They are both aiming at an animal in a tree.A slightly more detailed black-and-white image of the same blade. A pair of hunting dogs and a man leading them on a leash can be seen to the right of the blowgunner.
Alex West@ajw87.bsky.social · last wk.

A couple more pictures of details from the Borobudur reliefs. One shows a man wearing an earspool about to shoot a blowgun/blowpipe—a Southeast Asian invention. The second is of an umbrella with a chowry (or flywhisk), known in Sanskrit and Old Javanese as "camara" (which also meant 'yak').

A bas-relief showing a jumble of armed men and some animals in various positions with a many-armed deity at the top. The man with the blowgun is about halfway up.
Alex West@ajw87.bsky.social · last wk.

I've been going through some old files. Java truly is a palaeographer's dream; there's so much interesting variation in the forms of written text from the island, especially before the sixteenth century

An image comparing 13 different forms of the aksara, or syllabic grapheme, "ma" in scripts from the Indo-Malaysian archipelago between the fourth and fifteenth centuries of the Common Era. The forms differ considerably. The first form, from Borneo in the fourth century, is an oval with two antennae. The final form, from Java in the middle of the fifteenth century, is a V-shaped blob with another blob placed into it. The two forms are very different but there is a family resemblance across the 13 shapes.
Matt Gabriele@profgabriele.com · 2w ago

just got an email from my (former) chair that the university has acted & the state has approved the formal closure of my department. this was done without any faculty input on the decision or the process, & has ended a vibrant, growing (!), humanities department that won teaching and research awards

Matt Gabriele@profgabriele.com · 12mo ago

Anyway, happy Monday! The Dean is shutting down my department - Religion & Culture, the only 1 of is kind in the country & home to the innovative Major in Humanities for Public Service. There is no immediate budgetary or political pressure for this decision