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Sep 21, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
This is the Graduale Arosiense (or Graduale Svecicum), printed (by Stephanus Arndes?) in Lübeck in 1493.

This is the earliest surviving music printing for Sweden. This leaf is enclosed in a passe-partout, with a bookplate revealing a curious and rather sinister provenance...1/7 ImageImage
The bookplate has no text at all, but underneath is written in pen "Rockelstad".

Rockelstad Castle, situated on Lake Båven in Sörmland, Sweden, was the home of the bibliophile Count Eric von Rosen and suddenly the reason for the lack of text on the bookplate becomes clear.. 2/7 Image
A previous owner or more likely, a previous bookseller, has removed the original bookplate, cut away all the outer text, and then re-affixed the central part only to the pass-partout. Why? Because this is Eric von Rosen's actual, complete bookplate... 3/7 ImageImage
Research Von Rosen's bookplate though & you'll find that he used a swastika as a personal owner's mark - having originally seen the symbol on runestones in Gotland while still at school - from as early as 1901! This swastika traditionally signified good luck for the Vikings. 4/7
So the cut-down bookplate is an understandable but harmless misunderstanding on the part of a panicky bookseller, the swastika used here as a good luck symbol decades before it was adopted by the Nazis, and Von Rosen is in the clear.

Well, not quite.... 5/7
In an astonishing case of life imitating art, Eric von Rosen DID in fact become a fervent admirer of Hitler and the Nazis, and ultimately became brother-in-law to Hermann Göring when his wife's sister, Carin von Kantzow, married Göring, who'd been a guest at Rockelstad! 6/7 ImageImage
To read more on Eric von Rosen, see here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_von_…

If you can cope with the Swedish, there's a wonderful article on Von Rosen as a bibliophile by that brilliant manuscript polymath, Tim Bolton, here:
biblis.se/digitalt-arkiv…

7/7

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More from @incunabula

Oct 15
The seven days of Sukkot start tomorrow. Sukkot is one of the three Jewish festivals on which the ancient Israelites were commanded to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.

This beautiful folio-sized machzor (prayerbook) for Sukkot according to the Provençal rite of Avignon, was written by the scribe David Tsoref in 1721. 1/Image
After their expulsion from France in the 14th-century, a handful of Jews remained in the Provençal Papal territory of the Comtat Venaissin. Avignon was one of four Jewish communities tolerated by the Holy See: the other 3 were Carpentras, Cavaillon, & L'isle-sur-la-Sorgue. 2/ Image
Because of their extreme isolation from the rest of the Jewish world (and even, within the Comtat Venaissin, from each other), all 4 communities developed their own unique minhag (liturgical rite).

Most of these were never printed, and survive only in manuscript form, as here. Provençal manuscripts like this are instantly recognizable by their beautifully distinctive Hebrew script. 3/Image
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Aug 2
Today, August 2, Roma people around the world commemorate the genocide of the Roma with Samudaripen memorial day. It marks both the specific moment in 1944 when the Nazis murdered around 3,000 Roma at Auschwitz, and the wider Roma genocide during the Second World War. 1/ Image
The number of Roma killed during the Samudaripen is still unclear - the US Holocaust Memorial Museum puts the figure of Roma dead at between a quarter of million and a half a million people. 2/ Image
However, the advocacy group the International Romani Union believes that as a result of this genocide, approximately 2 million Roma were killed, which was about two-thirds of the total Roma population in Europe at the time. 3/ Image
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May 5
One of the masterpieces of ancient Egyptian art, the 'Seated Scribe' was discovered by the French archeologist Auguste Mariette at the Saqqara necropolis just south of Cairo in 1850, and dates to the period of the Old Kingdom, around 2500 BCE. It's now in the collections of @MuseeLouvre.

The eyes are especially amazing. I'll explain why. 🧵Image
The eyes of the scribe are sculpted from red-veined white magnesite, inlaid with pieces of polished rock crystal. The inner side of the crystal was painted with resin which gives a piercing blue colour to the iris and also holds them in place. 2/ Image
Two copper clips hold each eye securely in place. The eyebrows are marked with fine lines of dark paint. The scribe stares calmly out to the viewer as though he is waiting for them to start speaking. 3/ Image
Read 7 tweets
Mar 30
This is the Rongorongo script of Easter Island. Rongorongo lacks an accepted decipherment but is generally presumed to encode an earlier stage of Rapa Nui, the contemporary Polynesian language of the island. It is possible that it represents an independent invention of writing. 1/Image
Hundreds of tablets written in Rongorongo existed as late as 1864 but most were lost or destroyed in that period and only 26 of undoubted authenticity remain today; almost all inscribed on wood. Each text has between two and over two thousand glyphs (some have what appear to be compound glyphs). 2/Image
The longest surviving text is that on the ‘Santiago Staff’: around 2,500 glyphs, depending upon how the characters are divided. The glyph-types are a mixture of geometric figures and standardized representations of living organisms; each glyph is around one centimetre in height. 3/Image
Read 19 tweets
Jul 16, 2023
Oy. Forget about being a "rabbi", if you had even a kindergarten level knowledge of Hebrew (or Judaism for that matter) you'd know that this is not old, not Jewish, not an amulet, and nothing to do with kabbalah (which you grotesquely mischaracterize). It's a crude mishmash of… https://t.co/3IJjWrqnIp https://t.co/U7OBn124MNtwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Image
One of many previous threads on these fakes.
When looking at any purportedly ancient Jewish manuscript, bear in mind:
1. Jewish manuscripts are generally austerely plain and written in black ink only. Red ink is seen occasionally as a highlight color in for example Yemenite manuscripts, but gold ink is essentially never… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Read 6 tweets
Jun 9, 2023
Oi u luzi chervona kalyna - Oh, the Red Guelder Rose in the Meadow - is the anthem of 🇺🇦 Ukrainian resistance to Russian oppression.

Written in 1875, it was adapted by Stepan Charnetsky in 1914 to honor the Sich Riflemen of the First World War. 1/
twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The red guelder rose or viburnum of the song ('kalyna' in Ukrainian) - a shrub that grows four to five metres tall - is referenced throughout Ukrainian folklore. It is depicted in silhouette along the edges of the flag of the President of Ukraine. 2/ Image
Due to the song's association with the Ukrainian people's aspiration for independence, singing of the song was banned during the period in which Ukraine was a Soviet Republic(1919-1991). Anyone caught singing it was jailed, beaten, and even exiled. 3/
Read 12 tweets

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