Incunabula Profile picture
Sep 27, 2020 10 tweets 3 min read Read on X
This extract barely scratches the surface of the misinformation, vested interests, political maneuvering, and even outright duplicity surrounding the claimed looting of the libraries of Timbuktu. The real story of what happened has not yet been written.
dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-0…
I have some first-hand knowledge about this. When reading about the Timbuktu libraries, bear in mind three things:

1. The news in 2013 was almost pure catnip to NGOs and cultural charities, instantly confirmed the world-view....1/2
of right-leaning ones (ISIS are culture-destroying Islamofascists) AND left leaning ones (Africa is the repository of ancient wisdom). You could hardly, even in theory, conjure up a set of circumstances more likely to engage the interests of NGOs & philanthropic foundations. 2/2
2. Contrary to the impression created in most news reports, only a tiny fraction of the manuscripts in these libraries are particularly early, most are 18th to early 20th century, and most of them are standard texts and Qur'ans.
3. The families who control these manuscript are not necessarily all selfless guardians of ancient desert wisdom. Many - including most of the owners of the largest libraries - are wealthy and politically well-connected Malian elite "aristocracy".... 1/2
..... for whom the western reaction to the 2013 reports of the “destruction of Timbuktu libraries” represented an unprecedented, once-in-a-lifetime monetization opportunity. 2/2
None of this is to deny that some manuscripts were destroyed, nor to deny the some Western organizations have done wonderful work in Timbuktu, especially the @visitHMML digitization efforts under the guidance of the extraordinary @ColumbaStewart.
hmml.org/about/father-c…
But there really is a vast gulf between what one learns about the Timbuktu libraries from press reports (based as they almost always are on NGO or publisher's press-releases), and what actually happened in 2013, and has happened in Timbuktu since then.
For an idea of what I mean by "monetization opportunities" look at Swann's 2015 sale of an ordinary 18th cent. West African qur'an for $50 000. The normal value of a ms like this is $500, so the Timbuktu provenance accounted for literally 99% of the price.
swanngalleries.com/3dcat/2408/fil…
To limit this to what I know from direct knowledge not hearsay, I should have said "some of the owners" in the tweet above, not "most of the owners"

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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
Read 7 tweets
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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