An Epigraphical Note-book of Sir Arthur Evans

1941 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 39-39
Author(s):  
Marcus N. Tod
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Mathematical Problems ◽  
Mathematical Section

Among the papers of the late Sir Arthur Evans was found a note-book, measuring 5¾ X 3⅝ X ⅝ in., bound in red leather and with a metal clasp, comprising 122 pages, inclusive of the inner sides of the cover. Sixteen of these are blank, eight contain notes on Greek coinage and numerals, a list of the Attic tribes, bibliographical references and some mathematical problems, and the remainder bear copies, in Evans' characteristically microscopic handwriting, of a large number of Greek inscriptions, with brief notes added in many cases. All are written in pencil save the mathematical section, which is in ink and appears to be in a different hand. At the request of Mr. E. Thurlow Leeds, Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, I have examined the copies of inscriptions and find that, with very few exceptions, the originals are in the British Museum. These exceptions are IG i2. 929, 11. 1-5 (in Paris), IG iii. 1418, IG ii.2 3765 and CIG 3333 (all three in the Ashmolean Museum). Of the rest 105 appear in the Collection of Ancient Greek Inscriptions in the British Museum; 91 of them are Attic, three (Nos. 159, 160, 162) Boeotian, three (Nos. 373, 375, 376) Tenian, five (Nos. 1003, 1012, 1022-4) Anatolian, one (No. 1398) Italian, and two (Nos. 1107,1123 a) of uncertain provenance.

Archaeology in the home: neoclassical ceramics for new audiences in mid-nineteenth-century Britain

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-88
Author(s):  
Paul Lewis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Transfer Printing ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Ceramics Industry ◽  
Material Evidence

Abstract For audiences not familiar with antiquity, the shattering of the Portland Vase at the British Museum in 1845 raised awareness of a classical past which was claimed by many European nations as their cultural heritage. This article explores how the British ceramics industry quickly exploited a ready market, prompted by such interest. A new genre of wares was produced industrially, mainly in Stoke-on-Trent until the 1870s, although manufacture continued sporadically until 1900. Modern techniques, including moulding and transfer-printing, allowed the creation of versions of black- and red-figure ancient Greek ceramics, sometimes in vivid polychrome. Hitherto largely overlooked by museums and standard histories of ceramics, the material evidence of this fashion endures. Although the resulting artefacts were often marketed without reference to their origins in antiquity, an argument is presented here for their having more than merely decorative significance.

scholarly journals On the hour lines of the ancients

1837 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 17-20
Keyword(s):  
Royal Society ◽  
Plane Surface ◽  
Computing Time ◽  
British Museum ◽  
The Other ◽  
Conical Surface ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Double Curvature ◽  
The Right ◽  
Straight Lines

The hour lines on the sundials of the ancient Greeks and Romans correspond to the division of the time between sun rise and sun-set into twelve equal parts, which was their mode of computing time. An example of these hour lines occurs in an ancient Greek sundial, forming part of the Elgin collection of marbles at the British Museum, and which there is reason to believe had been constructed during the reign of the Antonines. This dial contains the twelve hour lines drawn on two vertical planes, which are inclined to each other at an angle of 106°; the line bisecting that angle having been in the meridian. The hour lines actually traced on the dial consist of such portions only as were requisite for the purpose the dial was intended to serve: and these portions are sensibly straight lines. But the author has shown, in a paper published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, that if these lines are continued through the whole zone of the rising and setting semidiurnal arcs, they will be found to be curves of double curvature on the sphere. In the present paper the author enters into an investigation of the course of these curves; first selecting as an example the lines indicating the 3rd and the 9th hours of the ancients. These lines are formed by the points of bisection of all the rising and setting semidiurnal arcs; commencing from the southern point where the meridian cuts the horizon, and proceeding till the line reaches to the first of the always apparent parallels, which, being a complete circle, it meets at the end of its first quadrant. At this point the branch of another and similar curve is continuous with it: namely, a curve which in its course bisects another set of semidiurnal arcs, belonging to a place situated on the same parallel of latitude as the first, but distant from it 180° in longitude. Continuing to trace the course of this curve, along its different branches, we find it at last returning into itself, the whole curve being characterized by four points of flexure. If the describing point be considered as the extremity of a radius, it will be found that this radius has described, in its revolution, a conical surface with two opposite undulations above, and two below the equator. The right section of this cone presents two opposite hyperbolas between asymptotes which cross one another at right angles This cone varies in its breadth in different positions of the sphere; diminishing as the latitude of the place increases. The cones to which the other ancient hour lines belong, are of the same description, having undulations alternately above and below the equator; but they differ from one another in the number of the undulations: and some of these require more than one revolution to complete their surface. The properties of the cones and lines thus generated, may be rendered evident by drawing the sections of the cones on the sphere, in perspective, either on a cylindrical or on a plane surface: several examples of which are given in the paper.

On the Rules Regulating the Celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries

1959 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Sokolowski
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Real Problem ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Easy Task ◽  
Classical Studies ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Eleusinian Mysteries

The old and very illegible inscription from Athens containing the charter of the Eleusinian Mysteries was happily completed by a few small fragments discovered during the American excavations on the Agora. It was not an easy task for Professor B. D. Meritt to bring together the broken pieces and the stone bearing the inscription (now in the British Museum). He did it with his usual epigraphical expertness and contributed very much to the reading and to the restoration of a document which has been a real problem to many scholars for a long time. Of course, the inscription so old and so badly preserved will continue to be debated by specialists in different fields of Classical studies, but the part of Professor Meritt in elucidating this important testimony of the ancient Greek cult always will be gratefully appreciated. I should like to discuss some passages of the document in question in the hope that small changes in certain lines may perhaps make it more intelligible.

scholarly journals Amphora-Handles from Antiparos

1885 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 192-194
Author(s):  
Percy Gardner
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Great Complexity

Mr. Bent has brought from Antiparos, and the British Museum has acquired, several of those stamped handles of diotae which have been the subject of numerous papers by various savants, and of a special work by M. Dumont (Inscriptions Céramiques).To record the find-spots of the several classes of these handles is a matter of some importance, because they furnish us with archæological evidence in a matter of great complexity, where archæological evidence is rare and desirable—in the matter of ancient Greek commerce, its marts and its course. The stamped handles which bear the names of Rhodian magistrates and potters are, as is well known, found in all parts of the Levant from Kertsch to Egypt and Sicily; those which derive from Cnidus are also found in many places; Thasian handles are found chiefly on the shores of the Euxine sea, but at Athens and elsewhere also. Why Rhodes, Cnidus, and Thasos should in Hellenistic times have almost monopolized the trade in wine, or why these states should have monopolized the custom of using stamps for handles of wine-jars, we do not know. But the latter statement at all events must be true: there are but very few other known sources of stamped handles.

Myths of the Odyssey in the British Museum (and beyond): Jane Ellen Harrison’s museum talks and their audience

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-137
Author(s):  
Abigail Baker
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Visitor Experience ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The Past ◽  
Greek Vases

Abstract Jane Ellen Harrison’s early work giving tours and lectures in London’s museums offers an unusual window on visitor experience in the late nineteenth century. This article examines the composition and motivations of her audience, looking at how Harrison’s lectures addressed gendered and class-based anxieties about their access to education and ability to respond appropriately to prestigious objects. Harrison used Greek vases to tell stories from ancient Greek literature. She made the case for the value of Greek vases as a repository of stories that could be understood through comparisons with literature but which also stood as evidence in their own right, hinting at lost stories and the perspectives of ordinary people. Her museum talks demonstrate a belief that Greek vases offered an alternative to Classical literature, one which had been made by ordinary people in the past and could be ‘read’ by ordinary people in the present.

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