BadSikander

The image shows a rectangular Roman dice tower (turricula) made of four copper alloy (bronze) plates with punched cut-out Latin letters and cut-out decorative patterns. At the bottom front is a stepped exit chute with small bronze bells attached to the opening. The tower is a Roman anti-cheating device. It has an open top and is hollow inside except for three staggered, downward-sloping plates, designed to randomize dice as they fall, ensuring unpredictable dice rolls. When the dice rolled out of the exit chute they rang the bells! There is a decorative dolphin either side of the stepped exit chute. The top of the front plate has two decorative pine cone finials. Height 25 cm. There is a single die shown next to the stepped base to illustrate how it was used. The front inscription reads: PICTOS VICTOS HOSTIS DELETA LVDITE SECVRI Translated as: ‘The Picts defeated, the enemy has been destroyed, play in safety’. Around the top of the three remaining sides, a second inscription made with cut out letters reads: ‘UTERI/FELIX/VIVAS’ translated as ‘Use happily; may you live well’. Found at a Roman villa at Froitzheim in Germany in 1985.

Roman anti-cheating gaming accessory!

This Roman ‘turricula’ (dice tower) was used to ensure a fair roll of the dice! 🎲🎲🎲

Dice dropped into the top, tumbled over sloping internal levels, and appeared randomly below.

From Froitzheim, Germany, AD 300-400

📷 LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn

#Archaeology

A cutaway view of the interiors of the Discovery, the spaceship from 2001.

For Sci-Fi Cutaway Saturday, Oliver Rennart's art for '2001: A Space Odyssey'

🟢🕑 Malachite mantel clock, mid 1800s, France.

#art #sculpture #clocks #time

A glass tube with kangaroo tendons stored in fluid. There is a yellow and label on the outside that reads "kangaroo tendons"

These sutures are made from kangaroo tendon. This glass phial is from the early 20th century and the sutures are in a carbolized glycerine. Kangaroo tendon is incredibly strong making the sutures suitable for deep tissue procedures.

Puzzle Binding!

Tricky! These are almost as rare as hen's teeth, and we just...
Had One???
And, it includes HOW Many Books? (Five from Germany c. 1601 and a blank one at last count...) #Vexierbuch #DosADos @newberrylibrary.bsky.social (Case C 823 .966)

Art made with teeth; on the first, a serpent enwraps a man with a strange face looking on; on the second, two figures throw bodies onto a fire

One of the most common ways to curse someone is to use their teeth: take a tooth and you have a direct connection to their bones, so medieval European thought went, and thus witches sought teeth. Folklorists suggest this may be the origins of the tooth fairy. #MythologyMonday

#MolluscMonday Dating mostly from the 16th and 17th centuries, nautilus shell cups consist of metal-mounted shells sometimes capped by a small figure of Poseidon. This example on display at the British Museum shows remarkably intricate carving of the shell and septa.

How far back in time can you understand English? An experiment in language change

If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle.

It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get.

www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

Close up on a gorgeous astrolabe in shiny brass and covered in Kufi characters

The astrolabe being dismantled by the gloved hands of the curator

Inside of the mater revealed, covered in a concentric grid of Abjad numerals

Context shot showing the astrolabe on a protected surface, together with a larger astrolabe, a much smaller one (the size of a fob watch), dismantled, a globe and an armillary sphere, all brass

I’ve admired this 1068 Toledo astrolabe in its case and I studied every millimeter of it on digital images, and today I got to handle it with the medieval manuscripts group. Oxford is wild.

After a spot of pre-dinner retouching, a lovely new photo of a Myasishchev VM-T Atlant during a flight test with a Buran orbiter test article on its back.

A heavy vase with dragon’s heads sticking out of the side with frogs on a base surrounding the vase and facing the dragons.

This is a model of a seismometer made in China by Zhang Heng in the year 132 CE. When triggered by an earthquake, a pendulum inside the vase hits a rod that leads to one of the dragons spitting a brass ball into a frog’s mouth. Photo from David Bainbridge’s Geology: An Illustrated History.

Illustration from Laennec's book "" showing his design for the first stethoscope which is a tube of wood with detachable sections

A Laennec stethoscope from our collection. It is made of wood and is taken apart to show the three separate sections of the instrument

Renee Laennec, the inventor of the stethoscope, was born #OTD in 1781 🥳

The first stethoscope was made out of wood with 3 detachable parts for listening to the sounds of the lungs and heart 🫁🫀

#stethoscope #histmed

Sunday’s remarkable ‘elephant done by a medieval artist that had never seen one’ - 15th century, Neustift/Novacella, Augustiner-Chorherrenstift, Cod. 166, f. 27r

Wild Boar silver-gilt rhyton
Sasanian Empire
600 CE

A rhyton is a ritual drinking vessel.
The Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE) was the last pre-Islamic Persian empire. Zoroastrianism was the state religion. Conquered by Arab-Muslim invaders in 651 CE.

#persia #rhyton #wildboar #giltsilver #sasanian

The Nunns & Clark square piano, built in 1853.

A piano crafted with mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell.

The Metropolitan Museum
#art #music #piano #craftsmanship

Met Museum photo of an ancient Egyptian board game carved from cream-coloured ivory displayed against a dark background. The original name of the game is unknown. It is now known as ‘Hounds and Jackals’ or the ‘Game of 58 holes’. The game board rests on four bulls' legs. One of the legs, seen at back of the board on the right of photo, is completely restored. Another has a restored hoof (seen at front of the board on left). The board is shaped like an axe head. In the centre of the upper surface is an incised palm tree topped by a ‘Shen’ symbol (a circle atop a a horizontal line to which it is tied). The palm’s trunk runs down the length of the board. There are 58 holes in the upper surface; 29 arranged evenly on either side of the palm tree. At the lower side of the game board there is a drawer with a bolt to store the playing pieces. The playing pieces are made up of ten long pins (sticks) with carved animal heads. Five are hounds and five are jackals. In the photo, the ten pins are arranged randomly in holes on the game board. The board is carved from ivory with ebony detailing around the 58 holes. The pins are ivory. Measurements: Game board: H 6.8cm W 10.1 cm, D 15.6 cm. Hound pins: H 6 cm to 6.8 cm Jackal pins: H 7 cm to 8.5 cm
 The game was excavated in 1910 by Howard Carter from the tomb of an official named Reniseneb at Thebes. The tomb is dated to Dynasty 12, Reign of Amenemhat IV, circa 1814–1805 BC. “Ancient Egyptians likened the intricate voyage through the underworld to a game. This made gaming boards and gaming pieces appropriate objects to deposit in tombs” (The Met).

This Ancient Egyptian board game is almost 4,000 years old!

Known as ‘Hounds and Jackals’ or ‘Game of 58 holes’, its original name is unknown. It’s suggested it was played in a similar way to ‘Snakes and Ladders’.

📷 The Met www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

#Archaeology

Pectoral depicting a hybrid deity combining feline and spider features, holding a trophy head in one hand and a ceremonial tumi in the other. The figure wears a crescent-shaped crown adorned with a small projecting mask at the center of the forehead. The elongated eyes and open mouth revealing fangs give the piece a strong expressiveness. This representation falls within the Chimú iconography of great tutelary deities, in which animal attributes are combined with symbols of power. The joint presence of the trophy head and the tumi refers to complex ritual practices related to authority, warfare, and the divine realm. The figure, both frontal and hieratic, embodies an intermediary between humans and gods, expressing the power and legitimacy of both religious and political rule.

Pectoral
hammered copper, pigments
1100-1400 CE
Chimu culture
Peru

#precolumbian #prehispanic #ancientcultures #chimu #chimor #peru #pectoral #hammered #copper #pigment
#spiritual #religion #magic #power #culture #beliefsystem

Case of drawing instruments of gilt brass. The four sides are engraved with classical female figures: Peace, War, Poverty and Abundance. Made in London, 1565-1575 by 'Barthelemewe Newsum'

(British Museum)

The Bonampak Murals, Mayan 790-792 CE, located in the Lacandon Jungle, Chiapas. Its discovery in 1946 changed the historical perception of the Maya, revealing that, in addition to being astronomers and artists, they were a civilization with a sophisticated culture of warfare and sacrificial rituals.

Dummy Lunokhod

Parade version of the Soviet "Lunokhod" Moon rover.

Nunc est bibendum! What may be a ceremonial drinking competition features on this Gotlandic Picture Stone from Tängelgårda 🍻

Six hold drinking horns (one may be dipping a cup in a bucket), and two hold swords. Three wear eastern-style baggy trousers 👖

My 📷 Historiska museet

#Antique Watches, Cameras, and Medical Equipment Morph Into Meticulous #Steampunk #Spiders by Peter Szucsy #art

More information and photos of his amazing art are found here: www.thisiscolossal.com/2020/11/pete...

Photo of the underside of a hammered metal bowl, below it a label reading "A Backgammon First: The richly detailed scenes on this bowl have been traditionaly interpreted as the celebration of a marriage. ... Other vignettes depict events that would have accompanied the festivities, including musicians playing a harp and a drum, a wrestling match, and two men playing backgammon in what is the first known representation of the game. Such scenes could also represent activities associated with a wine banquet held in conjunction with Nowruz, the Persian new year." A label on the side notes that this bowl was gifted to the Smithsonian by one of the most famous drug dealers and merchants of death in US history.

Detail from the bowl, showing a view of the backgammon game in question.

Okay if we're doing super bowl games, how about this 7th-8th century Iranian one from the Smithsonian collections, with the earliest known depiction of backgammon:

In the current zeitgeist it's surprising that this hasn't been remade ... Probably a blessing though as it's a good film whereas many remakes/reimaginings are not.

A Maya ceramic effigy incense burner, 600-900 CE from Comitán, Chiapas, used in rituals to honor ancestors. The upper part is a deity. The lower part is the head of an underworld animal, possibly a bat or jaguar. This duality symbolizes the Mayan belief in the interconnection between life and death.

Wine Container Western Zhou dynasty (1046-771 BC), IIth/roth century BC China Bronze Lucy Maud Buckingham Collection, 1932.971 Identical inscriptions cast inside basin and lid: Rong Zi made this precious vessel

Just your standard 3000 year old Chinese wine container.
(Seen at Art Institute of Chicago)

Medieval Artificial Intelligence 😁

By the Italian artist and engineer Amedeo Capelli, creator of handcrafted wooden automata.
@stoccafisso_design [IG]

#art #inventions #wood #IA #engineering #email #computer

Ship (Nef)
Partly gilded silver.

Work of Esaias Zur-Linden
(1607-1632)

Called nefs in Old French, ceremonial centerpieces in the form of ships marked a lord’s place at the table. These pieces became popular again in Germany (known as Schiffspokale) early 17th century.

MET, New York

My photo shows a hemispherical red pottery bowl with underside supports in the shape of a pair of human feet. It is handmade from red Nile clay, slipped and polished to give a light surface sheen. The front of the bowl tips slightly forward as if offering its contents. The museum catalogue entry informs us that a bowl standing on feet is very similar in form to the Egyptian hieroglyph meaning "to bring." Dimensions: diameter 13.2 cm x width 13.7 cm x depth 9.8 cm. This type of bowl is dated to Predynastic Egypt, Late Naqada I-early Nagada lI period, circa 3700-3450 BC. I saw this bowl on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The museum purchased the bowl from M. Mohassib in Egypt in 1910.

To bring a smile to your face this weekend …

An ancient bowl with human feet!

Made in predynastic Egypt around 5,500 years ago.

The Met www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

📷 by me

#Archaeology

Whilst Stanley Kubrick's ‘The Shining’ and Jim Henson’s ‘The Muppet Show’ were filming next door to each other at Elstree Studios, Danny Lloyd got to visit and hang with Kermit in 1979.