The Voynich Manuscript is one of my favorite historical mysteries and one that I plan to write about soon in more detail, but for now I present some (new to me) digitized images from this most obscure of books. For more see the Wikimedia Commons page, which seems to contain the complete original text.
Author Archives: Benjamin Breen
Update
My apologies for the paucity of posts recently! I just spent a week in the extremely beautiful coastal area near the village of Ubatuba, about three hours northeast of São Paulo, and a place where internet access is scarce. When I get the chance, I will upload and post some of the photos I’ve taken so …
Vanished Civilization II: The Tocharians
These people, they said, exceeded the ordinary human height, had flaxen hair, and blue eyes, and made an uncouth sort of noise by way of talking, having no language of their own for the purpose of communicating their thoughts. – Pliny the Elder on the report of an embassy from Sri Lanka on the people who …
Uniforms of the Brazilian Army
Greetings from Brazil! More to follow on the fascinating city of São Paulo. For now, I present some images of eighteenth century Brazilian army uniforms, courtesy of the excellent Portuguese-language blog Arquivo Histórico, : Note the ‘auxilaries’ in the bottom left of this last image — apparently mestizo and African-descended soldiers, sporting uniforms with much brighter …
Brasil.
I leave for Brazil (S.P. and Rio) today and will be there until the end of the month. While traveling I plan to use this blog as a clearinghouse for the interesting history-related things I find there, and for the occasional photo I take with my friend’s fancy DSLR camera. Inspired by my impending visit, …
South Georgia Island Church
Click to enlarge. I love the solemness and austerity of this old church in the abandoned settlement of Grytviken on one of the most remote islands in the world, South Georgia, which lies hundreds of miles to the east of Tierra del Fuego. According to Wikipedia, the church was built by Norwegian whalers in 1913. …
Image of the Week 2: the Court of the Ottoman Grand Vizier
Click to enlarge. Today’s image of the week depicts a formal audience between Ahmed III‘s powerful Grand Vizier, Ibrahim Pasha, and the Vicomte d’Andrezel, the French Ambassador to the ‘Sublime Porte‘ (as the Ottoman court was called in diplomatic circles.) The date is given as October, 1724. This puts the work squarely in the middle …
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Europeans as ‘Other,’ Redux [February 2011 update]
A post today inspired by last week’s post on early modern Japanese and Chinese depictions of Europeans. Thinking about that led me to look more closely at an image I’ve had filed away for awhile — a remarkable example of sixteenth century Japanese Nanban (‘Southern Barbarian’) art depicting a group of Portuguese merchants at a …
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Animals in Pisanello
Looking at the paintings of the early Italian Renaissance painter Pisanello just now, I was struck by how wonderfully delicate and accurate his paintings of animals are. If he had lived in a different time or created these images in a different context (one of scientific learning rather than courtly patronage) I’m convinced that Pisanello …
The Drawings of George Psalmanazar
The brilliant eighteenth century impostor George Psalmanazar (1679?-1763) is one of my favorite historical figures and someone I’ll return to at a later date to write about in more depth. Today I’m just going to post some of his drawings, which were discovered by the historian Frederick Folely, S.J., in a sheaf of Church documents …
