egabriel's blog

Extremely rare medieval manuscript

In the end of the 14th century a new musical style emerged. Specialists call it ars subtilior. It is of extremely complex and experimental nature, hard to sing and produce and with super refined musical notation. Obviously, only a small circle of true composers and music lovers could enjoy this musical style. Overall, it was the avant-garde music of the late medieval period. However, as a specialist and web analyst I find some controversy in this issue. Even though the ars subtilior music is highly refined, it was not merely a dead-end artistic movement.  Even more, it seems that some of ars subtilior music was widely known and distributed because many of the devices first used by its composers became standard compositional techniques in the Renaissance.

The center of ars subtilior was Avignon when it was a residence of a Pope who was fighting the opposing fraction in Rome headed by another Pope. From Avignon this musical style spread to Southern France, Paris and Northern Spain.  In the beginning of the 15th century it reached England and established itself there too. Ars subtilior music was exclusively secular. Its songs were telling of courtly love, war, chivalry and even praise of public figures.

The majority of what we know about ars subtilior French composers comes from a single invaluable and extremely rare medieval manuscript the Chantilly Codex.  It is the most important source of information, because we don’t know anything else about many of these music creators, including their biographies, dates of life and death. Brief texts that accompany the music and some of its lyrics allowed us to discover great composers of that time like Solage, Borlet, Grimace, Trebor, Senleches and others. The Chantilly Codex contains 112 polyphonic pieces, mostly ballads, motets, and rondeaus, that represent the most popular courtly dance styles of its time.

Even with the invention of printing

Yet, there was another reason for the loss of all those invaluable scrolls. Generally, papyrus scrolls don’t last more than a couple of centuries. Those scrolls that were chosen not to be copied on parchment  during the times of Christianity did not survive.

Even with the invention of printing European hand-written manuscript writing kept on going for another century. Printing was expensive and not accessible for everybody at those times.  Each time when a copy of a document was created more and more errors were introduced with each copy. That is why, specialists have to compare different versions of the same document to figure out the most authentic parts of a document.  As for private and governmental documents, they remained handwritten until the invention of the typewriter in the 19th century.

First ancient manuscripts

Originally, all documents and books were written by hand.  This type of manuscripts lasted until the invention of printing in China in the 7th century and later in Europe in about 1450.  The material used for hand-written ancient manuscripts differed depending on the geographical location.  The ones that were preserved till our days included papyrus, various parchments, and even palm leaves and birch bark documents.

First ancient manuscripts were discovered in Egyptian tombs and mausoleums. They were either located inside the sarcophagi or even reused as  mummy wrappings.  Archeologists and adventurers were discovering scrolls of manuscripts in bizarre places like dry caves, desert burials, or within the secretly buried jars.

The world of antiquity was famous for its large libraries, the most famous and largest of which was the  Library of Alexandria.  There is a certain irony that most of the scrolls that were kept in these huge storage all over the ancient world were lost forever. They were either burnt in fire or destroyed during wars and turmoil.

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Ancient Bestseller

There were the product of collaboration of various scribes and artists whose work was pasted together and then produced in some kind of funerary workshops, that predate funeral homes. It seems that the book of the dead was extremely expensive and had to be prepaid before the persons' death.  It is interesting to note that the value of the book was so high not because of the spells pasted there but due to high value of the blank papyrus.  No wonder, that some of the discovered papyrus funeral resolutions were reused.

When specialists started finding in quantities the book of the dead, they mistakenly assumed that it had extreme religious importance to ancient Egyptians. Some even proclaimed that it was the "Bible" of ancient Egypt.  However, this was not the case.  Ancients did not consider it a divine source, which led to the changes of some texts as the time went by.  But it was popular reading for them because it remained an ancient bestseller until ancient Romans conquered Egypt.

Famous Book of the Dead

In the middle of 19th century European learned about very complex and sophisticated concept of afterlife that existed in ancient Egypt.  In 1842 when German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius published the selection of texts that included Egyptian collection of funeral hymns, spells, and instructions to allow the deceased to pass through obstacles in the afterlife. The book became an instant bestseller and part of its fame belongs to the title that Lepsius gave to the selected manuscripts. He simply called them - "The Book of the Dead", deriving the name from the one of the most important spells in the ancient texts.

The original texts that were included in the book of the dead were most commonly found in the coffin or burial chamber of the deceased ancient Egyptian. There were written on the papyrus scrolls. Archeologists learned that these "prequels" of funeral poems were created in advance with with spaces being left for the name of the deceased to be written in later.

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Fans of conspiracy theories

It seems that everything Google has instant first love attraction. Sometimes we even see things that don’t exist because of that kind of trust we have in the number 1 search engine company.  I am talking about the recent "discovery" of Atlantis.

It all started when some Big Foot believer from United Kingdom was spending too much time on Google Earth.  Mind you, the guy, whose name is Bernie Bamford, is an aeronautical engineer.  While browsing the wondrous software, that recently added above and below ocean views, he observed a grid of lines near the coast of West Africa.

What would you do next? Probably, nothing.  Well, Bernie called tabloid Sun paper and proclaimed that he just discovered lost Atlantis! Why, Atlantis? Because wise Plato mentioned its location somewhere nearby a couple of thousand years ago.

 A number of other newspapers kept printing articles left and right about the discovery. Even after Google stated that the lines Bernie had seen, represented sonar data collected from boats.  That lade to a new salvo of articles hinting that Google "hides" something from general public.

You just can’t please them all. Say no to Lemuria searchers, and you immediately have to deal with the fans of conspiracy theories.  Why would Google hide Atlantis? After all, thanks to Google Earth, experts already discovered pristine forest in Mozambique and an ancient Roman villa.

 

Manuscript of Mesoamerican rituals and life

The invasion of conquistadors to America resulted in almost total destroyal of documents and manuscripts of Mesoamerican rituals and life.  One of a little few that survived the ordeal is located in the Apostolic Library of Vatican.  Specialists call this famous manuscript  Codex Borgia  - it consists of 39 sheets of made of the animal skin.  All sheets except one are painted on both sides. Up to this day Codex Borgia remains an enigma: nobody knows its origin, although many believe that it came from someplace on the territory of the modern Mexican state Puebla.

The discovery of the manuscript is interesting story by itself. It seems that the document was brought from America to Italy during early  Spanish colonial period. The last owner of the manuscript was Italian cardinal Stefano Borgia (which explains the name of the codex).  Borgia was a well-known theologian, antiquarian, and historian of the 18th century.  When he died in 1804 he left the treasure of invaluable artifacts that he collected throughout his life.  Alexander von Humboldt, extraordinary German naturalist and explorer, due to his greatness was allowed by Vatican to organize the artifacts in 1805.  This is where Alexander  discovered the enigmatic document and realized its importance, as he traveled so many times to America with research expeditions.

Even now specialists can not claim that they decoded every piece of the codex correctly because  nobody can understand the ways of ancient Aztec priests.  Thus, the largest part of the great manuscript contains the whole story with rituals, ball games and historical events that are not decoded. And up to this day the longest sequence in the document remains a mystery.

 

Mysterious texts in Book of Gates

One of the sacred funerary texts found in the tombs and pyramids along with the Book of the Dead is the famous Book of Gates.  Overall, this secret and mysterious manuscipt appears in the times of the New Kingdom, somewhere between 16th and 11th centuries B.C. Book of Gates is accompanying the Book of the Dead which facilitates the passage of a newly deceased into the next world. It is also most famous for depiction of the human races. In fact, Book of Gates tells us what races are known to ancient Egyptians. They are presented as four men entering the next world and names them as  Syrians, Nubians, Lybians and Egyptians races.

There are some mysterious texts in Book of Gates that we still don’t fully understand.  In the Book of Gates a deceased soul is guided to follow the journey of the sun through the underworld during the night. The text explains that at different stages of the journey  the soul must pass through a series of gates.  Book of Gates tells us that each gate is guarded by a different goddess and that a soul has to recognize her and act according to the character of that goddess. If the soul does what it is supposed to do then it will pass unharmed. It it makes mistakes then it will wind up in a lake of fire and face eternal torment.

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Ancient manuscript called Amduat

Among funerary pieces of literature found by archeologists in the Valley of the Kings there is an ancient funeral text called Amduat. Specialists discovered many excerpts of it in the tombs of New Kingdom pharaohs. Until they found the complete ancient document in the tomb of Thutmose 3 in the Valley of the Kings.

For many centuries this ancient manuscript was reserved exclusively for pharaohs only. The story in Amduat follows the journey of the Egyptian sun god Ra, who travels through the underworld, from sunset till dawn. After his death, says the text, pharaoh is taking this same journey. And in the end of it dead pharaoh becomes one with Ra and live forever.

Amduat tells us in details about gods and monsters of the underworld. Some of them are allies of the pharaoh and some are great enemies. In order to achieve his objective and become one with Ra, dead pharaoh must know the names of all good and evil in the underworld which is divided into twelve hours of the night.

So, this is when the Amduat comes handy as a reference for the pharaoh: it names all of these gods and monsters. With the help of Amduat he can call upon them for help or use their name to defeat them.

 

With gifts of flowers

You know, what they say - death is a part of life. Before I started working for funeral home directory, I was always history, music, art, and literature fan, over the years I built a close circle of friends who share same interests with me. I guess, this is why I want to write some blog entries about life and death and funeral traditions that vary all over the world. So people developed very interesting rituals in various cultures. I got somehow very passionate about these topics.

As you know, a funeral is a ceremony marking a person’s death. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember the dead, from the funeral itself, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honor. These customs vary widely between cultures, and between religious affiliations within cultures. In some cultures the dead are venerated; this is commonly called ancestor worship. The word funeral comes from the Latin funus, which had a variety of meanings, including the corpse and the funerary rites themselves.

Funeral rites are as old as the human race itself, as well as other hominids. I read in a local library that in the Shanidar cave in Iraq, Neanderthal skeletons have been discovered with a characteristic layer of pollen, which suggests that Neanderthals buried the dead with gifts of flowers. Go figure! These Neanderthals also believed in an afterlife, and in any case were aware of their own mortality and were capable of mourning. Isn’t that something?