Here are some upcoming events that Cipher Mysteries readers might well enjoy:-

  • A nice little bit of codicology to start with: Dr Kathryn M. Rudy, “Dirty Books: Quantifying Patterns of Use in Medieval Manuscripts Using a Densitometer” – 5.30pm, 20th January 2010, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Research Forum South Room. Free.

    “Medieval manuscripts carry signs of use and wear. The priest repeatedly kissed the canon page of the missal, leaving his greasy nose print behind. The devotee regularly touched the image of Mary out of veneration, but inadvertently rubbed the paint off the vellum. Medieval readers of books of hours and prayerbooks – the largest surviving category of late medieval books – often held their manuscripts open for reading by resting their thumbs at the lower corners of the opening. The more often that readers used a text, the darker the thumbprints became.”

  • A talk on the Antikythera Mechanism by Professor Mike Edmunds at the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society – 7pm, Wednesday 26th May 2010, MANDEC, Higher Cambridge Street, Manchester. Free (but “a donation is requested“).

    “What may well be the most extraordinary surviving artefact from the ancient Greek world was discovered just over a century ago. Found in 1900 in a wreck off the coast of the Mediterranean island of Antikythera, the device contains over thirty gear wheels and dates from around 100 B.C. Now known as the Antikythera Mechanism, it is an order of magnitude more complicated than any surviving mechanism from the following millennium, and there is no surviving precursor.”

  • A talk on ‘Cosmography and Cartography in the Renaissance: Their Relationship Revisited‘, by Dr Adam Mosley – 5pm, Thursday 15th April 2010, Warburg Institute, London. (Free)

    This is part of the ‘Maps and Society’ series of lectures at the Warburg: you may remember Adam Mosley from the review here of his “Bearing the Heavens” book on Tycho Brahe’s research community, so should be very interesting!

  • Professor Michael Farthing  Nicholas Culpeper: London’s first general practitioner? Gideon de Laune Lecture: 6pm, Wednesday 28th April 2010, Apothecaries Hall, London. Not sure whether or not this is only open to Society of Apothecaries members!

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