11-09-2016, 01:23 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-09-2016, 01:23 PM by Diane.
Edit Reason: specifics
)
Koen,
I should have posted the whole circuit of the fan, sorry. Nor did I mention that I looked into the big Ethiopian fan. It has the images of the saints of the day: it is a calendar. Originally these were carried about, but the sticks could be removed, and then you had a fold-out. The fan has since been put in a museum, but when I wrote to the curator, they told me that using fanfold documents which opened out into a circle rather than in the European way was very common, and that in fact it derived from use of palm-leaves as books. This custom was (and in many cases still is) unremarkable from north Africa, through Egypt, Ethiopia and Arabia into India as as far as southeast Asia. But unlike them, this fan-fold calendar in the VMS is of fabric (paper/papyrus), and at the place marked by the usual "beginning and end" line, it has a motif which even tells us when the year begins - I'm not sure if the centre was originally meant to be the moon as it is now, or that's a misinterpretation by the fifteenth century copyist. (I've already written posts about each of these things, so won't offer more detail. Still, if the centre is the moon, that's appropriate enough because the next section in the VmS foldout is also moon-focused and is - I concluded after going into the whole thing in some depth - a chart for calculating the 'establishment of the port' by the old mariner's method. Very interesting pair of diagrams.
PS - here's the post about the 'star on the pedestal' if you're into historical, astronomical or cultural minutiae.
I reprinted and expanded it slightly from the original analysis - I treated that section of the manuscript fairly early on, and realised there wasn't a single current worker likely to have seen the original.
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I should have posted the whole circuit of the fan, sorry. Nor did I mention that I looked into the big Ethiopian fan. It has the images of the saints of the day: it is a calendar. Originally these were carried about, but the sticks could be removed, and then you had a fold-out. The fan has since been put in a museum, but when I wrote to the curator, they told me that using fanfold documents which opened out into a circle rather than in the European way was very common, and that in fact it derived from use of palm-leaves as books. This custom was (and in many cases still is) unremarkable from north Africa, through Egypt, Ethiopia and Arabia into India as as far as southeast Asia. But unlike them, this fan-fold calendar in the VMS is of fabric (paper/papyrus), and at the place marked by the usual "beginning and end" line, it has a motif which even tells us when the year begins - I'm not sure if the centre was originally meant to be the moon as it is now, or that's a misinterpretation by the fifteenth century copyist. (I've already written posts about each of these things, so won't offer more detail. Still, if the centre is the moon, that's appropriate enough because the next section in the VmS foldout is also moon-focused and is - I concluded after going into the whole thing in some depth - a chart for calculating the 'establishment of the port' by the old mariner's method. Very interesting pair of diagrams.
PS - here's the post about the 'star on the pedestal' if you're into historical, astronomical or cultural minutiae.
I reprinted and expanded it slightly from the original analysis - I treated that section of the manuscript fairly early on, and realised there wasn't a single current worker likely to have seen the original.You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.