Another Neurodivergent Queer Writes A Blog!

So a few years ago I took a class on ‘paleography,’ which is just a fancy word for ‘ancient (paleo-) [hand]writing (-graph-),’ because ancient manuscripts and papyri are incredibly difficult to read unless you already know how to read them. The final project was to type out one page of this book (Mich. Ms. 155, 8th century CE) [the link takes you to a collection of page scans].

I typed out most of it, if not the whole thing, and eventually I noticed that the damage was appearing in the same places on random pages here or there. This happened several times, so on a whim I moved around my copies of the images and it seemed like things started to make more sense. I became convinced when one of these moves lined up a split word, I think it was some form of λαμβάνειν, split between the end of one page and the start of another.

So I went into the reading room the next morning and tested out the moves I’d made on my computer. Without even referencing the text on the pages, using only the patterns of damage, I accidentally re-collated an ancient book that had become shuffled up over time. Tada!

I was asked to make a little movie of how I put it back together, and this is the result: I’ve uploaded the full unedited version because the one I edited down for the presentation went so fast it looked like I was flinging ancient pages all over the place ahaha… Plus I’m not so pressed for time here. It’s super nerdy, but actually a lot of fun, like a puzzle but more rewarding.

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