ancient

The Redbridge Museum

 

 

This morning I visited the Redbridge Museum and Heritage Centre in Clements Road, Ilford, in the town centre. It’s a small civic museum featuring objects and ephemera from the borough of Redbridge from the Victorian era up to the 1990s. A fascinating snapshot into the history of our area, ideal for local history buffs and schoolchildren studying history projects. There’s no dino skeletons here but there’s a mammoth skull displayed just outside the museum.

Credits: Museum GIFs and Tumblr via GIPHY

Shapiku’s cuneiforms

 

An example of Babylonian text, in its original ‘cuneiform’ script from 5,000 years ago, then transliterated into our modern Latin alphabet, then translated into English. Attributed to a ‘Sapiku of Borsippa’ it is a prediction of the future. Sapiku was a 7th century BCE astrologer and priest who was an advisor to the king of that time.

Credits: The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon: Vol II and Babylonian-Assyrian Ittu [Omen] Astrology Before 550 BC via GifCities and Internet Archive, The Visual Astrology Newsletter

The old Dutch windmill

 

There isn’t a single windmill owner in Holland who doesn’t have a second job, for when there is no wind. Johnny Ball
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Gifvilleasaurus

 

Circa late Jurassic era – Gifvilleasaurus shahii – lived in primordial fern forests in what is now Gifville. It fed upon horse chestnuts and wild coriander (didn’t do ferns, really) and with its lean and muscular hind legs, this bipedal dinosaur as capable of hunting down unusual and elusive proto-GIFs. It also liked to play the sitar. A mortal enemy of the fat purple dinosaur, Barney.

Credit: Best Animations

Codex Gifvilleus: The enchantment of the mandolin

 

“La musique vous permet de devenir imprévisible.”
Björk

“Music allows you to become unpredictable.”

Credits: Évrart de Conty via {BnF Gallica, GIFMaker.me, Gallica BnF, Divers / Various, Gallica en GIFs, Pinterest, Fidjie Fidjie, Gifs Animés: art ,humour,animaux… and Google+

Saturn tears

Ｉ ｄｒｉｎｋ ｃｈｅｍｉｃａｌ ｈａｐｐｉｎｅｓｓ
Ａｎｄ ｅｖｅｒｙｔｈｉｎｇ ｓｅｅｍｓ ａ ｌｉｔｔｌｅ ｌｅｓｓ ｇｌｏｏｍｙ

Credits: Plupluru, Sugar Pop Party and Tumblr via Savannah Jayne, I like your style and Pinterest

Fore-edge painting

A fore-edge painting is a scene painted on the edges of the pages of a book. There are two basic forms, including paintings on edges that have been fanned and edges that are closed; thus with the first instance a book edge must be fanned to see the painting and in the second the painting is on the closed edge itself and thus should not be fanned. A fanned painting is one that is not visible when the book is closed.

The earliest fore-edge paintings date possibly as far back as the 10th century; these earliest paintings were symbolic designs. Early English fore-edge paintings, believed to date to the 14th century, presented heraldic designs in gold and other colours.

 

Credits: 4GIFs.com (Animated GIFs) via Tumblr, Al Heden Chrism, Awesome GIF’s and Facebook, Wikipedia