Testaments of Time: The Search for Lost Manuscripts and Records

This labor of love by Dr.Leo Deuel was published by Knopf 1965. If you care about books, the thrill implicit in palaeography or archaeology, and about what the ancients kept written records of, this book is for you.It is long out of print, so if you chance upon a copy, hug it, buy it, devour it, relish it.The author's undertaking is daring. His scope may be judged from the following BOOKS within a book:BOOK ONE: A RENAISSANCE PRELUDEBOOK TWO: THE PERMANANCE OF PAPYRUS AND CLAY a) CLASSICS b) THE ANCIENT NEAR EAST BOOK THREE: THE PREVALENCE OF PARHCMENT a) THE NEW TESTAMENT b) HEBREW WRITSBOOK FOUR: A PROFUSION OF SILK, BARK, AND PAPER a) INNER ASIA b) THE NEW WORLD.With so wide a scope, the author has created a book that beckons (I found it by accident at The Strand, NY. I am a non-specialist in thsi subject). 590 pages, BW Plates 16 in number, five maps, and figures, woodcuts and facsimiles of scripts and symbols far too numerous to tally. (Examples include Aramaic, Syriac to Brahmi to the Dresden Codex pictograms of Mexico).Even in the instance where decoding might have progressed since the author laid pen to paper, the humor, the flow and the narrative keep the reader in thrall.I will give only one example to whet the appetite. A certain Sir Aurel Stein(1862-1943) after Oxford, the British Musuem, was stationed as Registrar of the Punjab University in British India(1888). He persuaded, says the author, the bureaucratic red tape to let him undertake in the reverse direction Marco Polo's travel. He then routinely traversed high mountain passes several times, exploring, surveying, seeking the Silk Route, written records of any kind from peoples past. He once lost his toes (amputation after the Kunlun mountains took their toll), several times cracked his collarbone. But he was outclimbing assigned helpers at the age of 60. The retold story of his archeological exploits in the arid desert of Taklamakan, his two digs there (in winter perforce where temperatures at night reached 0 degrees F), his challenging in some outlands a forger whose products had found a place in European Museums as genuine records, and the adventure story of arriving at Tun Huang (some one thousand miles across desert) and of his dealing with the "keeper of the scroll library" in the "Thousand Buddha Caves (grottoes)" are greatly amusing.Tantalizing little drawings of character sets and pictograms abound. Not photographs but illustrations or facsimiles.Enjoy scripts uncial, scripts miniscule, and letters ligatured!Having recently read Nicholas Basbanes' "A Gentle Madness" and "Patience and Fortitude",(both excellent reading for post-papyrus, book-form bibliomania as you will ever see,) the book under review compares very favorably for including writing materials of every sort known to mankind over centuries and all civilizations.It also compares favorably for the thrill and pull of the narrative.Lest I should have mischaracterized the quintessence of the book, here is the au