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Exploring Manuscripts: A Quiz on Historical Texts

Test your knowledge about manuscripts, their history, and their significance in various contexts with this engaging quiz.

#manuscripts #history #publishing #library science #text production

1 Manuscripts were produced on vellum and other parchments, on papyrus, and on ________.

2 An average manuscript page in 12 point ________ will contain about 23 lines of type per page and about 13 words per line, or 300 words per manuscript page.

3 ________ = 1,300 (including papyri)

4 In ________ and academic contexts, a "manuscript" is the text submitted to the publisher or printer in preparation for publication, usually as a typescript prepared on a typewriter, or today, a printout from a PC, prepared in manuscript format.

5 In the ________, for example, as early as 900, specimen documents were not inscribed by stylus, but were punched much like the style of today's dot-matrix printers.

6 In the context of library science, a manuscript is defined as any hand-written item in the collections of a library or an ________; for example, a library's collection of the letters or a diary that some historical personage wrote.

7 In ________, in the first millennium, documents of sufficiently great importance were inscribed on soft metallic sheets such as copperplate, softened by refiner's fire and inscribed with a metal stylus.

8 Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on palm leaves, survived in desert burials in the ________ of Central Asia.

9 In ________, the kammavaca, buddhist manuscripts, were inscribed on brass, copper or ivory sheets, and even on discarded monk robes folded and lacquered.

10 Private or government documents remained hand-written until the invention of the ________ in the late nineteenth century.

💡 Interesting Facts

  • the books and manuscripts in the Renaissance era Cotton library were categorized by their location in relation to busts of Caesars shelved alongside them.
  • the Codex Calixtinus, a 12th-century illuminated manuscript, is prefaced by a forged letter purporting the manuscript to be the work of Pope Callixtus II.
  • the nucleus of the 13,000 manuscripts that are just part of the Biblioteca Marciana of Venice, is made up from the personal library of Petrarch and the collection of Cardinal Bessarion.
  • the oldest known text of the Martyrology of Tallaght is in a 12th-century manuscript now at University College, Dublin.
  • in 1820, the missionary William Jowett bought the 9,539-page manuscript of Abu Rumi's first-ever translation of the Bible into Amharic "on terms which appeared... equitable to all parties".
  • The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul (pictured) was a manuscript translated, scribed, and embroidered for queen Katherine Parr by future queen Elizabeth I when the latter was eleven years old.
  • Banderia Prutenorum is a 15th century manuscript by Jan DÅ‚ugosz, describing banners collected by Polish forces after their defeat of the Teutonic Order forces in the Battle of Grunwald in 1410 AD.
  • Nikolay Likhachov collected medieval coins and manuscripts, Byzantine seals, Russian icons, and cuneiform tablets.
  • Peter P. Dubrovsky, Russian diplomat, collected valuable manuscripts from destroyed libraries during the time of the French Revolution.
  • rubrics were originally anything written in red letters in a manuscript, but now most often mean instructions, especially for officiating clergy, or scoring tools for tests in education.
  • French miniature painter Jacquemart de Hesdin is noted for his marginalia (example pictured), shapes of animals and foliage which give manuscript pages a frame.
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