The practice of wet squeezing as a means of creating epigraphic facsimiles was widespread during the 19th and 20th centuries, but often negatively impacted the original inscriptions, particularly in cases where paint pigment was present. Depending on the precise method used, the pigment may transfer from the original to the squeeze. This article presents a case-study of four such squeezes made by Swedish Etruscologist Olof August Danielsson in 1886 of a funerary tile from Chiusi, as part of the preparatory work for Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum. This material makes it possible to study epigraphic polychromy in cases where pigment on the original has been damaged through squeezing. In addition, it illustrates how squeezes can give insight into the history of individual objects, as the squeezes, which show both the carving and the paint, cast light on the various proposed readings of the tile’s Etruscan inscription (CIE 1973/ET Cl 1.1478).
Olof Rudbeck’s Atlantica (1679–1702) is a characteristically wide-ranging example of Early Modern scholarship in which the author draws on a compendious assortment of evidence to argue that his native Sweden was the cradle of human civilization. Within this discussion, he devotes particular attention to the Phoenicians, whom he attempts to paint as descendants of “Scythians” who had migrated to the Mediterranean from an original Swedish homeland. Drawing upon the work of earlier Phoenician scholars such as Joseph Scaliger and Samuel Bochart, as well as his own, often rather creative, etymologies, he seeks to demonstrate a relationship between the Phoenician language and Swedish. This paper explores how Rudbeck engages with and utilizes the Phoenician people and the Phoenician language in service of his wider proto-nationalist goals and places his work within the wider context of Phoenician studies in Early Modern Europe, a few decades before Barthélemy’s decipherment of the Phoenician script (1758). While clearly wrong in many of his conclusions, Rudbeck’s work can tell us much about perceptions of Phoenicians at an important time of transition between Renaissance scholarship and the beginnings of modern archaeological and linguistic research.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.