Showing Results 1 - 10 of 257
Song at the Sea (Exodus 15), Leningrad Codex, 1009 CE. The photo shows the first fourteen verses of the poem (Exodus 15:1–14) and a few prose verses from the end of the preceding chapter. The text of…
This dictionary of maritime terms, a hand-written manuscript, includes definitions in Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
Ángel Jacob Jesurún’s topographical map of Caracas, with its geometric grid, is the first map after Venezuela’s independence to be drawn and printed by a native of the city. After decades of war and…
This manuscript copy of a prayer book, containing prayers and hymns for the Sephardic community of Amsterdam, was written out by David Mendes Franco. It shows David dancing before God and his…
Born near Mumpf, Switzerland, Rachel (born Elisa-Rachel) Félix (1821–1858) was a prominent French actress. Her parents worked as peddlers, and, as a child, she performed music alongside her sister…
This map of the Temple in Jerusalem made in Safed by a Jewish scribe comes from an example of a “pilgrimage scroll,” also known as an “itinerary,” because they included instructions for visiting holy…
In this seventeenth-century map, Jerusalem is depicted as a fairly dense city within a wall, with only a few structures outside. Men in Arab dress stand in small groups conversing with one another in…
In the back of a manuscript collection of astronomical texts, which includes one of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s works on the use of the astrolabe (a tool for astronomical calculations), is a set of crude but…
This ketubah (marriage contract) from Damascus, signed on the 21st of Shevat 5466, or February 5, 1706, features a text set within an arch, and flanked on both sides and above with green and orange…
While ketubot (marriage contracts) are usually written in Aramaic, Karaite ketubot are written in Hebrew. They are often pentagonal in shape, most often with a pointed bottom. This example has a…
