Snippets in StoneHere are two unusual stone fragments. The thing at the top is an ostrakon”,a piece of stone or pottery filled with text, in this case from Byzantine Egypt, and dating from c. 600. While the fragment seems to be part of something that was initially much bigger (a sizable pot filled with a long biblical text,perhaps), it was actually always meant to be like this: a snippet with only a few words. The thing was filled with text after it had become a fragment, and as can be seen from the words written on its side. It is the equivalent of a page from a notebook. The moment image,from 1280 BCE, has an even stronger draft connotation. This piece of stone was likely a teaching tool used by a master who showed his apprentice how to draw a face. The pupil subsequently tried out a pair of arms, or which stare clumsy - lots to learn here. Both items deceive us: they seem broken and insignificant,yet are total and full of history.
Pic: (top) Metropolian Museum of Art, Accession nr. 14.1.103, and dated c. 600 (more here); (bottom) Baltimore,Walters Art Museum, Accession nr. 32.1 (more here).
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