@mappadan.bsky.social
Home of my thoughts about archaic maps and mappae mundi, reconstructions and snaps people have taken of them, and my own redrawings. Third party stuff is believed to be in public domain. Copyright applies to own work.
A glimmer of light in the darkness. This morning at sunrise, the light peeped through as the clouds darkened and the rain fell. Photograph taken on Glastonbury Tor looking out over the Somerset levels. Another cold start to the day.
18.11.2025 08:35 β π 283 π 46 π¬ 7 π 0
Bamburgh Castle First Light, photo by Emma Rothera.
18.11.2025 08:22 β π 109 π 14 π¬ 0 π 2
Yellow fish only a mother could love
Hi there from the Shedd Aquarium!
18.11.2025 03:22 β π 3 π 2 π¬ 1 π 0And wasn't that the time that a lot of men wore mullets?
OMG.
Shoulder pads and back-combing.
Seemed fetching at the time.
World-renowned Dutch conductor and violinist AndrΓ© Rieu, together with Ukrainian-born singer Anna Reker, performed the legendary #Ukrainian Christmas carol Shchedryk (Carol of the Bells).
It was performed live during the Johann Strauss Orchestra concert in Maastricht, Netherlands.
Perhaps a coat hanger for people that are wearing huge shoulder pads. Would have been very useful in the 1980s.
17.11.2025 20:07 β π 2 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
The ruins of the 13th-century Whitby Abbey.
Nov 17: Feast of Hild (c.614-680), abbess. She succeeded Heiu in charge of Heruteu (Hartlepool) before founding, or refounding, Streanæshalch (Whitby), where she championed the 'Irish' dating of Easter at the synod in 664. She later founded a monastery at Hacanos (Hackness). #medievalsky
17.11.2025 07:50 β π 46 π 9 π¬ 0 π 2
"Speak not of what men deserve. For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think." β Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed
There's a magnificent passage in "The Dispossessed" about this.
20.03.2025 15:54 β π 98 π 30 π¬ 3 π 5
π· An Elderly Boatman in Istanbul
βDo not look down on those who appear worn and disheveled;
For there are ruins that hide treasures.β
βοΈ Δ°brahim HakkΔ± Erzurumi (1703β1780)
Want to walk into and through an actual Iron Age houseβ¦and UP THE STAIRS?
Of course you bloody do.
Come with me.
Carn Liath broch, just sitting quietly beside the A9 as thousands whizz by without stopping. Their mistake.
Far too excited to wait for #HillfortsWednesday
Part of a coloured engraving of a Roman mosaic showing an elephant moving towards the left. There are crossed lines on the animal's body.
Following last week's monochrome elephant, this is another common type of depiction in Roman mosaics. From the Great Pavement at Woodchester, moving around Orpheus. 1/2
#MosaicMonday
@classicalalan.bsky.social
In case of confusion, this is not an x-ray of the original. It's a (laborious) redrawing of the Hereford Mappa, imagining what an underdrawing might have looked like, assuming it was completed before ink, wash and paint were added.
17.11.2025 11:27 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
Simone Martini's annunciation...
17.11.2025 10:30 β π 3 π 1 π¬ 0 π 0... as far as a record exists.
17.11.2025 10:23 β π 3 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
The two lost annunciation doors...
17.11.2025 10:21 β π 2 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
17.11.2025 10:15 β π 2 π 1 π¬ 0 π 0
Text omitted.
17.11.2025 08:34 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
Underdrawing of the geography and topography.
16.11.2025 22:14 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
Underdrawing of the Hereford Mappa - first step.
16.11.2025 22:11 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0
Underdrawing of the Hereford Mappa... final step?
16.11.2025 22:09 β π 2 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0
LOTR ambient music fix.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=62j1...
Your 25 seconds of soothing waves from the beach down the road.
May the rest of your day be peaceful ππΌ
#oceandevotion #naturescure #youreswell #thesea #seastheday #WestBay #WestBeach
#archaeology #history #ancientbluesky
A stone βdistance slabβ, from Old Kilpatrick on the Clyde, Scotland, marking the western end of the Antonine Wall.
A portrait-format, black and white photo of a pool of water on a black sand beach. The light catches the edge of the sand in a line that leads towards distant mountains reflected in the water.
A simple scene from a remote black sand beach in Iceland.
15.11.2025 08:13 β π 726 π 98 π¬ 27 π 9
Forscher irrten jahrelang: "Himmelsscheibe" von Nebra ist offenbar ein Pizza-Rezept www.der-postillon.com/2019/11/pizz...
16.11.2025 09:00 β π 526 π 79 π¬ 9 π 6Day four, you wear your hat because it turns out you are not a barber.
16.11.2025 08:48 β π 3 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0I now realise it takes two or three days to cut your own hair.
Day one, you cut it.
Days two and three, bedhead first reveals uncut clumps that were mysteriously invisible previously and then individual hairs that wave around like reeds in a stream.
Monmouth was underwater yesterday. Town at the confluence of the Monnow and the Wye.
Happened around the time we had Sun Alphonse (maybe I slightly exaggerate but it wasn't especially rainy) on the other side of the mountains.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
