p. 483 previous chapter on Maden
p. 484 unsure
p. 485 missing requested!
Is there a bibliography or is this it?
p. 486 ocr
also proud to name Phillipps among his heroes and role models,
‘The Saga of Christianity’s Oldest Liturgical Book’, pp. 405-11 in J. H. Marrow, R. A. Linenthal and W. Noel, eds.,
The Medieval Book Glosses from Friends & Colleagues of Christopher de Hamel, ’t Goy-Houten, 2010.
The letter of Simonides to the Guardian in 1863, quoted on this page. is from L. Diamantopoulou, ‘Konstantinos Simonides: Leben und Werk. Ein tabellarischer Uberblick’, pp. 305-25 in Muller et al., eds., Die getauschte Wissenschaft, as above, p. 305.
The denunciation of Simonides in the Allgemeinische Zeitung of November 1853 appeared in English in
The Athenaeum, no. 1478, 23 February 1856, p. 233, which 1 have read in British Library 1700.b.4, a volume of newspaper cuttings relating to Simonides; it was also published in French in
L’Athenaeum Franfaise, December 1853, pp. 1185-6.
The remark of
Patriarch Arthimus IV echoes the sentiment of the Caliph Omar on the destruction of the library of Alexandria in the mid-seventh century: ‘if these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed’
(R. Ovenden, Burning the Books, Cambridge, Mass., 2020, p. 32).
Simonides may nonetheless have staged a show excavation in Constantinople. “He declared that at a certain spot an Arabic MS in Syriac characters would be discovered by digging. Workmen were accordingly employed, Simonides himself not being allowed to descend. By-and-bye a pause was made for luncheon, and not long afterwards Simonides called out, ‘There it is, bring it up.’ The soil about it, however, was quite different from that of the ground. The workmen . . . when interrogated confessed that during luncheon the Greek came out for a short time and jumped into the pit, and began to burrow” (London Evening Standard, 1 October 1867, and other newspapers, including The New York Times, 20 October 1867).
Phillipps’s habit of staying up late (this page) is confirmed by Madden on a visit to Middle Hill: “Sir Thos. always keeps me up, and shows me MSS till my eyes ache” (journal, 31 August 1846; Bodleian, MS Eng. hist, c.159, p. 362; elsewhere Madden says that Phillipps often did not go to bed at all but stayed downstairs fully dressed on the sofa).
The various different forgeries (and probable forgeries) bought from Simonides by Phillipps at different times are listed in his catalogue under the following titles, (l) “Panselinos tom Zojgraphom, or Manual of Painters” (MS 13871; Sotheby’s, 4 July 1972, lot 1730;
now St John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, Kacmarcik MS 21, Area Artium Collection); (2) “Meletius’s
History of Byzantine Painting” (MS 13872; Sotheby’s, 1972, as above, lot 1731; A. Freeman, Bibliotheca Fictiva: A
Collection of Books & Manuscripts Relating to Literary Forgery, 400 bc-ad 2000, London, 2014, pp. 376-7, no. 1504, with
plate; now the Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore); (3)-(5) “A MS. in Arrowhead Character on
Vellum”, “Euleri Ethnica” and “Neocomi Historia Byzantina” (MSS 13873-5; together, Sotheby’s, 1972, lot 1732); (6)
“Homeri Ilias” (MS 13877; Sotheby’s, 1972, lot 1724; now Yale University, Beinecke Library, Osborn d543, bought
from Professor Takamiya on the James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection Fund, 2019); (7) “Hesiodi
Opera” (MS 13878; Sotheby’s, 1972, lot 1725); (8)-(9) “Anacreontis Carmina” and “Pythagoras Aurea Carmina” (MSS
13879-80; together, Sotheby’s, 1972, part of lot 1726; now Beinecke MS 581); (10) “Tyrtasi Odas” (MS 13881;
Sotheby’s, 1972, lot 1727; now Beinecke MS 580; C. E. Lutz, ‘A Forged Manuscript in Boustrophedon’, Yale University
Library Gazette, 53, 1978, pp. 28-44); (ll) “Phocylidis Carmina, &c.” (MS 13882; Sotheby’s, 1972, lot 1728; now
Beinecke MS 582); and (12)-(13) “A Charter ..“Another similar Charter ..“A third Charter more suspicious
than the others” (MSS 13883-85; together, Sotheby’s, 1972, lot 1729; now Beinecke MS 583). Beinecke MS 251,
which is genuine, is listed in B. M. W. Knox et al, ‘The Ziskind Collection of Greek Manuscripts’, pp. 39-56 in The
Yale University Library Gazette, 32, 1957, p. 51.
Phillipps’s suggestion that the scrolls might be made from boa constrictor skin occurs in his letter to S. L. Sotheby, who printed it in his Principia Typographica, II, London, 1858, p. 136e. I am grateful to Professor Takamiya for advice on the Homer and for allowing me to see it.
The visits of Simonides to the British Museum, this page, are recounted in
Madden’s journal for 22-23 February 1853. The quotation
“At first..is Bodleian, MS Eng. hist, c.166, p. 65. Madden also wrote a recollection of the same visit in his journal on 23 April 1856, quoted by Munby, Phillipps Studies, IV again, pp. 116-18.
That is the source for the discreet aside by Barker, traveller and orientalist (and member of a family of shipping agents in Alexandria), who died of cholera in the Crimean War.
Madden’s purchases of authentic manuscripts from Simonides are now BL, Add. MSS 19386-93 (Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years MDCCCXLVIII-MDCCCLIll, London, 1868, pp. 228-9);
on 1 March 1853 he recorded the agreed price as £35 but in the later account remembered it as £42. On 3 March 1853, the
dealer William Boone showed Madden several Greek manuscripts which he too had evidently bought from Simonides. The two versions of Simonides’ visit to the Bodleian Library occur in
The Athenaeum, no. 1479, 4 March 1856, included in the volume of newspaper cuttings cited above, and in
the Biographical Memoir, pp. 26-9. The encounter is also described in W. D. Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, A.D. 1598-A.D. 1867, [London], 1868, pp. 280-81, and H. H. E. Craster, History of the Bodleian Library, 1845-1945, Oxford, 1952, p. 88.
Bodleian, MS Barocci 33 is a collection of texts by Matthaeus Blastares, Gemistus Pletho and others, in its original blind-stamped binding. I owe the translation of the letter to Coxe, cited on this page, entirely to the kindness of Dr Mae A. Goldgraben and her mother, Dr Giannoula I. Mihailidou.
The story of Simonides in Paris is from
L’Athenaeum Fnanfaise, V, 23 February 1856, pp. 156-7, supplemented by Farrer, Literary Forgeries, p.
p. 486
https://books.google.com/books?id=5n5dEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT486
p. 487
https://books.google.com/books?id=5n5dEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT487
p. 487 highlights OCR
Another forgery of the same momentous year attempted to debunk Christianity from a supposed manuscript source: the Wichtige historische Enthullungen uber die wiridiche Todesart Jesu, Leipzig, 1859,
Wichtige, Historische Enthüllungen über Die Wirkliche Todesart Jesu. Sechste Auflage
https://books.google.com/books?id=qW4VuQEACAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
https://archive.org/details/bib_fict_4103026
went through at least six editions, claiming to publish an ancient manuscript found in a cave in Alexandria showing that the Resurrection was a hoax perpetrated by the Essenes; it was later shown to derive from a novel published in 1800 (Freeman, Bibliotheca Fictiva, pp. 354-5, nos. 1387-9).
Hodgkin
For his dealings with
Simonides I used two volumes of papers in the British Library, Add. MSS 42502 A-B (
some of it in Greek, which I
have not read), assembled by the antiquary John Eliot Hodgkin. His family were Quakers and looked for the good in
all people; the twentieth-century artist Howard Hodgkin was a direct descendant. The first volume includes the
deposition of Simonides (in English), fols. 359-85, which gave me several quotations here in the voice of
Simonides. His report of the Mayer hieroglyphics (this page) was published as FmoToXipaia nepi icpoy/.u<piK(ov
ypappawiv diarpifirj (A Brief Dissertation on Hieroglyphic Letters), London and Liverpool, 1860, in the form of an
epistolary essay addressed to Mayer “as a small mark of personal attachment”; citing Egyptian sources, including
his own Uranius, Simonides stubbornly explains hieroglyphs as purely symbolic, not alphabetical or phonetic, as in
the interpretations of Champollion (1822) and Lepsius (1837). Stobart’s confirmation that he had acquired papyrus
scrolls in Egypt and sold them to Mayer is in The Athenaeum, no. 1781,14 December 1861, p. 807, and Mayer in turn
confirmed that the scrolls had come from both Stobart and Sams, categorically not from Simonides (The Athenaeum,
no. 1783, 28 December 1861). Stobart had previously offered his papyri to the British Museum (Madden’s journal,
19 September 1856; Bodleian, MS Eng. hist, c.169, p. 307); Madden had a low opinion of Sams, “a sad rogue, I
believe” (journal, 7 December 1850, MS Eng. hist, c.163, p. 389). Tischendorf had found a fragment of the Codex
Sinaiticus in 1844, but the principal part in 1859, almost simultaneous with Darwin’s Origin of Species
Kirk
Write to Christopher de Hamel on HODGKIN correspondence, Forging Antiquity
Also quote about determining ms. Age
p. 488
https://books.google.com/books?id=5n5dEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT488
p. 489
https://books.google.com/books?id=5n5dEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT489
END SIMONIDES
