Quick Question for the Yale People
Apr. 25th, 2009 05:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ap_aelfwineI'm just after doing some research at the Sterling Memorial Library, which turns out to be a very helpful institution.
As I was leaving, I noticed the stonecarvings above the main entrance--it's a Gothic Revival type building, and offhand I'd say it might date to somewhere between the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the First World War. Represented appear to be texts in Hebrew, Arabic or Persian, Greek, Chinese (looked like later-ish characters, rather than seal script), Mayan glyphs, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and something written in cuneiform.
I couldn't make any sense of the Greek--it looked like a copy of an ancient text, written all in capitals and without spaces between the words. Then again, I didn't have long to look at it. But something makes me think that somebody faculty-ish would have complained if either that or the Hebrew were only gibberish.
That said, what I was particularly wondering about was the cuneiform. Does it actually mean anything, or did they just put up a bunch of cuneiform because it looked cool?
Anyone have any thoughts?![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sovay?
As I was leaving, I noticed the stonecarvings above the main entrance--it's a Gothic Revival type building, and offhand I'd say it might date to somewhere between the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the First World War. Represented appear to be texts in Hebrew, Arabic or Persian, Greek, Chinese (looked like later-ish characters, rather than seal script), Mayan glyphs, Egyptian hieroglyphics, and something written in cuneiform.
I couldn't make any sense of the Greek--it looked like a copy of an ancient text, written all in capitals and without spaces between the words. Then again, I didn't have long to look at it. But something makes me think that somebody faculty-ish would have complained if either that or the Hebrew were only gibberish.
That said, what I was particularly wondering about was the cuneiform. Does it actually mean anything, or did they just put up a bunch of cuneiform because it looked cool?
Anyone have any thoughts?
sovay?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-04-25 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-25 11:37 pm (UTC)My, I'm impressed that it's that late, although I also suppose I should've looked it up. Most of the Gothic Revivals I've known were older, unless they were rebuilt after burning, like Kenyon's Old Kenyon which was burnt in something like 1947.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-25 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-25 11:57 pm (UTC)His architecture seems to be intruding into my life a fair bit, lately--last week I needed something at Columbia, which was actually in Avery Library rather than in the Butler which he built, but I couldn't help but pass Butler by to get there.