If Indiana Jones had relied on trains . . .

At the turn of the twentieth century, Francis W. Kelsey began to amass a large collection of artifacts from ancient sites across the Mediterranean, with an emphasis on Imperial Rome, to broaden the teaching of antiquity at the University of Michigan. Among the objects now housed in the museum that bears his name is a collection of seven hundred colorful stones dating to the Roman period, one of the largest and most varied collections of Roman decorative stones outside Europe. These pieces were obtained as archaeological artifacts, mostly architectural, with many deriving from well-known ancient buildings, such as the Baths of Diocletian in Rome and the Palace of Herod in Jericho, allowing for new interpretations of their architectural decoration and design. Chapters trace the formation of the collection, study the archaeology of the artifacts, and detail the history of each stone and its study with a comprehensive bibliography. In keeping with the nature of the collection, Roman Decorative Stone Collections focuses on archaeological contexts and object biographies, from the stones' first use to their eventual display in the Kelsey Museum. Entries are accompanied by rich photographs detailing the stones' appearances, environmental factors, and their collectors. The fully illustrated catalog includes essays deriving from Kelsey's original notes on sources, buildings, sites, and dealers. As the first formal catalog of these items, Roman Decorative Stone Collections is an accessible resource of Roman archaeology, antiquities, and the decorative arts.

Discarded, Discovered, Collected: The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection provides an accessible introduction to the University's collection of papyri and related ancient materials, the widest and deepest resource of its kind in the Western hemisphere. The collection was founded in the early part of the 20th century by University of Michigan Professor of Classics Francis W. Kelsey. His original intention was to create a set of artifacts that would be useful in teaching students more directly about the ancient world, at a time when trips to ancient sites were much harder to arrange. Jointly administered by the University of Michigan's Department of Classical Studies and its Library, the collection has garnered significant interest beyond scholarly circles and now sees several hundred visitors each year. Of particular note among the collection's holdings are sixty pages of the earliest known copy of the Epistles of St. Paul, which are often featured on tours of the collection by groups from religious institutions. Arthur Verhoogt, one of the current stewards of the University of Michigan Papyrology Collection, provides clear, insightful information in an appealing style that will attract general readers and scholars alike. Extensively illustrated with some of the collection's more spectacular pieces, this volume describes what the collection is, what kinds of ancient texts it contains, and how it has developed from Francis Kelsey's day to the present. Additionally, Verhoogt describes in detail how people who study papyri carry out their work, and how papyri contribute to our understanding of various aspects of the ancient Greco-Roman world. Translations of the ancient texts are presented so that the reader can experience some of the excitement that comes with reading original documents from many centuries ago.

A Catalogue of Greek Manuscripts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a comprehensive, fully illustrated catalogue of the largest collection of Greek manuscripts in America, including 110 codices and fragments ranging from the fourth to the nineteenth century. The collection, held in the Special Collections Research Center of the University of Michigan Library, contains many manuscripts from Epirus and the Meteora monasteries built on high pinnacles of rocks in Thessaly. Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann has based the manuscript descriptions on the latest developments in the fields of paleography and codicology, including the newest recommendations of the Institute for Research and History of Texts in Paris. The catalogue includes high-resolution plates of all the manuscripts, allowing researchers to compare the entries with other Greek manuscripts around the world. This catalogue contains a trove of fascinating information related to Byzantine culture that will be available for the first time to scholars working on various disciplines of the humanities such as Classical and Byzantine Studies, Art History, Medieval Studies, Theology, and History. This is the first volume of a projected two-volume set. Volume 2, also by Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann, will contain descriptions of remaining Greek manuscripts in the Library’s collection, starting with Mich. Ms. 59 and ending with Mich. Ms. 238, for a total of 53 manuscripts and 8 fragments. Both volumes will have the same format – catalogue entries for each manuscript together with extensive illustrations. The publication date for Volume 2 has not been established.

Object Lessons and the Formation of Knowledge explores the museums, libraries, and special collections of the University of Michigan on its bicentennial. Since its inception, U-M has collected and preserved objects: biological and geological specimens; ethnographic and archaeological artifacts; photographs and artistic works; encyclopedia, textbooks, rare books, and documents; and many other items. These vast collections and libraries testify to an ambitious vision of the research university as a place where knowledge is accumulated, shared, and disseminated through teaching, exhibition, and publication. Today, two hundred years after the university’s founding, museums, libraries, and archives continue to be an important part of U-M, which maintains more than twenty distinct museums, libraries, and collections. Viewed from a historic perspective, they provide a window through which we can explore the transformation of the academy, its public role, and the development of scholarly disciplines over the last two centuries. Even as they speak to important facets of Michigan’s history, many of these collections also remain essential to academic research, knowledge production, and object-based pedagogy. Moreover, the university’s exhibitions and displays attract hundreds of thousands of visitors per year from the campus, regional, and global communities. Beautifully illustrated with color photographs of these world-renowned collections, this book will appeal to readers interested in the history of museums and collections, the formation of academic disciplines, and of course the University of Michigan.

Second edition, updated March 2023 Ancient Rome is still with us, more than ever. Every year, with new metro lines, roadworks, digs, restorations and repairs, new discoveries are made and old errors corrected – and new questions raised. This electronic book is intended as both a walking guide to ancient Rome and a resource for the city and the people who left their mark on history. Each of the eight excursions illustrates an aspect of the city from the foundation to the fall, and in passing explains the bits of modern Rome whose roots lie in that distant past. These walks are not meant to be a tourist guide of the "Rome in 3 days" style nor a nutshell guide to the well-documented and overrun sites such as the Colosseum and the Forum. Instead, they lead through the city itself, along paths that have been trod for thousands of years.

The archaeological study of the ancient world has become increasingly popular in recent years. A Research Guide to the Ancient World: Print and Electronic Sources, is a partially annotated bibliography. The study of the ancient world is usually, although not exclusively, considered a branch of the humanities, including archaeology, art history, languages, literature, philosophy, and related cultural disciplines which consider the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean world, and adjacent Egypt and southwestern Asia. Chronologically the ancient world would extend from the beginning of the Bronze Age of ancient Greece (ca. 1000 BCE) to the fall of the Western Roman Empire (ca. 500 CE). This book will close the traditional subject gap between the humanities (Classical World; Egyptology) and the social sciences (anthropological archaeology; Near East) in the study of the ancient world. This book is uniquely the only bibliographic resource available for such holistic coverage. The volume consists of 17 chapters and seven appendixes, arranged according to the traditional types of library research materials (bibliographies, dictionaries, atlases, etc.). The appendixes are mostly subject specific, including graduate programs in ancient studies, reports from significant archaeological sites, numismatics, and paleography and writing systems. These extensive author and subject indexes help facilitate ease of use.

The first-ever history of Michigan’s celebrated collection of papyri offers nonspecialists an inviting encounter with the ancient world

Essays on the historical Greco-Roman influence on the evolving architectural landscape of New York City. During its rise from capital of an upstart nation to global metropolis, the visual language of Greek and Roman antiquity played a formative role in the development of New York’s art and architecture. This compilation of essays offers a survey of diverse reinterpretations of classical forms in some of the city’s most iconic buildings, public monuments, and civic spaces. Classical New York examines the influence of Greco-Roman thought and design from the Greek Revival of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries through the late-nineteenth-century American Renaissance and Beaux Arts period and into the twentieth century’s Art Deco. At every juncture, New Yorkers looked to the classical past for knowledge and inspiration in seeking out new ways to cultivate a civic identity and to structure their public and private spaces. Specialists from a range of disciplines—archaeology, architectural history, art history, classics, and history— focus on how classical art and architecture are repurposed to help shape many of New York City’s most evocative buildings and works of art. Federal Hall evoked the Parthenon as an architectural and democratic model; the Pantheon served as a model for the creation of libraries at New York University and Columbia University; Pennsylvania Station derived its form from the Baths of Caracalla; and Atlas and Prometheus of Rockefeller Center recast ancient myths in a new light during the Great Depression. This examination of post-Revolutionary art, politics, and philosophy enriches the conversation about how we shape space—be it civic, religious, academic, theatrical, or domestic—and how we make use of that space and the objects in it.