From Cyzikus to Bootle: inscriptions and epigraphy in nineteenth (and twenty-first) century Liverpool

Date/Time
Date(s) - 16/11/2016
5:30 pm - 6:45 pm

Location
Room G33, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School

Categories


Epigraphic images of feetDr Peter Liddel and Dr Polly Low from the University of Manchester will give a talk entitled ‘From Cyzikus to Bootle: inscriptions and epigraphy in nineteenth (and twenty-first) century Liverpool.’

They have kindly provided the following abstract:

A number of ancient Greek inscriptions are held in the collections of the World Museum, Liverpool; they have been held by the Museum since the 1890s, but have not yet been systematically studied and have never been published.

We will present five of these inscriptions, and offer a brief discussion of their historical context and significance. We will also explore the circumstances of their collection and donation to the Liverpool Museum, and the possible significance of this for our picture of nineteenth-century habits of classical (and specifically epigraphical) collection.

These inscriptions, though diverse in form and date, have a shared geographical origin, and, as we suggest, they shed some light on our understanding of the epigraphic culture of ancient Kyzikos. They also share a collection history: four of them were brought to Liverpool by Captain John Ferguson, an employee of the Cunard shipping line. Ferguson was a respected seafarer, and seems to have been involved in some aspects of the cultural and intellectual life of Liverpool in the late nineteenth century, but his profile is far from that of the more typical collector or connoisseur of antiquities in this period.  

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