Homeric writing… in Lego!

Happy International Lego Classics Day – the highlight of our calendar here at CREWS! To celebrate, I’ve put together a special post on writing in the Homeric epics, which, as you’ll see, gives us a great excuse to talk about how writing developed all around the Mediterranean in the Bronze Age and Iron Age.

A possible reference to something being written down in the Iliad? Read on to find out more!

There is a very big Classical problem at the heart of this post: the so-called “Homeric Question”. Which is actually more like a group of questions. Who was Homer, the individual credited with composing the Iliad and the Odyssey? Was he a real individual, or is “Homer” a convenient umbrella term for multiple individuals involved in the poems’ composition? When and in what circumstances were they composed? And – in some ways the most interesting question – do the poems refer to real historical events in an identifiable historical period?

Lego Pippa!

I am ever so excited and humbled to have been initiated into the Lego Classicists family, and immortalised as a Lego figure. It’s a huge honour, and just the most amazing career accolade! I even have a little tile with the CREWS logo, and have been designed specially to include one of my self-made necklaces.

Animating the Alphabet – in Lego!

Today is International Lego Classics Day on Twitter, an annual occasion when classicists all over the world dive into their Lego collections to build models related to their research. We’re big Lego fans here at CREWS and every year we try and do a couple of things for ILCD. As this year will be the last when the Project is running, we wanted to pull out all the stops. This is the result, a short film telling the history of alphabetic writing through the medium of Lego stop-motion.

I’ve wanted to try my hand at a CREWS-related stop-motion video for a while but the timing has never worked out. Fortunately this year I had just sent off proofs for two forthcoming CREWS publications so had enough leeway in my diary to get stuck in to a little Lego project for a few days.

Lego Cleopatra, and writing in Ptolemaic Egypt

We wish you all a very happy International Lego Classicists Day! As official partners this year, we have been getting very excited and we have two big treats for you – Lego Cleopatra (this post) is by me, and the stop-motion Lego history of the alphabet is by Philip.

It’s hard to avoid that very striking popular cultural image of the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, with almond eyes and sleek black hair, made most famous perhaps by Elizabeth Taylor in a 1963 Hollywood epic (or Amanda Barrie in Carry On Cleo if you prefer!) – and immortalised in series 5 of Lego’s collectable sets of minifigures. A lot has been said about what she might really have looked like, but are looks everything? For instance, did you know that it is quite widely believed that we have a signature on a piece of papyrus that could be in Cleopatra’s very own hand?

Cleopatra and Marc Antony as played by Elizabeth Taylor (note the embroidered hieroglyphs on her dress!) and Richard Burton in the 1963 film epic ‘Cleopatra’ (left) and by my Lego figures (right).

Literacy in Ancient Pompeii… in Lego!

It’s time to say happy International Lego Classicism Day again! Our special treat this year is a brief excursion to ancient Pompeii, to consider the nature of literacy at the site. Who could write in Pompeii, and what sorts of writing might a resident of the city have encountered in their day-to-day life? Let’s explore this through a small Lego street scene.

Reconstructing Mycenaean scribes and archives… in Lego!

Happy International Lego Classicism Day to all our friends and colleagues! In celebration this year, I have been working on something special: a re-imagining of the cover art from John Chadwick’s The Mycenaean World book, in a 3D Lego model. Far from a just-for-fun exercise, this actually has some helpful practical applications in making us question what Mycenaean scribes did at work, and how Linear B archives functioned.

Making ancient writing fun (with Lego and knitting)

The CREWS project Twitter feed has gone Lego crazy today, as you may have noticed. And with good reason, because today is International Lego Classicism Day (look for the #ILCD2018 hashtag on Twitter and you’ll see what I mean).

Our resident CREWS office scribe was the first to get in on the act.