JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1819

Oh TIme, thou must untangle this, not I; it is too hard a knot for me t’untie! — Twelfth Night. 2.2.40-41

I really should have included this in yesterday’s post about a terrific and creative image of concentric circles used early-on to display concepts of terrestrial distance and importance (A Table of the Cheifest Cities and Towns in England, printed in London in 1600,  ), as they both use this organizing concept in a bit of an uncommon way.  This image appears in  Charles de Bouelles’ beautifully titled Que hoc volumine continuentur; Liber de intellectu; Liber de sensu; Liber de Nichilo; Ars oppositorum; Liber de generatione; Liber de sapiente; Liber de duodecim numeris; Epistole complures, and printed in 1510 in Paris (from which also appears another interesting image on the “evolution” of the rock from being to thinking to being again, here), and maps the importance of the city of Jerusalem, but more importantly places its significance in the histories of the number twelve, centering on the city itself and the twelve tribes of Iraeli, and then branching out in more creative listable ways.

Besides the twelve tribes, there are the twelve constellations of the ecliptic, Apostles, knights of the Round Table, trials of Hercules, Olympians, sons of Odin, books of Paradise Lost and the Aeneid, hues of the color wheel, inches, months, dozen, virtues, Olympians, half unit of the day, and on and on. 

There are twelves enough to carry out just about any iconographic need, and that limited to just occidental resources.

Source:  Les Pierres du Songe, Etudes sur les graffiti medievans, here.