Emily Mann
King's College London
Project title:
Diamond in the rough: The Orphic Lithica as Lapidary
Project Summary:
The Orphic Lithica, a little-known 4th-century CE lapidary (of nearly 800 lines) found in Dishna, Egypt, lists various gemstones and describes their appearance, powers and history.
The poem opens a way into understanding the little-known and less-understood Orphic texts, but also fits into a larger continuum of gemmological writing which continues into the Late Medieval times and beyond. There has been a long Classical history of gemstones being written about from various medical, symbolic, visual and historical perspectives. Lapidaries were extremely popular in the Middle Ages from Isidore of Seville to Marbode of Rennes to Georgius Agricola, and provided knowledge about the perceived scientific, Christian and magical properties of stones. However there remains a large gap in our own knowledge about literature on gemstones in Late Antiquity.
I propose to compare how gemstones in the Classical tradition have been described and classified with how the Orphic Lithica orders and provides knowledge about gemstones.
This will range from more scientific approaches (Pliny and Theophrastus) and knowledge-ordering works (Pausanias, Diogenes Peregetes) to more poetic attempts at categorising and explaining stones (Posidippus’ Lithica) as well as considering stones as objects of wonder (Priscus). This poem follows the Greek pastoral and Roman rustic poetic traditions where landscape and the impact humans have on Nature are used to consider ethical and moral concerns. Therefore I will engage an eco-critical approach since gemstones inherently form part of the natural world and represent the complex meeting of human meaning and natural material.
An examination of how the Orphic Lithica will elucidate not only how Orphism valued information and established hierarchies of knowledge, but also what sort of knowledge was preserved and prioritised in Late Antiquity through the lens of gemstones as geological objects, parts of the natural world, or measures of beauty and symbolism.