Lecture: The spread, usage, and modifications of the zodiac in Asia as documented on non-textual objects 

Lecture by Sonja Brentjes (Berlin/Wuppertal)
Date and time: 10 December 2024, 16.00-17.30
Location: Utrecht, Janskerkhof 13, 0.06

Abstract
The study of the histories of astral knowledge in various societies in Asia focuses primarily on texts. Except for instruments, non-textual objects are rarely considered by historians of science. In contrast, art historians and archaeologists rarely investigate the astral imagery in depth that is part of non-textual objects. The project Visualizations of the Heavens and Their Material Cultures in Eurasia and North Africa from 4,000 BCE to 1700 CE which Sonja Brentjes created focused on collecting non-textual objects representing visually the cosmos as a whole or individual of its components with the aim to offer interested researchers access to the wealth of pictorial representations of a broad range of ideas related to the heavens. In her talk, she will present objects of different kinds from West to South-East Asia showing zodiac signs in various forms and contexts.

Biography
Sonja Brentjes is a historian of science with a specialization in the mathematical societies, institutions, mapmaking, translations, mobility, cross-cultural exchanges, and the relationship between the sciences and the arts in various Islamicate societies, as well as the Midetarranean until 1700. Her latest book publications are The Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies. Practices from 2n/8th to 14th/19th Centuries and Imagining the Heavens in Eurasia from Antiquity to Early Modernity. Currently, she explores the substantial corpus of manuscript copies of ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi’s (903-986) Book on the Constellations produced over 1,000 years in cities across North Africa and Asia west of China.

See also: https://globalintellectualhistory.org/