Bookplates of scholars in ancient studies

Ancient World Bloggers Group

This is a great post from Charles Ellwood Jones. I suppose that this comes under the broad heading of Egyptomania, in that most of the Egyptian-themed bookplates shown are distinctly on the romantic side. I found them all great fun. Bookplates (exlibris) are the labels which are pasted inside book covers, usually to identify the owners or to indicate the affiliation of the owner. It's not a fashion today but I do see them in second hand books that I buy. I had no idea that they were collector items. There's an account about them on Wikipedia. This one belonged to a chap named Hans Bernhard Ambrosius Abel, but James Henry Breasted's, shown on the above page, is great fun too and there are some other excellent examples. Here's an extract from the above post:

When I was Research Archivist- Bibliographer at the Oriental Institute (1983-2005) I began, in a vague and undirected way, to collect scans of bookplates of scholars of ancient Near Eastern Studies. The primary focus was on those which appeared in volumes in the collections of the Oriental Institute. When the OI History blog began in the winter of 2008, it seemed an appropriate place to illustrate this small collection. When that blog entry appeared, correspondents began to send me information on other bookplates and copies of their own, when they had them. I hope this trend will continue, and I urge those of you who have a personal bookplate, or who have examples of scholar's bookplates in your own books or in books accessible to you will send them along for inclusion in this collection.

The study of the Bookplate, or Exlibris, is an interesting topic. See here, and here, and here, for instance. I suggest in particular, that those of you interested in the subject might like to consult Antike im Exlibris 2 Griechenland im Exlibris, and, Antike im Exlibris. Teil 1, Aegypten im Exlibris. A copy of the latter is in the Research Archives. See also the egyptological (or Egyptomaniacal) bookplates in the collection of Lewis Jaffe at Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie