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Material Texts: Georgios Boudalis (Museum of Byzantine Culture, Greece) "Books in Late Antiquity: Their Making, Their Depiction, and Their Interpretation"

  • Monday, February 24, 2025 - 5:15pm to 7:00pm

Class of 1978 Pavilion, sixth floor of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library


We welcome Georgios Boudalis (Museum of Byzantine Culture, Greece), for a talk titled: “Books in Late Antiquity: Their Making, Depiction, and Interpretation.” Dr. Boudalis writes:

This presentation will explore the codex book formats used in late antiquity, focusing primarily on wax tablet codices and multi-quire codices, as well as their depiction in the art of the time. Through the analysis of iconographic and archaeological evidence, we will examine the distinct characteristics of these codices and consider how wax tablet codices may have influenced the development of multi-quire codices. Lastly, I will argue that the way books are depicted and how we interpret these representations are influenced by our knowledge of books—both contemporary and historical. A limited understanding of how books were made and used can result in misinterpretations or overinterpretations of these artistic depictions.

Georgios Boudalis is senior book conservator at the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Thessaloniki/Greece. He has worked and conducted research in various manuscript collections including those of the monasteries of Mount Athos and Sinai. He completed his PhD in 2005 on the evolution of Byzantine and post-Byzantine bookbinding and has since published on issues of codicology, bookbinding archeology, and manuscript conservation. His main interests are the evolution of bookbinding techniques in the Eastern Mediterranean and how this can be studied using a combination of physical, written, and iconographical evidence. He has been a visiting scholar and professor at Bard Graduate Center in New York and an invited Museum Scholar at the Getty Research Institute, and he is currently a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He has published two books, The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity (Bard Graduate Center, 2018) and On the Edge: Endbands in the Bookbinding Traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean (Legacy Press, 2023). He is currently working on his next book dedicated to Byzantine bookbindings.