Page Numbers and Sequence
Today’s page numbers were assigned to the codex by Agostino Aglio when he became the first to transcribe the manuscript in 1825/26. For this, he divided the original codex into two parts, labeled Codex A and Codex B. He sequenced Codex A on the front side followed by its back side, with the same order on Codex B. Today, we understand that a codex reading should traverse the complete front side followed by the complete back side of the manuscript, i.e., pages 1-24 followed by 46-74 and 25-45.
The librarian K. C. Falkenstein adjusted the relative position of pages for “esthetical reasons” in 1836, resulting in today’s two similar length parts. While deciphering the codex, the librarian E. W. Förstemann noticed an error in Aglio’s page assignment of the sheets 1/45 and 2/44, so he correctly reassigned Aglio’s pages 44 and 45 to become pages 1 and 2.
The reversal of the sheets 6/40, 7/39 and 8/38 is due to an error when the sheets were returned to their protective glass cabinet after drying from the water damage due to the bombing of Dresden in 1945.
Read more about this topic: Dresden Codex
Famous quotes containing the words page, numbers and/or sequence:
“It is difficult to read. The page is dark.
Yet he knows what it is that he expects.
The page is blank or a frame without a glass
Or a glass that is empty when he looks.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The forward Youth that would appear
Must now forsake his Muses dear,
Nor in the Shadows sing
His Numbers languishing.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
“It isn’t that you subordinate your ideas to the force of the facts in autobiography but that you construct a sequence of stories to bind up the facts with a persuasive hypothesis that unravels your history’s meaning.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)