Lecture Sonja Brentjes: The Zodiac in Asia as Documented on Non-textual Objects

On Tuesday 10 December, the research group Global Intellectual History (Utrecht University, University of Amsterdam, and University of Groningen) will organise a lecture by Sonja Brentjes (Free University of Berlin and University of Wuppertal). In ‘The Spread, Usage, and Modifications of the Zodiac in Asia as Documented on Non-textual Objects’, Brentjes will present objects of different kinds from West to South-East Asia showing zodiac signs in various forms and contexts.

Astral knowledge in non-textual objects

The study of the histories of astral knowledge across various Asian societies primarily focuses on texts. With the exception of instruments, non-textual objects are often overlooked by historians of science, and art historians and archaeologists seldom delve deeply into the astral imagery present in these non-textual objects.

Brentjes created the project Visualizations of the Heavens and Their Material Cultures in Eurasia and North Africa from 4,000 BCE to 1700 CE, which focuses on collecting non-textual objects that visually represent the cosmos as a whole or its individual components. The aim is to offer interested researchers access to the wealth of pictorial representations that reflect a wide range of ideas related to the heavens.

Sonja Brentjes

Sonja Brentjes is a historian of science specialising in 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 Mediterranean until 1700.

Her latest book publications include The Routledge Handbook on the Sciences in Islamicate Societies: Practices from the 2nd/8th to 14th/19th Centuries and Imagining the Heavens in Eurasia from Antiquity to Early Modernity. Currently, Brentjes explores the substantial corpus of manuscript copies of ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi’s (903–986) Book on the Constellations, produced over more than 1,000 years in cities across North Africa and Asia west of China.