paganimagevault:

Locri pinax 490-450 BCE

“The Pinakes was a bibliographic work written by Callimachus (305–240 BC). It was a listing of the holdings in the great Library of Alexandria. It was probably the world’s first library catalogue, yea, even before the internet and Google, back when people read books and even scrolls. The collection at the Library of Alexandria contained nearly 500,000 scrolls grouped by subject matter and stored in bins. Each bin carried a label with painted tablets hung above the stored papyri. The tablets described the contents of the bin by title, author, etc. The tablets were called pinakes. (Modern Italian retains the hard Greek ‘k’ and the Greek pronunciation of PIN-a-kays. In English, the common plural is 'pinaces’, giving us the pronunciation of PIN-a-seas. That’s ok. If you’re not sure, just point. The singular was pinax. Ah, getting closer!

A pinax, in ancient Greece, was the general word for a small board that might be painted on and serve as a devotional or votive tablet. It could also be used to refer to a terracotta, marble or bronze tablet engraved with devotional figures from Greek mythology and deposited in a sanctuary or in a burial chamber.”

-taken from naplesldm link below

https://paganimagevault.blogspot.com/2019/11/locri-pinax-490-450-bce_29.html