There’s a tendency to think that the ancients must have been a gullible lot – all of that digging in entrails and watching the flight of birds to determine the future, but perhaps they were cleverer than they looked.

The Greek word usually translated as seer is mantis (which in ancient Greek also referred to the spider, which suggests the human practice required lots of sitting around, waiting and watching). Oracle is Latin.

The most famous mantis was Blackfoot (Melampous). Held in a prison cell, he called for the guards and got out seconds before the roof fell in – the story goes that the woodworms had “told” him they were chewing through the beam. Perhaps they used a trail of sawdust …

He went on to cure a king’s impotence, “having learned” from a vulture, that when he was a boy the king’s father had threatened him with a gelding knife then left in the bark of a particular tree. He then prepared a solution of rust from the knife that restored the king’s virility. No modern psychiatrist could come up with a better explanation and treatment.

This from a fascinating piece in the London Review of Books. You can read the full article, dense but worth sticking with, here. It is a review of The Road to Delphi: The Life and Afterlife of Oracles, by Michael Wood, Chatto, 2004.

I’m often in the British Library, but usually trying to read too many books in too little time, so it was only finally today, since I really wasn’t in a working mood, that I checked out the displays.

The Magna Carta was on the essentials list, of course, and the Codex Sinaiticus, a codex of the Bible in Greek from the middle of the 4th century – now that is an astonishing piece of material survival.

But what most took my fancy was the “Indulgentia” an A3 size sheet (landscape form) printed in 1454, possibly by Gutenberg. The display told me:
“Indulgences were among the first items printed in the West. [They] meant an end to the labour-intensive and costly procedure of writing thousands of letters for visits to a single town, thus maximising profits.”

The purchaser had them signed, this one was for Hinrich Mais, a pastor, “and several of his female relatives”, issued at Neuss, near Dusseldorf, and could then show it to his or her parish priest as proof of the transaction – a receipt in fact, no doubt the first printed receipts.

But I couldn’t help wondering how this contributed to Luther and all of that – the printing made the church’s entirely mercenary view of the transaction transparent, whereas at least when a cleric had to laboriously write out in a beautiful hand your indulgence, you were getting his time and labour, and theoretically goodwill (although possibly in practice curses) in the process.

Amnesty International UK is reporting on two cases of women in Iran in imminent peril.

A 19-year old girl, “Leyla M”, who has a mental age of eight, reportedly faces imminent execution for “morality-related” offences after being forced into prostitution by her mother as a child. According to a Tehran newspaper report of 28 November, she was sentenced to death by a court in the central Iranian city of Arak and the sentence has now been passed to the Supreme Court for confirmation.

Leyla M was reportedly sentenced to death on charges of “acts contrary to chastity” by controlling a brothel, having intercourse with blood relatives and giving birth to an illegitimate child. She is to be flogged before she is executed. She had apparently “confessed” to the charges. Earlier reports stated that there would be an appeal, and the 28 November report indicates that this process is now at an end.

Social workers have reportedly tested her mental capacities repeatedly and each time have found Leyla to have a mental age of eight. However, she has apparently never been examined by the court-appointed doctors, and was sentenced to death solely on the basis of her explicit confessions, without consideration of her background or mental health …

AND

Hajieh Esmailvand is at risk of imminent execution after her death sentence for adultery was upheld by the Supreme Court in November. She could allegedly be stoned to death as early as 21 December. Her unnamed co-defendant is at risk of imminent execution by hanging.

According to reports, Hajieh Esmailvand was sentenced to five years imprisonment, to be followed by execution by stoning, for adultery with an unnamed man who at the time was a 17 year old minor. Although the exact date of her arrest and trial are not known, it is reported that she has been imprisoned in the town of Jolfa, in the north west of Iran, since January 2000.

In November 2004, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence against Hajieh Esmailvand but changed the lower court’s verdict from ‘death by hanging’ to ‘death by stoning’. Reports suggest that the Supreme Court has ordered that the remainder of Hajieh’s five year prison sentence be annulled so that the stoning sentence can be carried out before 21 December.

The websites suggest officials to email.

There’s been a raging debate over on Crooked Timber about women academic bloggers and the alleged dearth thereof.

In the light of which I was amused to count the number of women on a Channel Four programme, What We Still Don’t Know this evening, which spoke to academics whom I would assume came entirely from the physical sciences, mathematics or related fields. Now I missed the first 10 minutes or so, but of the seven or eight academics I heard, guess how many were women? That’s right, none.

There might still be enormous gender bias in the humanities – and the academic conferences that I’ve attended have certainly shown that – but it is far, far worse in the sciences. (And since my first degree was agricultural science – as my profile says, I was 17, that’s my only excuse – I know plenty of women still battling from within the system.)

As for the media, my “day” job, well it is probably a little better than the sciences …

If you are still desperately trying to find a perfect present, check out Persephone Books, which publishes out-of-print titles by women writers. “Titles include novels, short stories, diaries and cookery books. They are all carefully designed with a clear typeface, a ‘fabric’ endpaper and bookmark, and a preface by writers such as PD James, Jacqueline Wilson and Jilly Cooper.”

These are lovely books, that rescue women writers who had almost been forgotten. I went into their office for the first time on Saturday. It is in a simple, old-fashioned shopfront, with the books piled high and enthusiastic purchasers sharing their view on the volumes before them.

The universal recommendation was for Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson. There’s an article on the website about it, as there is for each volume …

“Miss Pettigrew was a sparkling and slightly risque contemporary tale set among the young and beautiful.

It unfolds over twenty-four hours and tells what happens when Miss Guinevere Pettigrew, a spinster who has led a sheltered life, is sent to the wrong address by an employment agency.

Instead of finding a fraught mother with a fractious brood, she encounters glamorous night-club singer Miss LaFosse who “had as many male admirers as Miss Pettigrew had had children to watch over in her long years as governess.”

A fish out of water, Miss Pettigrew proves equal to the task of sorting out this flighty young thing’s life, deftly disposing of the cocaine (shocking then as now) which she finds in her bathroom.

Critics went wild for this “tonic book”. One called it “jolly, deliciously naughty and frolicsome”; another “the type of book that will bring joy to every woman’s heart.”

P.S. I’m not on commission, just enthusiastic.

Alternatively, if Christmas madness is getting to you, go for the really insane option of The Cabaret Mechanical Theatre display at the Oxo gallery – creations that will make anyone laugh. I liked the mad butler figure powering an ultralight with flapping wings via a bicycle, complete with socks drying from the front propeller and a pig in a garbage can on the wing. (No I don’t know why either.)There’s also a complete circus in one ring, including a lady standing on a horse’s back who jumps through a hoop on each revolution.

In the slightly sick, not really for the children, category I also liked “Poisoned milk”, a cat that laps a dozen times at the spilt milk before the second cog finally tips over and it collapses in a boneless heap, and “Drifting apart”, a couple sitting at each end of a bath-tub that jaggedly splits down the middle, water and all.

For anyone who can’t make it to London there’s a “virtual” exhibition here. (Flash required)

I thought about buying one of the kits for my god son, but maybe another time – not really a Christmas Day sort of present, with incredibly intricate assembly required.

You’re allowed a little fantasy in mid-winter, I think, all those long dark nights and peering into the flickering flames, so enjoy this one from the New York Times.

A Not So Wonderful Life
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: December 19, 2004

EXTERIOR BRIDGE OVER POTOMAC RIVER – NIGHT

CLOSE SHOT – Rummy is standing by the railing, staring morosely into the water. The snow is falling hard. Feeling a tap on his shoulder, he wheels around and wrestles an old man with wings into a headlock.

OLD MAN: Ouch! Tut, tut. When will you learn that force doesn’t solve everything?

RUMMY: Who the dickens are you?

OLD MAN: Clarence, Angel First Class. I’ve been sent down to help you.

RUMMY, squinting: You’re off your nut, you old fruitcake. You can’t help me. I was a matinee idol in this town, a studmuffin. Now everyone’s turned on me – Trent Lott, Chuck Hagel and that dadburn McCain.

CLARENCE: No more self-pity, son. I’m going to show you what the world would have been like if you’d never been born …