Oscar Nalesini
I am librarian at the Istituto per l'Oriente "C.A. Nallino" in Rome. Formerly acting librarian at the National Museum of Oriental Art, and curator of the Photographs and Drawings Archives deposited by the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient (Istituto Italiano per l'Africa e l'Oriente) till 2017. Within this frame, I partecipated in the reorganization of the photographic archive of the late Giuseppe Tucci, a leading tibetologist, and spent some time trying to reconstruct the history of his travels through the Himalayas and Tibet (1926-1954). From 2018 through 2022 I worked at the Central Institute for the Union catalogue of the Italian Libraries.
Another major personal interest is the history and archaeology of the Indian Ocean. I fucused my work on the ethnic name 'Fish-Eaters' (Ichthyophagoi) of the ancient Greek and Latin sources, trying to to place the different usages of this word in their proper cultural and historical contexts throughout Antiquity and early Mediaeval times.
As an archaeologist, I had been involved in field work in Italy, France, Oman, Iran, Uzbekistan, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Laos.
Another major personal interest is the history and archaeology of the Indian Ocean. I fucused my work on the ethnic name 'Fish-Eaters' (Ichthyophagoi) of the ancient Greek and Latin sources, trying to to place the different usages of this word in their proper cultural and historical contexts throughout Antiquity and early Mediaeval times.
As an archaeologist, I had been involved in field work in Italy, France, Oman, Iran, Uzbekistan, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Laos.
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Arabia and the Erythraean Sea by Oscar Nalesini
To further explore the theme, the paper will compare this information to similar records of man's intimate ties with the sea and its creatures from the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
Notwithstanding the general awareness of the strong ideological bias that led the Hellenistic writers to portray the Ichthyophagoi as a wretched and backward race, recent publications maintain the assumption that they correspond to the people who left shell middens and traces of fishing and other maritime activities in the archaeological sites of Arabia and the Red Sea.
A closer reading of the Greek sources should prove such a correspondence simplistic, and reveal a more complex picture. Agatharchides certainly tapped his informations on the material culture of the Ichthyophagoi from the reports sailors made on the coastal adapted people of the Red and Arabian Sea making out on maritime resources for a living. But his description is also the product of Hellenistic geographic thought as well as of his personal disposition. This is clearly demonstrated by comparison with the concepts of the Ichthyophagoi expressed by other ancient authors, and their treatment of the social, economic and political ties between the populations of the Arabian and African littoral of the Red Sea.
The diachronic study of the name Ichthyophagoi challenges the idea of an unequivocal correspondence between the archaeological remains and and the Ichthyophagoi as described by the Greek sources.
Giuseppe Tucci, Tibet, Himalayas by Oscar Nalesini
Durante gli oltre cinque anni di soggiorno nel paese asiatico, Tucci indirizzerà la sua attenzione principalmente allo studio del Buddhismo, e in particolare della scuola vajrayana. Inizierà per questo una straordinaria serie di esplorazioni sullo Himalaya e in Tibet che gli permetteranno di raccogliere testi inediti sul tantrismo, e studiare sistematicamente per la prima volta i fenomeni artistici del Paese delle Nevi. Il libro Teoria e pratica del mandala, pubblicato nel 1949, segna il infatti il punto d’arrivo delle riflessioni cui Giuseppe Tucci perviene dopo molti anni di studio sull’arte e le religioni dell’India e del Tibet. L’opera però, lungi dall’offrire solo una sintesi dei diversi filoni di ricerca indologica e tibetologica perseguiti dallo studioso maceratese, introdusse in una platea ben più ampia – grazie anche all’adozione della psicologia analitica – un elemento che troverà accoglienza, indipendentemente dalla volontà di Tucci, presso alcuni movimenti culturali sviluppatisi negli anni della contestazione.
To further explore the theme, the paper will compare this information to similar records of man's intimate ties with the sea and its creatures from the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
Notwithstanding the general awareness of the strong ideological bias that led the Hellenistic writers to portray the Ichthyophagoi as a wretched and backward race, recent publications maintain the assumption that they correspond to the people who left shell middens and traces of fishing and other maritime activities in the archaeological sites of Arabia and the Red Sea.
A closer reading of the Greek sources should prove such a correspondence simplistic, and reveal a more complex picture. Agatharchides certainly tapped his informations on the material culture of the Ichthyophagoi from the reports sailors made on the coastal adapted people of the Red and Arabian Sea making out on maritime resources for a living. But his description is also the product of Hellenistic geographic thought as well as of his personal disposition. This is clearly demonstrated by comparison with the concepts of the Ichthyophagoi expressed by other ancient authors, and their treatment of the social, economic and political ties between the populations of the Arabian and African littoral of the Red Sea.
The diachronic study of the name Ichthyophagoi challenges the idea of an unequivocal correspondence between the archaeological remains and and the Ichthyophagoi as described by the Greek sources.
Durante gli oltre cinque anni di soggiorno nel paese asiatico, Tucci indirizzerà la sua attenzione principalmente allo studio del Buddhismo, e in particolare della scuola vajrayana. Inizierà per questo una straordinaria serie di esplorazioni sullo Himalaya e in Tibet che gli permetteranno di raccogliere testi inediti sul tantrismo, e studiare sistematicamente per la prima volta i fenomeni artistici del Paese delle Nevi. Il libro Teoria e pratica del mandala, pubblicato nel 1949, segna il infatti il punto d’arrivo delle riflessioni cui Giuseppe Tucci perviene dopo molti anni di studio sull’arte e le religioni dell’India e del Tibet. L’opera però, lungi dall’offrire solo una sintesi dei diversi filoni di ricerca indologica e tibetologica perseguiti dallo studioso maceratese, introdusse in una platea ben più ampia – grazie anche all’adozione della psicologia analitica – un elemento che troverà accoglienza, indipendentemente dalla volontà di Tucci, presso alcuni movimenti culturali sviluppatisi negli anni della contestazione.
The notebook, as well as all other documents and items found at Tucci's home, belonges to the library of the former National Museum of Oriental Art, and is nowadays stored in the premises of the Museum of Civilizations in Rome.