A woman examining giant books in the Prague Castle Archives. Czech Republic, 1940s.

The Enigma of the Giant Book

Có thể là hình ảnh về 1 người, đang học và văn bản

A minor mystery has been on the internet since 2013, and it revolves around the above image. This pH๏τograph, attributed to M. Peterka ca. 1940, seems to lack all provenance. One day an image of a man (or woman) kneeling in front of a giant book simply appeared. Though the image is often said to have come from the Archives of Prague Castle, the Librarian Shenanigans blog has chatted with the head archivist there who claims it is not from their archives.

To put the book’s size in context, it is not out of the realm of possibility that it exists. The Codex Gigas,”Giant Book” in English, from the 12th century is 36 inches tall, 30 inches wide when shut, and 8.7 inches thick. It weighs 165 pounds. The book in the mysterious Peterka image doesn’t appear to be quite that large, but it is odd that so many books in the image are “books of size”. Large books are fairly rare.

Alternately, the pH๏τo could simply be the result of pH๏τoshop. I am distinctly not an expert in the software, but the image’s shadows look odd, and this could very well be a composite image of 2-4 other pH๏τos. The pH๏τo manipulation theory is furthered by the fact that this image looks like it could belong in an archive, but if it had been digitized, the librarians certainly would have put out more information on it. (They really like providing background data, those librarians.)

So what do you all think? Is this a lost image that the internet has rediscovered? Or is it simply a clever use of modern technology? The romantic in me likes to think that the image came from a secret society and that the large books hold all answers to all of the world’s enigmas. The realist in me, however, has seen enough pH๏τoshopped images of cats in space to wonder.

Related Posts

The Silent Sentinel: Unearthed in the Fog

It was the kind of morning where the mist didn’t lift—it lingered, thick and damp, smothering the rolling hills in silence. In the uplands of northern England,…

Temple of the Water — Tipón, Peru (c. 1400 CE)

  Hidden high in the Andes near Cusco lies Tipón, a breathtaking example of Inca hydraulic engineering and sacred architecture, believed to have been built around the…

The Ghost in the Depths — The Ancient Shipwreck Beneath the Black Sea

They called it a “time capsule,” sealed not in bronze or stone, but in the stillness of the Black Sea. Lying nearly two kilometers beneath the surface,…

The Silence Beneath the Hill — Secrets of the Tumulus of Belevi

Under the scorching Anatolian sun, where the wind carries dust and forgotten names, a lonely hill rises from the plain near Selçuk, Turkey. It is no ordinary…

The Giant Beneath the Earth: A Myth Unearthed or Masterful Illusion?”

They dug slowly, as archaeologists always do—layer by careful layer, centimeter by centimeter. Dust puffed around their brushes. The summer sun poured down into the rectangular trench…

“The Plank Tomb of Beifudi: A Staircase to the Afterlife”

Beneath the quiet plains of northern China, where wheat once waved in the wind and children played near the foot of sacred hills, there slumbered a secret…