ancient ‘arts of memory’, where those trying to memorize stories, speeches, lists or similar material would each have a familiar ‘memory palace’. This consisted of a mental pathway or room in which a series of striking images could be arranged, each a cue to a particular episode, incident or name. One can only imagine what might happen if someone were to draw or carve one such set of visual cues, and a later archaeologist or art historian were to discover it, with no idea of the context, let alone what the story being memorized was actually about.
