A collaboration between the Digital Edition and Translation of the Coptic-Sahidic Old Testament Project and the British Library

By Chrysi Kotsifou

In May 2019, I visited the British Library to work on some Coptic Old Testament manuscripts from their collection. It was also then that I met for the first time with Dr Ilana Tahan, Lead Curator of the Hebrew and Christian Orient Collections. I was very glad to find out from her that the British Library would be starting a project of digitizing selected manuscripts from their Christian Orient Collections. Ilana Tahan had already created the Hebrew Manuscripts Digitisation Project and now with the Eastern Christian Manuscripts Digitization Project, her department would be digitizing for the first time selected Coptic, Armenian, and Syriac manuscripts. This project has been part of the Heritage Made Digital (HMD) programme initiated and funded by the British Library. For Ilana Tahan it was imperative that the selection of the manuscripts to be digitized reflected the diverse fields of knowledge represented in each collection. Besides religious texts, the selection included secular topics such as linguistics, sciences, philosophy, and various others.

She asked me if our project would be willing to assist her in the selection of the Coptic manuscripts to be digitized. It was a great opportunity and honour to be part of this very important endeavor, especially if we consider that so far, the British Library has online only four items, namely Papyrus 98, Papyrus 1442, Or.6801, and Or.7029, and these newly-digitized manuscripts will be made available to everyone online for free. Ilana Tahan had already a list of selected Coptic manuscripts and immediately in May 2019, we offered her our recommendations and additions to that list. In the years to follow, I maintained a continuous collaboration with Dr Tahan and was able to follow how this project evolved and is now close to its completion. The years of the pandemic certainly delayed matters but the digitization project managed to carry on. With the first list of Coptic manuscripts having been established, the British Library then needed to proceed to the conservation of these items. Some of these manuscripts are papyrus and some parchment and many items are mounted in glass frames, especially the papyrus ones. All issues of conservation of the selected items needed to be addressed, before any digitization took place. In April 2021, I also contacted Prof. Siegfried G. Richter (then at the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung at Münster University) who also recommended to us more Coptic manuscripts to be digitized.

During my second visit at the British Library in May 2022, Dr Tahan was very happy to inform me that most of the Coptic manuscripts had already been restored and digitized. Unavoidably before any of these manuscripts could be made available to the public, they needed to be newly-catalogued and have all their metadata updated. Our project offered then to Dr Tahan that we undertake the task of creating this new catalogue. The digitization of the Coptic manuscripts was concluded by the winter of 2022; our project and the British Library signed a Memorandum of Understanding in February 2023; and in the months to follow we received in numerous batches the digital images. Here is the list of the Coptic manuscripts that have been digitized:

• Add MS 5114 (Pistis Sophia)
• Add MS 5996 (Lectionary)
• Add MS 5997 (Lectionary)
• Add MS 17725 (The Euchologion)
• Add MS 18997 (Bohairic Proverbs, Job)
• Add MS 19902 (Sahidic NT Fragment)
• Or 424 (Bohairic Pauline Epistles)
• Or 425 (Four Gospels Coptic & Arabic)
• Or 429 (The Euchologion)
• Or 433 (Baptismal service)
• Or 438 (Consecration of the Holy Oil)
• Or 1241 (Liturgical and Biblical Fragments)
• Or 1314(1) (Bohairic Minor Prophets, Daniel)
• Or 1314(2) (Bohairic Minor Prophets, Daniel)
• Or 1315 (Four Gospels)
• Or 1318 (Pauline Epistles)
• Or 1319 (OT Isaiah, Corpus Ieremiae)
• Or 1320 (Canons of Apostles)
• Or 1322 (Services for the consecration of Monks & Nuns)
• Or 1325 (Arabic-Coptic grammars and vocabularies)
• Or 3381 (Four Gospels)
• Or 3579A (Sahidic OT)
• Or 3579B (Sahidic NT)
• Or 3581 A (Homilies)
• Or 4844 (Psalms)
• Or 5000 (Budge Psalter)
• Or 5001 (Budge Homilies)
• Or 5287 (Misc. Coptic Fragments)
• Or 5984 (Wisdom Books)
• Or 5987 A–C (Magical Charm)
• Or 6010 (Prochorus, Acts of John)
• Or 6019 (A charm)
• Or 6695 (Pauline Epistles and John)
• Or 6781 (Ps.-Theodosius of Alexandria)
• Or 6783 (Miscellany)
• Or 7021 (Encomium of Theodosius)
• Or 7029 (Life of Aaron)
• Or 7594 (Biblical Misc. Papyrus)
• Or 8799 (Miscellany)
• Or 8800 (White Monastery fragments of Shenoute)
• Or 8802 (White Monastery palimpsest fragments)
• Or 8808 (Psalms)
• Or 8810 (White Monastery fragments)
• Or 13825 (Book of Sirach)
• Or 14149 (Gospel Fragments)
• ORB.99/260 (Book bindings)
• Papyrus IV (Deed)
• Papyrus 91 (Letter)
• Papyrus XLVIII (Job)

A priority list of Coptic manuscripts to be catalogued has been established in our contract with the British Library. These are the 46 underlined shelfmarks in the list above. Alin Suciu and I will carry out this first phase of the cataloguing. In the meantime, Alin Suciu has been in contact with Michael Erdman in the British Library and together they have updated the British Library Metadata Template to reflect better the cataloguing needs of Coptic manuscripts, especially the ones that are dispersed piece by piece in numerous countries and collections. This new catalogue will certainly be a welcome addition to Walter E. Crum’s Catalogue of the Coptic manuscripts in the British Museum, London, 1905, and Bentley Layton’s Catalogue of Coptic literary manuscripts in the British Library acquired since the year 1906, London, 1987. Besides cataloguing, in due course our project will also edit all the newly-digitized Old Testament manuscripts on our Virtual Manuscript Room (VMR).

Last but not least, I would like to mention that the British Library also digitized the book bindings of the Coptic manuscripts in their collection. We received those photographs, as well, and I intend to catalogue them after the priority phase of the cataloguing is completed.

This collaboration is ongoing for five years now and there are still goals to be achieved. Our project believes that the British Library and Ilana Tahan undertook a very worthy cause and we are pleased to be part of it and to assist in any way possible towards its completion. Coptic studies are bound to be enriched in numerous ways when all the above-mentioned manuscripts will be made available to the public. But also, the contemporary Coptic communities in Egypt and abroad, whether lay or monastic, will be thrilled to see their heritage so carefully and scientifically treated and easily accessible to them.

On 4/11/2022, I reported on the new project dedicated to the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary (HWL), co-led by Diliana Atanassova and Frank Feder. Now, almost one year after its launch, it is time to provide a first progress report with the highlights of the period from April 1 to December 31, 2022.

1. New dedicated Holy Week Lectionary space in the VMR

The VMR now hosts three new dedicated sections for the Holy Week Lectionaries: Holy Week Lectionary Sahidic, Holy Week Lectionary Bohairic, and Holy Week Lectionary Arabic. We have updated the existing stock of digital copies of Holy Week lectionaries in the VMR with further manuscripts listed separately under the respective dedicated sections and henceforth available for transcription.

1.1 Uploading and display

The list in the new Holy Week Lectionary Sahidic section displays the five lectionaries that were already hosted in the Göttingen CoptOT manuscript workspace. These are sa 16L (1), sa 292L (2), sa 298L (3), sa 299L (4), and sa 349L (5) and correspond to more than 270 leaves.

The list in the new Holy Week Lectionary Bohairic section now includes six Holy Week lectionaries and four Ṭuruḥat for the Holy Week codexes, all newly prepared and uploaded. These are bo 3000L (6), bo 3003L (7), bo 3004L (8), bo 3004L (9), bo 3005L (10), bo 3006L (11), and bo 3007L (12), totalling more than 2000 leaves. The Ṭuruḥat are bo 3009L (13), 3010L (14), 3011L (15), and 3013L (16) and total 272 leaves.

The list in the new Holy Week Lectionary Arabic section includes all bilingual Sahidic–Arabic and Bohairic–Arabic Holy Week lectionaries already included in the other two dedicated sections as well as the monolingual Holy Week lectionary ar 1L (17) (185 leaves).

1.2 Indexing and tagging

Indexing in our context means identifying the contents of each page of a manuscript, i.e. biblical passages, liturgical instructions, liturgical rubrics, homilies, hymns, etc. Indexing is an essential work in preparation of the transcription of the texts in the codices. This step was further expanded by the development of a new feature tagging system specific to the Holy Week Lectionary, where the period, the day of the Holy Week and the time of the service are encoded. This can be seen in the following illustration

A brand-new volume in our Series Texts and Studies on the Coptic Bible just appered with the Publisher Harrassowitz: Peter Nagel's editio minor of the Sahidic Psalms. It is based on the important London Papyrus manuscript British Library Or. 5000 (sa 2031, ca. 500 CE), the only completely preserved manuscript of the Sahidic Psalter, and the variant readings of two miniature manuscripts (Chester Beatty Library n. 815 with Ps 1-50, sa 6; and Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Library Collection n. 167 with Ps 51-151, sa 2010; both ca. 600 CE). Since the digital editio maior of the many but fragmentary Sahidic Psalm manuscripts will need more time, the importance of Nagel's edition is multifold: first it replaces the notorious edition by Budge from 1898 ("Budge Psalter") providing a reliable edition of the London Psalter with the variant readings of two other manuscripts; second, it provides the indispensable reference text for the fragmentary Sahidic manuscript transmission; and third, the complete translation and the comprehensive indices make it, at the same time, an indispensable reference work for scholars specialised in the Septuagint Psalter tradition and its versions.     

From 28 January to 2 February, Frank Feder, Chrysi Kotsifou and I attended the 10th Symposium of the Saint Mark Foundation for Coptic Heritage. This meeting's topic was "The Coptic Bible". Scholars from Egypt, the United States, and eight European countries gathered to address issues such as the transmission of the Coptic Bible in various dialects, its usage in education and in liturgy, and its role in inspiring Coptic monks and artists. Some of the speakers offered philological/linguistic papers relying upon biblical books in Coptic.

As far as the Göttingen Academy is concerned, the conference featured representatives of both the Coptic Old Testament project (our "big project") and the Pauline epistles project. Frank Feder gave an overview of the CoptOT project, in which he also detailed the historical attempts to edit and translate books of the Sahidic Old Testament. Chrysi Kotsifou's topic was: "Editing the Sahidic Book of Psalms".

Katharina Sandmeier's talk was focused on the history of research on the Coptic New Testament at the Institute for New Testament Textual Research (INTF). My own presentation outlined Göttingen and Münster's work on the Pauline epistles in Coptic. It is my impression that our two speeches usefully complemented each other.

Unlike the regular conferences of, say, the IACS or the AFC, the Saint Mark Foundation's events are aimed at both Coptologists and members of the Coptic community in general. The presentations were abundantly recorded and photographed. Katharina Sandmeier and I volunteered to be interviewed by the COC Channel.

Our stay allowed us to catch up with old friends and meet new colleagues as well. On a personal note, I was especially delighted to meet Professor Lilian Larsen, a specialist of monastic education in Late Antiquity. I heartfully thank the Saint Mark Foundation and especially Hany Takla and Akhnoukh Fanous for their invitation and their wonderful hospitality.

1936 veröffentlichte Walter C. Till in Le Muséon 49 einen Beitrag über „Wiener Faijumica“ (S. 170-217). Zu diesen Wiener Faijumica rechnete er auch das Pergamentfragment K 57 (S. 213f). Till hatte auf der Haarseite zweimal ⲛⲟⲩϯ gelesen und dies als faijumische oder bohairische Schreibweise des Wortes für „Gott“ interpretiert, war sich aber selbst nicht sicher, da sonst keinerlei Dialekteinfluss festzustellen war. Identifiziert hatte Till den Text nicht. Dies gelang erst kürzlich Christian Askeland (E-Mail vom 6. Februar 2023), der den Text der Fleischseite als Sir 20,1ff erkannte. Bei näherer Betrachtung entpuppte sich der Text beider Seiten als sahidischer Standardtext von Sir 20. Das von Till auf der Haarseite gelesene zweimalige ⲛⲟⲩϯ ist jeweils Bestandteil der Phrase ⲟⲩⲛ-ⲟⲩ-ϯ „es gibt eine Gabe“, griechisch ἔστιν δόσις, in Sirach 20,10. Die Fleischseite ist also das recto dieses Pergamentfragments, die Haarseite das verso. Die Onlinepräsentation der Fotos auf der Seite der ÖNB weist noch, entsprechend der Edition von Till, die umgekehrte Reihenfolge auf. Dieser neue Wiener Zeuge des koptischen Jesus Sirach war sehr wahrscheinlich gemeinsam mit dem bereits bekannten Wiener Zeugen für Jesus Sirach K 8689 (Sir 45,9-10/Sir 45,13-15) ursprünglich Bestandteil ein und desselben Codex. Den beiden Zeugen wurde daher im Rahmen des Göttinger Akademievorhabens Digitale Gesamtedition des Koptisch-sahidischen Alten Testaments die Handschrift sa 2182 zugewiesen. Das auf den Fotos der ÖNB oberhalb des größeren Fragments platzierte kleinere Fragment (von Till nicht mitediert) gehört an den unteren Rand und fügt sich dort passgenau ein. Die Schrift ist auf der Fleischseite stark verblasst, was die Transkription anhand des Fotos erschwert.

K 57: Vorläufige Transkription