As a fruit of the cooperation within KELLIA the XML Coptic Lemmalist developed by Frank Feder and extended and standardized by Maxim Kupreyev at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW) - with contributions of some others, among them our Göttingen PhD student Julien Delhez - could be presented and tested at the 11th International Congress of Coptic Studies at Claremont (CA). Amir Zeldes and Emma Manning from Georgetown University managed in a quite short time frame to program a search interface that brought the dictionary online. The Coptic Dictionary Online offers all entries from Crum's Coptic Dictionary, with additions from other dictionaries like Westendorf's Koptisches Handwörterbuch, with bibliography and translations of the entries in English, German, and French. The base of the Coptic Dictionary Online, the XML Coptic Lemmalist will be further developed and enlarged (all inflected and dialect forms, Greek and other loanwords, Greek equivalents etc.) by the Berlin team of the BBAW and DDGLC.

On June 2, Myriam Krutzsch, the papyrus conservator of the Berlin Papyrus Collection (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin SPK, Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung), visited the CoptOT team to give two inspiring lectures on the material aspects of papyrus manuscripts and methods of dating the papyrus material, followed by a practical guide how to use these observations on two examples, the early papyrus codices: the so-called 'Berolinus Gnosticus' (ÄMP, P. 8502), and the Akhmimic Proverbs (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek SPK, Berol. orient. oct. 987).

From March 15-17 Hans Förster and Matthias Schulz from the University of Vienna FWF-project Die koptische Version des Johannesevangeliums visited the Coptic OT team in Göttingen. Since the CoptOT VMR will be hosting the Coptic Old and New Testament manuscripts and texts a close cooperation with the project partners, the New Testament VMR at Münster, Christian Askeland from the critical edtion of the Sahidic Coptic book of Revelation (Protestant University Wuppertal), and the partners from Vienna is necessary and desirable. The partners discussed and planned the first steps for a coordinated development of the common workspace.

On March 7-8 Dr Mark Depauw from the Trismegistos (TM) database project visited the Coptic Old Testament in Göttingen. During the fruitful meeting a closer cooperation was discussed and The Coptic Old Testament agreed to check and provide the metadata of Coptic biblical manuscripts for TM. This will enable TM to keep the entries for the Coptic manuscripts currently updated and to expand the time range of the online portal beyond 800 AD.

 

The newest fascicle of the late Karlheinz Schüssler's manuscript catalogue Biblia Coptica 2.2, prepared for publication by Hans Förster and Frank Feder, just appeared. This fascicle contains 76 mostly OT manuscripts. It can be ordered from the publisher Harrassowitz.