Further to our visit to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in June and as announced in the first blog entry in July, here follow some on-site autopsy results of a few manuscripts I had the opportunity to consult during the visit. The information pertaining to the first manuscript described below can be found as Metadata in the Göttingen Virtual Manuscript Room. The information pertaining to the other manuscripts can be considered as draft entries of a catalogue of Coptic liturgical manuscripts, which is under construction.

sa 349L, 14–15th century[1]
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Borg. Copt. 109, cass. XXIII, fasc. 98

Four extant folios originally belonging to a bilingual Sahidic–Arabic Holy Week lectionary of which another two folios are preserved at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Written on unwatermarked Egyptian glossy ‘two-layered’ paper,[2] with apparent laid lines and non-distinguishable chain marks. Page dimensions 36.5x22.5 cm, text coverage 31x19 cm, lines per page 25 for the Sahidic text and 25 for the Arabic text, line width 11–13 cm for the Sahidic text and ca. 5 cm for the Arabic text, intercolumn ca.1 cm. 10 lines of text: 12 cm. Ornamented hanging capital letters in black, red, yellow, and green up to 7 cm in height at the beginning of pericopes. Hanging capital letters in black, red, and yellow at the beginning of paragraphs. The last two extant folios, which preserve the readings for the Synaxis on Holy Thursday with a pericope from the book of Isaiah, namely Isaiah 32,1–16, are the only known example with this reading at that hour, whereas all other Holy  Week lectionaries I have examined have another Isaiah reading at that same hour, usually from Isaiah 52–53.

Borg.copt.52, 18th century[3]

Bilingual Bohairic–Arabic Holy Week lectionary written on European paper with the tre lune watermark (in transmitted light, the paper reveals the distinctive originally Italian watermark tre lune,[4] (see fig. 1 below) three moon crescents in decreasing size, specifically created for the Levant),[5] 460 folios. Page dimensions 315x215 mm, written text dimensions 240x155 mm, lines per page 22–23, 10 lines height 10 cm, line width 10–11 cm for the Bohairic text, 4–4.5 cm for the Arabic text, intercolumn ca. 1 cm. The Bohairic columns end with catchwords. All alphas (ⲁ) at the beginning of a pericope are ornamented as birds, some surmounted by a cross (more than 70 occurrences). Begins with Palm Sunday Eve and ends with the Synaxis on Easter Sunday, includes the whole text of the Apocalypse. Colophon on folio 459v dated 2 of Tout 1492 A.M., 1189 A.H., corresponding to 1775 A.D. Scribe Dāwūd Mīnā Aljīzāwī (داوود مينا الجيزاوي), surnamed al-Muwaqaʿ (الموقع), deacon of the Coptic Catholic Church.

Fig. 1: Three crescents, watermark in Isl. Ms. 589 (Yemen 1660)[6]

Vat.copt.34, 16th–17th century[7]

Bohairic manuscript with Bohairic–Arabic rubrics, 299 folios, page dimensions 295x205 mm, 21 lines per page. Begins with Palm Sunday and ends with Easter Sunday. This manuscript was written by two different hands. The first hand wrote the first 90 pages (up unto folio 45v, line 7) and the second hand undertook the writing from folio 45v, line 8 up unto the end of the manuscript. Anonymous invocations to pray for the soul of the ‘unworthy scribe’ are written in Arabic at the bottom of the page on folios 21v, 62r, 66v, 158v and 219r.[8]

Vat.copt.90, 18th century[9]

Bohairic manuscript with Bohairic–Arabic rubrics, 298 folios, page dimensions 330x225 mm, 22–25 lines per page. Begins with Palm Sunday and ends with Easter Sunday. Arabic colophon on f. 297 written by the scribe Maqarios ibn ishm Allah, monk at the Baramous Monastery in the Nitrian Desert and dated 1440 A.M., 1724 A.D.

Vat.ar.15, 14th century

We wrongly assumed that this non-digitized Arabic codex was a Holy Week lectionary. It turned out to be a Gospel lectionary with an index of all the lections from the New Testament to be read during the prayers and the masses all days of the year.[10] The 138 folios are made of unwatermarked Egyptian paper. This Gospel lectionary features a colophon on folio 135, dated 1054 A.M., 1338 A.D.

Bibliography

- Atanassova, Diliana (2018). Neue Erkenntnisse bei der Erforschung der sahidischen Quellen für die Paschawoche, in: Heike Behlmer, Ute Pietruschka and Frank Feder (eds), Ägypten und der Christliche Orient. Peter Nagel zum 80. Geburtstag (Texte und Studien zur Koptischen Bibel 1). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1–37.
- Briquet, Charles-Moise (1907). Les filigranes. Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600 avec 39 figures dans le texte et 16 112 fac-similés de filigranes, volume 2 (Ci-K), Paris : Alphonse Picard et Fils.
- Burmester, Oswald Hugh Edward (1933). Le Lectionnaire de la Semaine Sainte. Texte copte édité avec traduction française d’après le manuscrit Add. 5997 du British Museum, vol. I (Patrologia Orientalis, 24,2, Nr. 117). Paris: Firmin-Didot (Reprint Turnhout: Brepols 1985).
- Hebbelynck, Adolph/van Lantschoot Arnold (1937). Codices Coptici Vaticani Barberiniani Borgiani Rossiani, I: Codices Coptici Vaticani, Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae codices manu scripti recensiti. Rome: In Bibliotheca Vaticana.
- Humbert, Geneviève (2002), Le manuscrit arabe et ses papiers, in Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée 99–100/2002, 55–77, 67. https://journals.openedition.org/remmm/1174.
- Kropf, Evyn. Watermark Wednesdays blog series. Beyond the Reading Room (2014–2016). 
https://blogs.lib.umich.edu/beyond-reading-room/watermark-wednesdays-three-crescents.
- Le Léannec-Bavavéas, Marie-Thérèse (1998). Les papiers non filigranés. État présent des recherches et perspectives d'avenir. Paris: CNRS Éditions.
- Karabacek, Joseph von, (1991). Joseph von Karabacek, Arab Paper 1887, translated by Don Baker and Suzy Dittmar with additional notes by Don Baker. London: Archetype Publications.
- Mai, Angelo (1831). Catalogus codicum bibliothecae Vaticanae Arabicorum, Persicorum, Turcicorum, Chaldaicorum, Aethiopicorum, Slavicorum, Indicorum, Copticorum, Armenicorum et Ibericorum, item ejus partis Hebraicorum et Syriacorum, quam Assernanni in editione praeternisserunt Catalogus Codicum Bibliothecae Vaticanae. Rome: Typis 
Vaticanis.
- Zanetti, Ugo (1986). Filigranes vénitiens en Égypte, in Studi Albanologici, Balcanici, Bizantini e Orientali, in onore di Giuseppe Valentini S.J., (= Studi albanologici. Studi e Testi, 6). Florence: Olschki, 437–499.

This blog post also serves as an opportunity for me to introduce myself!  My name is Leila Hyde and I am from a little town on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.  I earned my bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University - Hawaii in History and then pursued a master’s degree at Indiana University in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures with a focus in Egyptology.  I arrived in Göttingen in May to begin working as a Trainee with the project.

July 7th, 2023 allowed for the celebration of the life and work of Dr. Jürgen Horn.  As a newcomer to the Academy and the city of Göttingen, I was pleased to become acquainted with some of the individuals in attendance.  The presentations vividly reminded those in attendance of Jürgen Horn’s widespread scholarly interests, the numerous contributions he made to academia as well as the good friend he was to those he worked with. After a welcoming address by Heike Behlmer introducing Jürgen Horn as teacher, colleague, and friend, some special aspects of Horn’s research were highlighted. Frank Feder recalled their common work during the former Halle University project “Koptische Septuaginta” (1994-1999) and the important contribution which Jürgen Horn made to the reconstruction and edition of the Coptic Old Testament.

Sebastian Richter focused on Horn’s interest in the history of scholarship on Ancient Egypt and singled out the outstanding but unpublished introduction to a planned volume on Wilhelm von Humboldt’s (1767-1835) essay “Ueber die coptische Sprache”. The Prussian diplomat and statesman, brother of the famous scientist and explorer Alexander, had a vivid interest in the Egyptian language. Matthias Müller reminded the audience of Jürgen Horn’s research on documentary sources and suggested the location of a newly discovered monastery in Western Thebes. Finally, the “Märtyrerhelden” presented by Gerald Moers not only connected the cult of the Christian martyrs in Late Antique Egypt with today’s, but also shed light on this central topic in Jürgen Horn’s research, the martyr accounts, on which he wrote his dissertation. 

Just before Anne Boud’hors gave her impressive evening lecture “Die Macht Gottes und die Milde des Propheten”, on the policy of quoting the books of the prophets in Coptic Literature, Diliana Atanassova and Frank Feder surprised Heike Behlmer with her birthday present, a copy of her Festschrift entitled: Pharaonen, Mönche und Gelehrte, comprising more than 1000 pages with articles by 58 contributors. 

Following the talks and presentation of the Festschrift, a delicious dinner was served which was prepared by many of the members of the Project.  This allowed many people to continue to talk with old friends and to make new acquaintances facilitating a good environment for networking and sharing ideas.

The investigation of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary in Egypt is the primary objective of the DFG project AT 193/2–1 “Digital Edition and Critical Evaluation of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary” currently pursued at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities of Lower Saxony. The on-site consultation of the manuscripts constituting the backbone of the project’s research is one of its milestones. During a 14-day visit of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, we were able to shed light on aspects up till then invisible on the digital reproductions of manuscript pages and to proceed to an autopsy of some non-digitized manuscripts. The Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana is home to two of our main Sahidic–Arabic Holy Week lectionaries (included in the digital collection of the Vatican library) and to three of the Bohairic–Arabic Holy Week lectionaries (not yet digitized by the Vatican library) used by Burmester in his “Le Lectionnaire de la Semaine Sainte”.[1] Besides the activities mentioned above, the visit also allowed us to exclude the codex Vat.ar.15, a non-digitized Arabic codex wrongly assumed to be a Holy Week lectionary. My colleague Diliana Atanassova was also there for an on-site autopsy of all Sahidic liturgical typika kept in BAV within the framework of her DFG project AT 193/1–1 “The Hymns in the Coptic Liturgy of the White Monastery in Upper Egypt”.

The autopsy results concerning the manuscript sa 16L are presented in what follows. Part II (forthcoming) will be dedicated to some other manuscripts.

sa 16L, end of the 14th century [2] 
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Borg. Copt. 109, cass. XXIII, fasc. 99

Bilingual Sahidic–Arabic Holy Week lectionary written on unwatermarked Egyptian brownish ‘two-layered’ paper,[3] with apparent laid lines and non-distinguishable chain marks, 189 surviving folios, page dimensions 36.5x26.5 cm, text coverage 25.5x19 cm, lines per page: 26–28 for the Sahidic text and 15–22 for the Arabic text, line width 11–13 cm for the Sahidic text and ca. 6 cm for the Arabic text, intercolumn almost non-existent. 10 lines of Coptic text: 9–9.5 cm, corresponding to 7 lines of Arabic text. Initial structure: 27 quaternions. Extant: 25 quaternions, three of which with missing folios. Last quire: Three folios and a stub before a last folio added at the end. In its current state, the lectionary begins with the ninth Hour of the Day on Holy Monday and ends with Holy Saturday. Six marginal notes, four in Arabic, one in Bohairic and one bilingual in Bohairic and Arabic. Four give us details about the owner family of the manuscript before it came to Rome, as for example the marginal note dated 1160 A.M. corresponding to 1443 A.D. that provides us with a terminus post quem non for the writing of the codex.[4] 

One of the aims of the autopsy was to identify the text on f. 187r of the codex. Water leak between f. 186v and 187r had resulted in a transfer of ink from one page to the other leading to the fading of the red ink on f. 187r or to its coverage by the black ink transferred from the previous page (fig. 1).

Detail, sa 16L, f. 187r
https://coptot.manuscriptroom.com/community/modules/papyri/?site=INTF&image=620016/89052/2870/20/96

Using a magnifying glass with light as well as UV light helped identify parts of the damaged text and allowed for a tentative reconstruction.

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