CoptOT Public

The 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies Concludes in Göttingen

2026-08-02T07:52:19Z

The 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies came to a close today after a memorable week in Göttingen, bringing together nearly 300 scholars from around the world. Hosted jointly by the Georg-August-Universität and the Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the congress reaffirmed Göttingen’s long-standing place among the great centres of global Coptology.

During the closing ceremony, outgoing IACS President Paola Buzi expressed her heartfelt gratitude to the many individuals and institutions whose commitment made the congress possible. She paid special tribute to Andreas Effland, who had been deeply involved in the organization of the meeting before his unexpected passing on 26 January 2026. His contribution was remembered with appreciation and affection. Thanks were also extended to the Georg-August University and the Göttingen Academy, to the university leadership and the Academy’s presidency, to Bishop Damian, and especially to the many student assistants whose dedication ensured the smooth running of the congress. Particular recognition was given to Dr. Frank Feder, who served as Congress Secretary on behalf of the Göttingen Academy, and to Heike Behlmer, who coordinated the congress from the University. Together with an outstanding team of student assistants, they organized an event that will long be remembered as a tremendous success.

The General Assembly of the International Association for Coptic Studies followed. Secretary Stephen Emmel commemorated colleagues who had passed away since the previous congress, including Theofried Baumeister, Martin Krause, Bentley Layton, Peter Nagel, Birger A. Pearson, Paul-Hubert Poirier, Michel Roberge, and Frederik Wisse. A moment of silence was observed in their memory. The Assembly also approved a revision of the IACS statutes introducing term limits for several key offices, including the Secretary, Webmaster, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Coptic Studies, and Director of the Cairo Center.

The meeting also marked an important transition for the Journal of Coptic Studies. Warm appreciation was expressed to Anne Boud’hors, who has served as editor since 2013. Beginning with the next volume, the journal will adopt a new editorial structure headed by Matthias Müller as Editor-in-Chief, working together with Korshi Dosoo, Esther Garel, and Ivan Miroshnikov as editors.

Another welcome announcement concerned the publication of the congress proceedings, which will appear online in open access with the support of the Göttingen State and University Library. In this way, a selection of papers presented during the past week will be freely accessible to researchers worldwide.

The Assembly also accepted the proposal to hold the 14th International Congress of Coptic Studies in Oslo in 2030. The event will be organized by Hugo Lundhaug (University of Oslo) and Victor Ghica (MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society). Participants enthusiastically welcomed the opportunity to continue the tradition of the congress in another important centre of Coptic scholarship.

The newly elected IACS Board was then announced. Tonio Sebastian Richter becomes President, with Sofía Torallas Tovar serving as President-Elect. Victor Ghica succeeds Stephen Emmel as Secretary, while Hugo Lundhaug assumes the office of Congress Secretary. Alin Suciu continues as Webmaster, Mennat-Allah El Dorry becomes Director of the Cairo Center, and Matthias Müller takes over as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Coptic Studies. The Members-at-Large are Florence Calament, Maher Eissa, Mary K. Farag, and Frank Feder, who joins the Board following Hugo Lundhaug’s move to the position of Congress Secretary.

In his inaugural address, the new President, Tonio Sebastian Richter, thanked Paola Buzi for her years of dedicated service and officially declared the 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies closed. Former President Paola Buzi remarked that the congresses have become “family reunions” for the international Coptic scholarly community, encouraging everyone to remain curious, collaborative, and open-minded.

Participants return home with new ideas, new collaborations, and lasting memories of an exceptionally successful congress. The Coptologists now looks forward to meeting again in the beautiful city of Oslo in four years’ time.

The 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies Opens in Göttingen

2026-07-27T20:17:30Z

The 13th International Congress of Coptic Studies was officially inaugurated today in the Aula Magna of the University of Göttingen, bringing together nearly 300 scholars from more than thirty countries for the world’s leading international gathering dedicated to the study of Christian Egypt.

Opening the ceremony, Frank Feder, chair of the local organizing committee, reflected on the remarkable development of Coptology since the first congress in Cairo in 1976. While digital resources have transformed research and made manuscripts more accessible than ever before, he emphasized that Coptic studies also has a broader mission. In a world increasingly marked by conflict and polarization, the humanities – and especially smaller disciplines – play a vital role by fostering historically informed and nuanced perspectives. Feder also highlighted the Göttingen Academy’s commitment to open-access scholarship and the training of a new generation of researchers, many of whom will present their work during the congress.

One of the highlights of the opening ceremony was the presentation of the IACS Award of Academic Excellence 2026, led by President-Elect Tonio Sebastian Richter. The Master’s Prize was awarded to Kierán Meinhardt (Free University Berlin) for his innovative study of Greek loanwords in Coptic. The doctoral prize was exceptionally shared between Élodie Mazy (Université libre de Bruxelles), whose dissertation offers the first comprehensive study of festivals in Coptic Egypt, and Vincent Walter (Free University Berlin), whose work sheds new light on late Coptic documentary texts and the transition from papyrus to paper.

The ceremony also featured a particularly moving moment when Stephen Emmel was appointed Honorary President of the International Association for Coptic Studies, in recognition of more than four decades of service to the Association. Emmel reminded the audience that his work had always been driven by “the love of Egypt” and the pursuit of human knowledge. He remains the only participant to have attended every International Congress since the inaugural meeting in Cairo in December 1976.

In her presidential address, Paola Buzi offered an assessment of the current state of Coptic studies. She emphasized the increasingly collaborative nature of the discipline, the growing importance of digital scholarly resources as research outputs in their own right, and the flourishing of Coptic Studies in Egypt through new academic programmes, archaeological discoveries, and international collaborations.

The opening ceremony also included a speech by Heike Behlmer on Göttingen’s more than 250-year tradition in Egyptology and Coptic Studies. Greetings were delivered by His Eminence Metropolitan Damian, conveying the blessing of Pope Tawadros II; Professor Sameh Soror, Cultural Counselor of the Embassy of Egypt; Professor Axel Schölmerich, President of the University of Göttingen; Professor Daniel Göske, President of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities, in a recorded video message; and Professor Ulrike Egelhaaf-Gaiser, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Humanities.

The opening ceremony set the tone for a week of lectures, discussions, and discoveries.

Two Days on the Materiality of Psalms in Hamburg

2026-07-22T15:20:02Z

On June 25^th and 26^th, I was fortunate enough to participate in the workshop ‘The Material Tradition of the Psalms,’ organized by Karin Becker, Erene Morcos, and Hanna Wimmer, under the auspices of The Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artifacts at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC). The event was attended both in situ and online. The goals of this workshop as set out by its organizers included the exploration of the Psalms not simply as text, but as a vast collection of objectified, visualised, and embodied traditions; and the study of the visual and material expressions of this sacred poetry with particular attention to material choices, modes of transmission, and the dynamics of fragmentation and reproduction.

Although, this conference was supported by the CSMC, it actually took place at the celebrated Warburg-Haus.

At the end of the 19^th c. and the beginning of the 20^th, Aby Warburg dedicated himself to the study of the influence of antiquity on the modern era and he also established the Warburg Library for Cultural Studies (KBW). This library was located in Hamburg until 1933 and then relocated to London. We were kindly offered a tour of this institution, which included a small description of Aby Warburg’s ideals, studies, and reasonings behind the creation of his library; and how Warburg-Haus functions today.

This tour was of special interest to me because as a graduate student in London, I often used the library of the Warburg Institute since it houses various resources otherwise not available at the University of London.

After the tour of this historic institution and an introduction by our three organizers, the conference began with the first paper by Oliver Huck who presented on ‘Written Music in the Psalter and the Psalms with Music in Medieval Western European Manuscripts.’ Huck explained that while one might expect the manuscript tradition of the Psalter to have included musical notation alongside the psalms, this is not the case. He added that music accompanying entire psalm texts is almost entirely absent from Western European psalters throughout the Middle Ages.

I followed with a paper on ‘The Coptic Psalms and their Transmission on Papyrus, Parchment, Stone, and Clay.’ I concentrated on the survival of Psalms on ostraca, inscriptions, and wooden tablets and the interplay of education, piety, and magic in late antique Egypt.

After lunch, Justin Wilson spoke on ‘Textual Survivor: The Psalter in Slavonic Author Images.’ Wilson focused on two Slavonic psalters from Novgorod and Moravia, both dated to the fourteenth century. The codices reveal a pronounced interest in the origins of the Psalms text. By situating the Simonov and Serbian image cycles alongside that of other Slavonic psalters, he argued for the artifactual nature of their texts.

Next, Ronny Vollandt followed with the ‘Arabic Translation of the Book of Psalms: A Survey.’ His lecture examined the early Arabic translations of the Book of Psalms as preserved in manuscripts from Sinai and Damascus, highlighting their historical, linguistic, and cultural significance. Particular attention was given to both bilingual Greek Arabic codices and later monolingual Arabic copies which reflect different stages in the development of the text.

The last session of the first day started with Uta Lauer who presented on ‘From Faith to Life-Style Product – Psalms and Chinese Cultural Conventions.’ Her paper explored the material and visual presentation of Psalms in China in different media, ranging from blue-and-white porcelain, cloisonné, lacquer, ink-cakes, and paintings to calligraphic renditions from the sixteenth century to the present day.

Finally, David Ganz spoke on ‘Psalms in Golden Splendor.’ He dealt with the use of gold lettering for the Psalms in the early Middle Ages, and took a comparative perspective on psalters in gold lettering and examined the specific aesthetic and political concepts underlying the use of gold in the context of the Psalms.

The second day of our conference kicked off with Sophia Dege-Müller and Jonas Karlsson on ‘Continuity and Innovation in the Ethiopic Tradition of the Psalms.’ Their presentation

began with a broad introduction to the Book of Psalms in the Ge’ez tradition, then presented in

detail one of the patristic texts that occasionally accompanied the Book of Psalms in medieval

Ethiopia, namely, the Introduction to the Psalms by Eusebius of Caesarea (CAe 6719).

Georgi Parpulov then presented his new research on ‘The Seven Penitential Psalms in Greek.’ He showed us seven pocket-sized parchment codices copied in Western Europe in the second half of the fifteenth century that contain the Greek text of the Seven Penitential Psalms (LXX 6, 31, 37, 50, 101, 129,142). He added that these same Psalms were also included in the Greek Book of Hours printed by Aldus Manutius in 1497, discussed the reasons for their popularity, and traced their manuscript tradition.

Grace Clipson was next with her presentation ‘Constructing Devotion: Architectural Framework in the Queen Mary Psalter.’ She concentrated on the Queen Mary Psalter (London, c. 1310-20), which contains a series of striking, yet under-studied, illuminated architectural frameworks. Diverging from scholarship that portrays manuscript borders as decorative pleonasms, her paper examined how these archimorphic containers actively structured the manuscript’s broader devotional use.

Following Clipson, Marco Pavan presented on ‘The Internal Segmentation, and Graphic Arrangement of Hebrew Poetry at Qumrân. The Dead Sea «Psalms» Scrolls and the Hodayot as a Case in Point.’ Building on previous research, his analysis focused on the differences in internal segmentation and graphic arrangement in the Dead Sea «Psalms» scrolls, highlighting how the text of the Psalms was received and interpreted in the final centuries of the Second Temple period.

Then came Anastasia Tsacheridou with ‘Whoever Dwells in the Shelter of the Most High (Psalm 91/90): Psalms and Apotropaic Practices in Byzantine Minor Art.’ Drawing on a corpus of small devotional and prophylactic objects (amulets, enkolpia, inscribed armbands, rings) her study investigated how selected Psalm verses were materialized, circulated, and employed in daily life as safeguards against any physical and spiritual danger.

The final paper of these proceedings was delivered by Giovanni Ruffini on ‘The Psalms as Nubia’s Shield.’ He presented on twenty-five texts in Nubian, Greek, and Coptic, and showed that Nubia’s Psalms appear in educational texts, lectionaries, wall paintings, phylacteries, and funeral texts. They all served as a form of protection for Christian Nubia against the world’s forces of evil.

In conclusion, this workshop offered a welcomed and much-needed approach to the study of the Psalms. Not only did it span a period from the time of the Dead Sea Scrolls to contemporary China, but it also brought into the discussion considerations on the role of Psalms when executed on stone, clay, wood, and metal. Its goals as set out by its organizers were achieved; all participants presented on those; and there was ample constructive discussion and feedback at the end of each paper. I certainly look forward to its forthcoming publication.

Solving the Mystery of One of the “Earliest Greek Lectionaries”

2026-07-12T19:28:29Z

For more than a century, five parchment leaves preserved in the Austrian National Library in Vienna (P. Vindob. G 2324 ) have been regarded as one of the oldest surviving Greek Gospel lectionaries. In the Gregory-Aland list of Greek New Testament manuscripts, they feature as Lectionary 1043.

In a new article published in Novum Testamentum, I argue that this common assumption is mistaken. By reconstructing the original manuscript from scattered fragments now preserved in libraries across the world, I demonstrate that the Vienna leaves belonged to a codex from the famous White Monastery in Upper Egypt. The codicological reconstruction reveals that the Greek passages were copied by the same scribe at the end of a manuscript containing the four gospels in Sahidic.

This discovery alters the presumed character of the Vienna leaves entirely. What had been considered one of the earliest Greek lectionaries turns out instead to be the work of a bilingual Egyptian scribe active in the seventh century.

My investigation also led to several other unexpected discoveries. I identified previously unknown fragments of the same codex, currently held in collections in Paris, Oslo, Vienna, and among the tiny parchment scraps excavated in 2011 at the White Monastery. I was also able to find another Sahidic New Testament manuscript – containing the Acts of the Apostles and the Catholic Epistles – copied by the same scribe.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the manuscript I pieced together is its sophistication. The scribe employed a series of scholarly tools borrowed from the Greek biblical tradition, such as the Ammonian-Eusebian apparatus, Gospel chapter cross-references, and stichometric counts. These features are unattested elsewhere in Sahidic manuscripts of the gospels, which demonstrates that the White Monastery was a significant learning center during the Coptic period.

The remaining puzzle is why these Gospel extracts in Greek were added at the end of a Coptic manuscript. My study argues that the scribe sought both to avoid wasting valuable parchment and to preserve a selection of important Gospel readings in Greek. Thus, this bilingual manuscript offers a rare glimpse into a period when Greek still retained a privileged status in the Coptic Church.

But beyond recovering the purpose of the manuscript to which the Vienna leaves originally belonged, I hope my study contributes to a broader methodological perspective. Greek and Coptic manuscripts from Egypt are often studied separately, as if they belonged to different worlds. My article implicitly argues that they should instead be approached together. Only by viewing them within the same bilingual scribal culture can we properly understand how manuscripts were produced and used in late antique Egypt.

Recently published: TSKB 5 – Die koptischen Miniaturkodizes aus spätantiker Zeit (Coptic Miniature Codices from Late Antiquity)

2026-07-03T16:42:10Z

It is not only the content but also the format of late antique manuscripts that can reveal interesting facts about the use and functions of biblical and non-biblical literature in Roman-Byzantine Egypt. Recently, there has been increased research on particularly small-format codices, as demonstrated by Michael J. Kruger’s monograph “Miniature Codices in Early Christianity,” published in 2025. In his work, Kruger primarily examines Greek manuscripts of the smallest format containing Christian texts. However, this type of codex was also widespread in Egypt among Coptic manuscripts. This became clear several years ago when Alin Suciu published a list of Coptic miniature codices.

Building on this and other studies, a monograph has recently been published, which, in appr. 600 pages, for the first time explicitly examines Coptic miniature codices from the late antique period. Jan-Malte Ziegenbein’s work defines and catalogues a corpus of over 140 Coptic manuscripts of a particularly small format that can be dated to the 4th–8th centuries. Based on content, material, palaeographic, and linguistic-orthographic characteristics, conclusions are also drawn regarding the dating, origin, and function of the codices.

The work originated as a PhD thesis at the University of Göttingen, supervised by Prof. Heike Behlmer and Dr Frank Feder. It has now appeared as the fifth volume of the series Texte und Studien zur Koptischen Bibel / Texts and Studies on the Coptic Bible (TSKB) distributed by the Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden.

Psalter & Gospel of Matthew. Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, Copt. Ms. 815, fol. 152r. Approx. 10.5 x 8.5 cm (h x w), 6th–7th century. Source: https://viewer.cbl.ie/viewer/image/Cpt_815/305/.

A key to defining a corpus of Coptic miniature codices: In the colophon of Copt. Ms. 815 at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, the manuscript itself is explicitly referred to as ⲡⲉⲓ̈ⲕⲟⲩ<ⲓ> ⲛ̄ϫⲱⲱⲙⲉ “this small book”.

Curatorial Position in Egyptology at the Ägyptische Museum und Papyrussammlung in Berlin

2026-04-27T11:06:02Z

A new position has opened at the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection in Berlin, which possesses one of the largest collections of papyri in the world.

The museum is currently seeking a wissenschaftliche*r Mitarbeiter*in / Kurator*in in the field of Egyptology. The position offers the chance to work closely with one of the most significant collections of Egyptian antiquities and papyri.

The position combines scholarly research with curatorial responsibilities, including collection-based work, exhibition development, and contribution to broader institutional projects. It is particularly well-suited for candidates interested in bridging academic Egyptology with museum practice and public engagement.

Applicants are expected to have a strong academic background in Egyptology, along with relevant research and, ideally, curatorial or collection-related experience.

Further information and application submission can be found here.

New Position in Egyptology & Coptology at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

2026-04-27T10:57:00Z

Colleagues in Egyptology and Coptology may be interested in a newly advertised two-year position at the Seminar für Ägyptologie und Koptologie in Göttingen.

A full-time position (wissenschaftliche*r Mitarbeiter*in, E13 TV-L) is now open, starting at the earliest possible date. The appointment is limited to two years and is designed to support advanced research, particularly the completion of a second major project (e.g. a habilitation).

The role combines research and teaching. The successful candidate will contribute to courses in Egyptian and Coptic language, literature, and the cultural history of Egypt from the Pharaonic period through Late Antiquity, alongside participation in supervision, examinations, and departmental activities.

Applicants are expected to hold a PhD in Egyptology (or a closely related field), demonstrate strong publication and teaching experience, and command all stages of the Egyptian language. Familiarity with digital research is also required.

Application deadline: 12 May 2026

Further details and application instructions are available here.

Coptic Manuscript Fragments at Trinity College, Cambridge

2026-04-27T10:35:36Z

The manuscript collections of Trinity College, Cambridge, are famous for their treasures. However, less well known is a relatively small but intriguing group of fragmentary Egyptian papyri in a variety of languages. These materials, now fully digitised by the Wren Library, are accessible online.

The papyri are stored in boxes labelled according to language: “Greek,” “Coptic,” and “Arabic.” However, even a cursory inspection shows that these divisions should be treated as approximate: for example, fragments classified as “Coptic” contain Greek material, and vice versa. Furthermore, the collection includes the so-called “Murray Papyri,” which were donated by A. G. W. Murray (1884–1919) to the Library. These also appear to include additional Coptic pieces.

The bulk of the collection consists of documentary texts on papyrus. Yet scattered among them are occasional literary texts on papyrus, parchment, and paper. Until now, only the Arabic material has been preliminarily inventoried by Petra Sijpesteijn. In this post, I would like to draw attention to the small group of Coptic biblical fragments in this collection.

Biblical Fragments from the Pauline Corpus

One of the most striking parchment pieces is the last, unnumbered Murray fragment, which contains a portion from the Epistle to the Galatians (4:13–26) in Sahidic. Its script suggests a date as early as the sixth century, making it a valuable witness for the transmission of the Pauline corpus in this dialect.

A Sahidic paper fragment from the same group, Murray 5, preserves First Epistle to Timothy 4:12–5:4. The fragment is paginated 158/159 (even/odd!), which suggests that it once belonged to a substantial codex. On palaeographical grounds, it is unlikely to predate the thirteenth century CE, and thus belongs to the final phase of Sahidic as a literary language.

A Gospel Fragment

Among the papyri inventoried as Coptic, perhaps the most noteworthy is “Coptic 17,” which derives from a papyrus codex of the Gospel of John. The fragment is written in a handsome Alexandrian uncial, pointing to a date in the seventh or eighth century.

Other Interesting Material

Among the fragments grouped as “Coptic 15,” one item (no. 7) appears to be liturgical. By contrast, item 6 from the same frame is clearly documentary, probably an account in Sahidic. The verso was subsequently reused to accommodate a private letter in Arabic. The importance of this document lies in the fact that the Sahidic text preserves a precise date: the month of Mesore, year 661 of the Era of the Martyrs, corresponding to July/August 945 CE.

Assuming that this is indeed the date when the Coptic text was written, the document in question is particularly noteworthy, as it may represent one of the earliest securely dated Coptic paper manuscripts. The transition from papyrus and parchment to paper in medieval Egypt remains poorly understood. Although paper had already come into widespread use in the Islamic caliphate, Coptic scribes appear, at least into the tenth century, to have reserved paper primarily for more ephemeral or utilitarian texts such as accounts and letters. By contrast, parchment continued to be preferred for biblical, liturgical, and other literary manuscripts. In this context, parchment functioned not only as a more durable writing surface, but also as a material marker of authority and prestige.

Ink Analysis at the Fondation Martin Bodmer

2025-09-26T08:40:27Z

In July of this year, I was able to travel to Geneva to work with the Bodmer Collection in Cologny. The object of the trip was a collaboration with Ira Rabin from the BAM (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung) to do ink analysis on manuscripts from the Bodmer Collection. I have previously traveled to the archive to work on a project that is in progress, and I was particularly interested in the ink analysis of Papyrus Bodmer 44, a Bohairic translation of the Book of Daniel.

Research was carried out using an XRF (X-ray fluorescence) spectrometer to analyze the chemical composition of Bodmer manuscripts’ inks. Specifically, the radiation is sent through the material to be analyzed and the various elements in the ink, e.g. copper, iron, nickel, etc., produce various X-rays, which can then be recorded by the XRF spectrometer.

Analysis could only be carried out on areas with ink on one side. Thus, careful preparation was required to identify potential areas that also measured at least Ø 1 mm and had ink in relatively good condition. Images of the desired areas were also taken using Dino-Lite to produce NL (normal light), UV (ultra-violet), and IR (infrared) photographs of the areas being analyzed. This provides additional information, and can show when carbon or plant-based inks were being used.

In addition to PB44, we were able to analyze the ink from many different Bodmer manuscripts. This will be useful not only in understanding the relationship of a text in a singular manuscript, but to also get a better understanding of the Bodmer Papyri as a whole.

The complete analysis of our findings is still in progress, however, I look forward to the results and implementing them in further study on the Bodmer Collection.

Job Offer: Trainee position

2025-08-28T11:31:21Z

The Digital Edition and Translation of the Coptic Old Testament at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony is dedicated to digitally describe, edit and analyse the transmission of the Coptic Old Testament with a focus on the Sahidic tradition. The long-term project has an opening for a one-year paid trainee program, to be filled from January 1, 2026. This trainee program will give the successful applicant the opportunity to expand their knowledge about the Biblical tradition in Coptic and to receive further hands-on training in editorial methods, manuscript studies and digital humanities, as applied to the Coptic Bible and Coptic literature.

The trainee will commit to working 30 hrs per week in a variety of tasks, which will depend on their experience and interests and the current Old Testament project focus. If pursuing a research project within the wider field of the Coptic Bible the trainee will be able to dedicate up to 50% of this time to their own research.

Prerequisites are a degree in Coptic Studies or a project-related field (Egyptology, Biblical Studies, History of Christianity, Digital Humanities or similar) and a working knowledge of Coptic. Other language skills (in particular in Ancient Greek or Arabic) are welcomed.

Please direct enquiries and applications (short CV, digital copies of diplomas or transcripts and letter of motivation – as a single PDF file) by October 15, 2025 to adw.bewerb@adwgoe.de.

For further information contact Prof. Heike Behlmer (heike.behlmer@uni-goettingen.de) or Dr Frank Feder (frank.feder@adwgoe.de). Information about the project is available on its website: https://coptot.manuscriptroom.com.

The Academy aims to increase the proportion of women in areas where they are underrepresented and therefore explicitly invites qualified women to apply. It also sees itself as family-friendly and supports the compatibility of work and caring commitments.

Disabled persons or those of equal status will be given special consideration if their qualifications make them suitable candidates.

We would like to point out that submitting an application constitutes consent under current data protection law for us to process your application data. You can find more details on the legal basis of this and the use of your data at: https://adw-goe.de/ueber-uns/datenschutzerklaerung/.

Travel and application expenses cannot be reimbursed.

The Origin and the Evolution of an Error in the Coptic Translation of Deuteronomy 33:16a

2025-08-13T12:40:12Z

When undertaking textual criticism of the Coptic translation of the Septuagint, one encounters all kinds of errors that are inherent to the manuscripts, yet these have a bearing on the textual history. I recently encountered such an error while preparing the critical edition of the Sahidic translation of Deuteronomy, specifically at the beginning of Deuteronomy 33:16.

As the editor of Deuteronomy, I had to make a decision regarding this part of the verse, and decided to emend it, as it did not make sense and was not consistent with any Greek Vorlage. The CoptOT project team at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony has decided to adopt the siglum “Sa” from the Göttingen edition of the Septuagint for cases where we do not have a direct Greek text witness, but have to correct an obvious mistake that occurs in all manuscripts.

Deuteronomy 33:16a is part of the blessing that Moses gave to Joseph, which is found in verses 13–16. For better clarity regarding the context of the passage in question, I am quoting these verses according to the New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS), edited by A. Pietersma & B.G. Wright, New York 2007:

Deut 33:13 “And to Ioseph he said:

His land is from the Lord’s blessing,

from the seasons of the sky and of dew

and from unfathomable springs below

Deut 33:14 and in a season of produce of the sun’s changes

and from conjunctions of months

Deut 33:15 and from the top of mountains of yore

and from the top of the everlasting hills

Deut 33:16 and in a season of earth’s fullness.”

In what follows, I am comparing the Greek text of the Göttingen Septuagint with the Coptic manuscripts from the fourth, ninth/tenth or eleventh centuries for Deuteronomy 33:16a, offering my reconstruction of the original Sahidic text, as well as, for comparison, the Bohairic version:

Deuteronomy 33:16a

Gö LXX: καὶ καθ’ ὥραν γῆς πληρώσεως

sa 17 (IV c.) ⲁ[ⲩ]ⲱ ⲛ̄ⲧⲡⲉ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ⲡϫⲱⲕ’ ⲙ̄ⲡⲕⲁϩ

sa 2006 (IX/X c.) ⲁⲩⲱ ⲧⲡⲉ ⲙⲛ ⲡϫⲱⲕ ⲙⲡⲕⲁϩ

sa 2164 (XI c.) ⲁⲩⲱ ⲛ̄ⲧⲡⲉ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ⲡϫⲱⲕ ⲙ̄ⲡⲕⲁϩ

Sa ⲁⲩⲱ ⲙ̄ⲡⲧⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡϫⲱⲕ ⲙ̄ⲡⲕⲁϩ

Bo ⲛⲉⲙ ⲕⲁⲧⲁ ⲡⲥⲏⲟⲩ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡϫⲱⲕ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡⲓⲕⲁϩⲓ

Why would three Sahidic manuscripts from such different periods translate the phrase by (ⲛ̄)ⲧⲡⲉ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ⲡϫⲱⲕ ⲙ̄ⲡⲕⲁϩ “(in) the heaven and the fullness of the earth”? The key phrase is καθ’ ὥραν “in a/its season”, which occurs eight times in the Septuagint. For our purposes, only the occurrences in Deuteronomy 11:14 and Hosea 2:11 will be of relevance. In both cases, the Greek phrase καθ’ ὥραν is translated as ⲙ̄ⲡⲉϥⲧⲉ, with ὥρα being rendered by the Coptic noun ⲧⲉ, while in the other instances the Sahidic translation uses a different word.

According to Crum’s Coptic Dictionary, the masculine noun ⲧⲏ, meaning “time, season” (Crum 391b), “oftenest” occurs as its variant ⲧⲉ and can be used in adverbial phrases such as ⲙⲡⲉϥⲧⲉ, meaning “at his/its time, right time” or ⲉⲡⲧⲉ, meaning “at, in time”. If we were to translate καὶ καθ’ ὥραν γῆς πληρώσεως in Deuteronomy 33:16a into Sahidic using the noun ⲧⲉ, we should not expect the possessive article ⲡⲉϥ-, however, but rather the article ⲡ-, since the Greek uses a genitive construction involving two nouns, resulting in the Coptic expression ⲙ̄ⲡⲧⲉ ⲛ̄-/ⲙ̄- “in the season of ...”.

We can now reconstruct how the Coptic scribes may have arrived at their incorrect reading of Deuteronomy 33:16a. At an early stage in the history of the Coptic Deuteronomy text, the letters Tau (ⲧ) and Pi (ⲡ) were erroneously transposed. This is evident in our earliest surviving manuscript sa 17, which most likely dates to the fourth century. From a linguistic perspective, this could be termed a metathesis. Subsequent copyists did not suspect an error, as the noun ⲡⲉ with the correct feminine article ⲧ- exists in Coptic and means “heaven, sky” (Crum 259a). This word occurs abundantly in the Old Testament and is frequently used in conjunction with the word ⲕⲁϩ, meaning “earth” (Crum 131a). Once ⲡⲧⲉ became ⲧⲡⲉ, a further change suggested itself, namely to replace My (ⲙ) with Ny (ⲛ), as ⲛ̄- is the correct form of the preposition ⲛ̄-/ⲙ̄- before a word starting with the letter Tau (ⲧ).

Subsequently, in order to make sense of the phrase, the scribes changed another letter: The preposition ⲛ̄-, which can have several meanings, and assimilates to ⲙ̄- when placed in front of the letter ⲡ, was replaced by the preposition ⲙ︤ⲛ︥-, meaning “and, with” (Crum 169b–170a). It is evident that the scribes found it more comprehensible to unite “heaven” and “earth” by using “and”.

We have therefore an example of what the Germans would term a “Verschlimmbesserung”, meaning “disimprovement”, whereby a subsequent correction of an original mistake only makes things worse.

A Showcase of Our Team Member Lina Elhage-Mensching on the British Library Website

2025-07-07T18:04:49Z

It is my great pleasure to announce the guest blog on the British Library website by our colleague, Lina Elhage-Mensching, on the Bohairic–Arabic Holy Week lectionary Add MS 5997 dated 1273 CE. This showcase is one of the results of a collaboration between the British Library and the Coptic Old Testament Project at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony. Lina analyses this lectionary in the framework of the DFG project Digital Edition of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary (n° 491266891).

One week research stay at the British Library

2025-08-13T08:50:44Z

From 2 to 7 June, I visited the British Library in London to examine biblical and liturgical Coptic manuscripts held there. These manuscripts belong to three different projects ongoing at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony.

CoptOT

As a member of the Göttingen CoptOT team, I was responsible for performing autopsy on pages containing texts from the books of the Pentateuch, including Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, as well as Old Testament lectionaries. Nowadays, autopsies are not performed on every page, given that the quality of coloured photographs has improved immensely since the start of my academic career in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, autopsy remains an important method when working with ancient manuscripts. Consequently, the statistics of the Göttingen Virtual Manuscript Room now include the number of pages autopsied by a team member.

At the British Library, I consulted Coptic manuscripts in the ‘Asian & African Studies Reading Room’ section on the third floor. There, throughout my research stay, I had the full support of Michael Erdman, the Head of the Middle Eastern and Central Asian Section. He gave me permission to take photos and to use the library’s UV light device. Furthermore, since the British Library does not yet have a special box that can be used as a ‘dark room’ for reading manuscripts under UV light, he also allowed me to build a temporary one using a few book cradles. This practical ‘invention’ served me very well.

In particular, it helped me read the parchment large leaf, bearing the shelfmark Or. 4717, folio 1 verso, which is the single leaf left from a once extensive manuscript listed in CoptOT as sa 2187 containing biblical Odes 2–4: Deut 32; 1Sam 2; Hab 3. The leaf measuring 290 mm x 235 mm has strong darkened areas and therefore using UV light renders the ink visible beneath the dirt and makes a significant difference. Whereas in cases where the ink has faded, but traces remain from the pressure of the calamus while writing, the result would be less satisfactory.

DFG project n° 491266891

As the supervisor of the DFG project ‘Digital Edition of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary’ I needed to photograph two Bohairic lectionaries with the curator’s permission. After studying my photographs, Lina Elhage-Mensching established that one of them, BL Or. 5453.1, folios 1–13, was not a Holy Week lectionary, but rather an Easter Week lectionary. The second lectionary, BL Or. 1242.6, folios 1–3, had not yet been studied in the framework of our project as the photos were lacking. This trilingual Bohairic–Greek–Arabic Holy Week lectionary has the siglum bo 3001L in our project. Its folios are dispersed over various library collections such as Oxford (BL, Copt.c.3, folios 1–4), Hamburg (SUB, Lect. 1, folios 1–40) and Vienna (ÖNB, K 11346, folios 1–3).

DFG project n° 287993677

Last but not least, as part of the third project, ‘The Hymns in the Coptic Liturgy of the White Monastery in Upper Egypt,’ I had to take care of typikon leaves from the codices MONB.WC, MONB.WK, and MONB.WP. I measured the new typikon leaves and compared my transcriptions with the manuscript. While this work was mostly routine, I was able to identify a few difficult words that were not found in the other typika from different library collections.

It is always a pleasure to visit the British Library and I look forward to my next research stay, as there is still much work to be done in the area of Coptic biblical and liturgical manuscripts.

Did Coptic Scribes Follow a Standard Orthography?

2025-08-02T20:13:42Z

A standard orthography simply refers to a uniform way of spelling, which in modern times is relatively easy to enforce–for example, through reforms by authoritative institutions. A notable example is the German orthography reform of 1996, initiated through an international agreement signed in Vienna by representatives of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Today, any deviation from such a standard is typically regarded as a typo. However, before the advent of printing, things were quite different: books were copied by hand, and spelling conventions often varied by region. Individual scribes were often inconsistent even in their own writing, resulting in diverse orthographic practices that lacked standardization.

Bible translations and language standardization

Bible translations played a pivotal role in the standardization of languages and their spelling. Luther’s Bible translation, for instance, had a profound influence on the standardization of the written German in the sixteenth century (Visser 2018: 350). Likewise, the Swedish Bible translation commissioned by Gustav Vasa, based on Luther’s version, marked a milestone in the development of a more uniform Swedish written language (Thelander 2005: 1900). Despite some irregularities, its orthography is quite consistent for its time, demonstrating a clear effort to maintain uniform spelling throughout the text (Pettersson 2005: 160).

The Sahidic Bible may not be an exception. In this brief article, I will demonstrate how Sahidic biblical manuscripts can help trace a similar process of orthographic standardization in Sahidic texts.

Method

The corpus comprises 52 texts (mostly biblical) preserved in 26 manuscripts, dating from the fourth century up to the tenth century. The goal is to computationally measure orthographic similarity–that is, the consistency of word spellings–across these texts.

The first step was to select variables (features) to capture orthographic behavior in the texts. These include: ϫⲉⲕⲁⲥ vs. ϫⲉⲕⲁⲁⲥ ‘so that’; assimilation of ⲛ before ⲃ, ⲗ, and ⲣ; the use of ⲏⲟⲩ vs. ⲏⲩ; and ⲡⲉⲉⲓ/ⲧⲉⲉⲓ/ⲛⲉⲉⲓ vs. ⲡⲉⲓ/ⲧⲉⲓ/ⲛⲉⲓ, among others (12 pairs of features in total).

Next, occurrences of each feature were counted in each text. Because texts vary in length, the values were normalized into ratios. For example, in Luke (sa 1), the cluster ⲏⲟⲩ appears 92 times, and ⲏⲩ 78 times. The normalized ratios are calculated as follows:

Ratio of ⲏⲟⲩ = total no. of ⲏⲟⲩ / (total no. of ⲏⲟⲩ + total no. of ⲏⲩ) = 92 / (92 + 78) = 0.541

Ratio of ⲏⲩ = total no. of ⲏⲩ / (total no. of ⲏⲟⲩ + total no. of ⲏⲩ) = 78 / (92 + 78) = 0.459

Ratios for all variables were calculated, and the resulting matrix was analyzed using Principal Components Analysis (PCA)–a statistical method that reduces dimensionality while preserving as much variability (i.e. statistical information) as possible (Redmont et al. 2023: 119). PCA is particularly helpful for identifying patterns in large datasets. The results were then visualized in a two-dimensional Euclidean space to assess the (in)consistency of orthography across texts.

Results and discussion

We generally expect orthographic consistency within a single manuscript, as texts of a manuscript were typically copied in the same location, sometimes by the same scribe. However, the texts of sa 31 (green ellipses) show considerable variation. Similarly, the sa 1 texts (red ellipse, lower right) are not closely aligned: the Luke text is clearly separated from both John and Mark (overwritten by “sa 32, Revelation”). PCA indicates that John and Mark are closer to each other than to Luke, supporting Quecke’s (1984: 18–19) paleographic observation that they were without doubt written by the same hand.

There are also discrepancies between witnesses of the same biblical book–for instance, the John texts in sa 1 and in sa 4 (grey arrows). The dispersed distribution of the texts suggests that these texts had not adopted standardized orthography. In fact, these divergent texts were copied in the fourth and fifth centuries.

In contrast, many other texts fall into two major clusters: (1) A small cluster comprising sa 4 texts, showing intra-manuscript consistency; and (2) a dense group of texts in the upper-right quadrant, nearly all of which were copied in the sixth century onwards.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that Sahidic orthography had become largely standardized no later than the sixth century. What motivated this standardization, whether institutional, ecclesiastical, or social forces, remains a question for further inquiry, requiring integration of both linguistic data and historical context. One possible explanation is provided by Funk (2013: 540; cf. also Feder 2023: 7–8) who suggests that large-scale production and distribution of Sahidic translations “was not begun until those translations had been subjected to careful revision and editing, presumably under the control of some church-based authority (whose identity and location is unknown to us).”

References

Feder, Frank. 2023. “Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update,” in: Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia. https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/cce/id/2188/

Funk, Wolf-Peter. 2013. “The Translation of the Bible into Coptic,” in: James Carleton Paget and Joachim Schaper (eds.), The New Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 536–546. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139033671.029

Pettersson, Gertrud. 2005. Svenska språket under sjuhundra år: en historia om svenskan och dess utforskande. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Quecke, Hans. 1984. Das Johannesevangelium Saïdisch: Text der Handschrift PPalau Rib. Inv.-Nr. 183 mit den Varianten der Handschriften 813 und 814 der Chester Beatty Library und der Handschrift M569. Papyrologica Castroctaviana 11. Rome and Barcelona.

Redmond, L., D. Foucambert, and L. Libersan. 2023. “Language Corpora and Principal Components Analysis,” in: D.G. Woolford, D. Kotsopoulos, B. Samuels (eds.), Applied Data Science. Studies in Big Data, vol. 125. Springer: Cham, 117–132. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29937-7_9

Thelander, Mats. 2005. “Sociolinguistic structures chronologically II: Swedish,” in: Oskar Bandle, Kurt Braunmüller, Ernst Hakon Jahr, Allan Karker, Hans-Peter Naumann, Ulf Teleman, Lennart Elmevik and Gun Widmark (eds.), The Nordic Languages, An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages, Volume 2. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 1896–1907. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110197068-087

Visser, Arnoud. 2018. “The Luther Bible,” in: David M. Whitford (ed.), Martin Luther in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 350–57. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316596715.041

Psalms International Conference 2025

2025-08-13T08:53:50Z

From March 25^th to 27^th, the University of Malta hosted the conference ‘The Book of Psalms and its Plurality: Textual Transmission, Exegetical Methodology, and Theological Hermeneutics.’ The conference was organized by Prof. Daniela Scialabba (Pontificio Istituto Biblico), Rev. Prof. Dr Marco Pavan (Pontificia Università S. Tommaso D'Aquino), and Rev. Prof. Dr Stefan M. Attard (L-Università ta’ Malta). Its aim was to stimulate discussion on the formation and interpretation of the Psalms in the light of manuscript evidence. Participants came from Italy, Germany, Malta, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States. They primarily explored Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac manuscripts. Some of the key questions that were addressed were: What is the impact of the study of the manuscript tradition on the methodological discussion about the reconstruction of the Redaktionsgeschichte of the Psalter? Does textual evidence still support the idea of the Psalter as a book? What is the relationship between the Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac manuscript traditions of the Psalter?

I was the only participant who presented on the Coptic manuscripts of the Psalter. The title of my presentation was ‘The Psalms in the Coptic Tradition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages,’ and my analysis was three-fold: Firstly, I described the surviving Coptic manuscripts of the Psalms. Secondly, I emphasised the relationship of the Coptic Psalms with the Greek tradition and how the Greek Psalms in P. Bodmer XXIV have helped us highlight the numerous times that the Coptic classical text of the Psalms reflects a much earlier Greek tradition than the one solidified in the Septuagint. Finally, I presented our published, digital edition of Psalm 90.

All in all, the conference was meticulously organized; all papers were insightful and thought-provoking; and the University of Malta was a most cordial host. During the Easter holidays, though, the saddest news was shared with us by Brent Strawn and Drew Longacre, the directors of the Critical Edition of the Hebrew Psalter Project. They announced that the federally-funded grant through the National Endowment for the Humanities to produce the Critical Edition of the Hebrew Psalter was summarily terminated without warning by the US federal government. They added that ‘we are forever grateful and we remain committed to bringing this work to completion as opportunity allows. We are convinced it is of great importance for biblical studies, Bible translation, and larger communities of faith, and we also wish to honor the work our volunteers and supporters have done. Indeed, one of the things that makes us most upset about this termination is that it is not just a cancellation of two researchers at a university somewhere. It is a cancellation of the work of some 200 volunteers drawn from across the world—indeed from every continent on the planet except Antarctica. Thankfully, none of that transcription work will be lost, but for the foreseeable future we will be considerably limited in our ability to manage new transcription work and construct the edition itself.’

Birmingham Conference on The Pauline Epistles and the Ancient Versions

2026-04-27T11:11:53Z

Our AHRC/DFG project partner Hugh Houghton from the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) of the University of Birmingham convened scholars from all over the world for an international conference on The Pauline Epistles and the Ancient Versions. The conference was not only the final meeting of the (AHRC/DFG funded) GALaCSy project team, but also the 14th Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. From our team Julien Delhez (now Louvain) and Frank Feder, as members of the GALaCSy Göttingen team, took part with papers on the Coptic transmission of the Pauline Epistles. In the three years of the GALaCSy project, Göttingen and Münster were responsible for the edition of all extant Coptic manuscripts of Galatians and Ephesians, with a special focus on the earliest witnesses. Although we were able to fulfil this task within the (only) three years of funding, mainly thanks to the well-preserved Sahidic manuscripts, such as sa 4, it has quickly become quite obvious that we have only discovered the tip of the iceberg. The Coptic versions of the Pauline Epistles are extant in many, but mostly fragmentary manuscripts that already existed in all known literary dialects of Coptic: Bohairic, Fayyumic, Mesokemic, Akhmimic, Lycopolitan, and Sahidic as early as the 4th century. Along with the psalms and the Gospels, the Pauline Epistles are the best-preserved books of the Coptic Bible. Much remains to be discovered that could shed new light on the textual history of the Greek New Testament.

The GALaCSy Team

Mapping Coptic Manuscripts: A Visit to Cambridge University Library

2025-08-13T08:57:25Z

Between April 14 and 16, 2025, my colleague Frank Feder and I undertook a research trip to the Cambridge University Library (CUL) as part of our ongoing work for the Coptic Old Testament Project in Göttingen. Our aim was to study and photograph Coptic manuscripts held in the collections of the library. In this post, I will report on these collections and highlight some of their most important pieces.

The Coptic and Copto-Arabic fragments at CUL originate from several sources. A substantial portion was acquired from the famous German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf (1815–1874), who brought them from Egypt during his travels. These fragments, inventoried as Add. 1875–1876 and 1885–1887, include some of the most valuable Coptic holdings of the library. Among them are parchment and paper fragments in the Bohairic dialect, which Tischendorf had brought from Wadi Natrun. These were later published by Hugh Evelyn-White (1884–1924) in the first volume of his The Monasteries of Wadi ’N Natrûn (1926). Particularly notable is Add. 1886.17, which contains Abba Isaiah’s Precepts to the Novices. Although the language of this manuscript is Arabic, it is written in Coptic characters.

Another major source of the CUL’s Coptic collection is the group of fragments that belonged to Sir Herbert Thompson (1859–1944), professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge. These are inventoried as Or. 1699. During our research, we also examined Thompson’s correspondence and notes, which revealed that he purchased these fragments in 1914 from Henry Hyvernat (1858–1941), professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

The Thompson fragments are particularly significant because they originate exclusively from White Monastery codices. Since fragments of these codices are now scattered across more than forty collections worldwide, the Thompson material is invaluable for reconstructing the original White Monastery manuscripts.

An unexpected find came from a box inventoried as Or. 1700 (Box 1), which contains numerous smaller fragments, apparently acquired by Thompson together with those now kept as Or. 1699. Surprisingly, these fragments had remained largely overlooked until now. Among them, we identified previously unattested biblical and liturgical pieces, as well as fragments of the works of Shenoute, hagiographic texts such as the Martyrdom of Cyprianus and Justina, and apocryphal writings like the Acts of Andrew and the Acts of John attributed to Pseudo-Prochorus.

Another important part of the CUL’s Coptic holdings comes from the collection of George Michaelides, which was acquired by the library in 1977. Although much of the Michaelides collection is formed of documentary papyri, it also includes a significant number of biblical and literary fragments. Among the highlights we identified is a parchment fragment containing Sirach 50:19–20, 24–27 in the Fayyumic dialect (Cambridge, UL, Mich.Pap.Q.118). This is the first known attestation of the book of Sirach in Fayyumic. Furthermore, the paleographical features of the fragment suggest an early date, likely the 5th century CE.

We also identified two Sahidic fragments (Cambridge, UL, Mich.Pap.Q.119–120) forming a leaf from a miniature codex, which preserve a portion of the Life of Paul of Tamma attributed to his disciple Ezekiel. This hagiographic work survives fully in Arabic, but only fragmentarily in Coptic. The section preserved in the Michaelides fragments had previously been unattested in Coptic, making this a particularly exciting find.

In addition to the manuscripts associated with Tischendorf, Thompson, and Michaelides, the CUL also holds two smaller collections of Coptic fragments that formerly belonged to Jack Plumley (1910–1999), professor of Egyptology at Cambridge, and Frederick William Green (1869–1949), Honorary Keeper of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum. These collections consist of biblical and literary texts in Sahidic and Greek, mostly written on papyrus.

We also had the opportunity to examine the famous Qau Codex (Bible Society MS 137), a fourth-century papyrus manuscript of the Gospel of John in the Lycopolitan dialect—one of the most significant early witnesses to the translation of the Bible in Coptic.

Finally, the Genizah Collection at Cambridge, brought by Solomon Schechter from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, contains a few Coptic fragments as well. Among these, there is an intriguing Bohairic Litany of the Cross (T.-S. K24.39), based on the sermon In Venerabilem Crucem attributed to John Chrysostom, which was widely circulated in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages among both Eastern and Western Christians.

All in all, the trip proved to be fruitful. Nevertheless, much work remains to be done to fully identify the fragments and place them within their original codices. We look forward to sharing further updates as we continue to work through the materials we photographed during this trip.

A Visit to the Lucca Archive

2025-04-30T09:18:23Z

In June of last year, our colleague, Alin Suciu brought a source of new Coptic papyrus fragments to the attention of our team. These fragments, under the shelfmark Biblioteca Manoscritti 305 are housed in the Archivio di Stato di Lucca in Italy.

Of particular interest to me was a fairly large fragment from the book of Daniel, and it was with that main intent that I arranged a visit to the archive.

I visited the archive at the end of January and was able to consult the Daniel fragment. An autopsy of the fragment enabled me to confirm Alin Suciu's identification of the fragment as coming from Daniel chapter 1. This fragment forms an almost complete page from a codex. This was a single column papyrus codex which would have measured not much more than 18 x 14.1 cm. The margin is visible on one side of the page. Specifically, the recto contains Dan 1:5b-8a and the verso 1:8b-10.

This attestation is of great help, as the only other witnesses of these verses in Sahidic are in sa 2050 and an ostracon (Var 18), which I am currently working on. This is especially helpful with verse 7, which is entirely in a lacuna in sa 2050 except for the first word ⲁϥϯ. Sa 2050 is housed in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris and is only the bottom portion of a page. At some point, it is likely there was more to the fragment, as Maspero has a great deal more text recorded for Daniel 1:7 in his Fragments de Manuscrits Coptes-Thébains[1]. With the addition of the text from Lucca, one can almost completely reconstruct this verse. In addition, a second attestation to these verses serves to establish a complete reading for these verses - something that is exceedingly difficult with the biblical Daniel corpus in Sahidic, which is so fragmentary that many sections are not attested at all, or are attested only by a singular manuscript.

There were many other fragments that I was able to examine. I was able to confirm that despite being under one accession number, these fragments were written by multiple hands and come from multiple different manuscripts. Some fragments are unimodular, while others are bimodular. In addition, the size of the letters varied significantly between some fragments, and some were written with a finer pen than others. The most likely explanation for the variation among these fragments is that they come from multiple manuscripts.

There were many other fragments that I wished to more closely analyze, but was unable to due to time constraints. Time was short, but I hope in the future another trip can be made to complete the initial work on these fragments.

I look forward to continuing to work with this archive in the future and hope that a closer analysis of the many fragments will yield more Old Testament attestations.

[1] Maspero, G., “Fragments de manuscrits coptes-thébains provenant de la bibliothèque du Deir Amba- Shenoudah,” Mémoires publiés par les membres de la Mission Archéologique Française au Caire 6 (1892) 268.

Autopsying Manuscripts at the BnF in Paris, 18–23 November 2024

2025-08-13T08:59:11Z

The research visit Diliana Atanassova and myself made to the BnF last week proved fruitful both in terms of autopsying original manuscripts and in terms of using different settings to decipher heavily damaged portions of texts. Diliana examined Sahidic liturgical fragments (ca. 10-11^th c.) and Sahidic Old Testament leaves (from the 7^th, 7^th–8^th and 11^th c.). For my part, I examined Sahidic liturgical fragments and leaves (from the 10^th to the 14^th c.), an Arabic Holy Week lectionary (1312 AD) and the Latin Codex Colbertinus (12^th c.).

In this brief blog post, I shall restrict my account to our experience with the UV light.

In recent times, the use of colour photography with enhanced resolution has often rendered the autopsy of the original material superfluous. However, this was not the case with the BnF images of the leaves and fragments under consideration, where parts of the texts were illegible. Our experience at the BnF last week showed that there are at least four different methods that can be employed in such cases.

The first is to work with the source material in the BnF's large dedicated reading room, which is lit by natural and artificial light. This can prove effective in enabling the deciphering of letters that have not undergone significant deterioration.

The second method is to examine the original in the above-mentioned reading room, while using UV light. One hand is used to cast a shadow on the text, while the other hand points the UV light at the text. This method proved effective in rendering some of the more challenging letters legible; however, there were places in which the ink was washed out and nothing could be seen while we were in the reading room.

It was evident that the only viable solution was to utilise a darkroom. We were very fortunate that Dr Vanessa Desclaux, the Curator of the manuscripts of Ancient Egypt and the Christian Near East, had reserved the Salon Rothschild for us and freed up time in her schedule to allow us to use this dimmable environment in her presence. There, we used the third method, which involved focusing on the illegible letters under UV light in total darkness. This proved an effective approach in many instances and enabled us to recognise the traces of the letters.

The fourth method was discovered by chance. A column of text had been so severely washed out that the ultraviolet light in the darkroom, shining on the missing text from above, had no effect. However, in an attempt to resolve this issue, Diliana discovered that the invisible text could be made visible by holding the ultraviolet light at a certain angle behind the page.

Our stay was evidently too short and we will definitely need to visit the BnF again. To conclude, we would like to express our sincere thanks to Dr Desclaux and to the competent and helpful staff of the Department of Manuscripts of the BnF.*

* The photos are published with the kind permission of the BnF.

French-speaking Coptologists take interest in manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles

2025-08-13T09:07:42Z

On 17 October 2024, I had the pleasure and privilege of delivering the opening lecture of the monthly seminar “Manuscrits et textes coptes”, held in Paris (but accessible via Zoom) and co-organized by the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (a research unit of the French CNRS), the Association Francophone de Coptologie, and the Institut Protestant de Théologie. Being at the end of my postdoctoral project at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony, I found it fit to present an overview of the said project. My lecture was titled: “Les manuscrits coptes des épîtres pauliniennes”.

Most conferences limit the speaking time from 20 to 30 minutes per speaker, questions included (excluding plenary lectures). By contrast, the session at which I spoke could last up to 2 hours all included. Thus, I was able to delve into many issues including digital tools (including the renowned Virtual Manuscript Room), codicology, palaeography, and provenance. Additionally, I regularly asked the participants to intervene and share their insights.

The lecture comprised five parts. To begin with, I introduced the GALaCSy project, the team members, the project’s goals, and the digital tools we used — tools whose possibilities are not always known to Coptologists. Thereafter, I gave an overview of Sahidic manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles. Then, I did likewise with manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles in other dialects, more precisely, in Lycopolitan and Mesokemic. Nathalie Bosson kindly intervened to present the findings of her doctoral dissertation on the Mesokemic manuscript mae 4. After that, I addressed the Sahidic manuscript sa 491, a fragmentary but potentially very ancient witness of the Pauline epistles. Since sa 491 has no known provenance, this was an opportunity to discuss whether, more generally, scholars should study and publish manuscripts of uncertain provenance and/or archaeological provenience. In the last minutes of the allotted time, I provided a brief assessment of the project’s results.

I warmly thank Anne Boud’hors, Korshi Dosoo, Catherine Louis, Laurent Pinchard, and Anna van der Kerchove for making this event possible. The next session (on 28 November 2024) will be conducted by Loreleï Vanderheyden and will focus on the theme “Textes en copte d’Aphrodité à Heidelberg? Identification et édition de nouveaux fragments”.