Am 26. Juni war unser Projekt zum Berliner KOHD-Tag eingeladen, ein jährliches Treffen mit Vorträgen und Berichten aus den Arbeitsstellen des Projektes Katalogisierung der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland (KOHD) und seiner Partnerprojekte. Das Treffen hat sich mittlerweile als eine feste Institution etabliert und bietet den Rahmen um Berichte,  Neuigkeiten sowie kleinere und größere Entdeckungen aus der täglichen Arbeit der Projekte präsentieren zu können. Die Vorträge der Teinehmenden, die sich im gut klimatisierten Brugsch-Pascha-Saal des Berliner Archäologischen Zentrums an diesem Nachmittag eingefunden hatten, reichten von den alttürkischen Turfantexten und den persischen Handschriften der Staatsbibliothek über Materialaspekte koptischer Papyruskodizes bis hin zu neu entdeckten koptischen Handschriften. Wir danken den Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeitern der Berliner KOHD-Arbeitsstelle für ihre großartige Unterstützung unserer Arbeit am koptischen Alten Testament und freuen uns schon auf ein Wiedersehen beim KOHD-Tag 2020.

From May 28th to 31st, I was able to work at the Asian and African Manuscripts Room of the British Library examining several Coptic Old Testament manuscripts. Ilana Tahan, Lead Curator of Hebrew and Oriental Studies in the British Library, was extremely welcoming and instrumental in the success of my research trip. 

First, Ms Tahan and I finalized the creation of a showcase of BL Ad. 17183, a Coptic-Syriac palimpsest Biblical manuscript. It was decided that our colleague, Theresa Kohl, will create a Collection Items entry for the British Library homepage that will briefly describe the manuscript and also provide a link to our site where visitors could view all of the multi-spectral images of the Book of Ruth and Ms. Kohl’s digital transcription of that Coptic text.
Furthermore, I managed to examine eight manuscripts (most of them in very fragmented forms) that are not fully or at all represented in our photographic records and establish in what form they are; how they are stored; and how relevant they are to our project. 

Most importantly, though, during this visit at the British Library, I was able to start my codicological survey of Or. 5000 (previously published by E. A. Wallis Budge, The Earliest Known Coptic Psalter, 1898). Around 100 years ago the manuscript was taken apart from its original binding (the binding is still there but kept separately) and placed in glass frames, 2 folia in each frame. All together the manuscript can be found now in 154 frames. This division was done in order to preserve the papyrus folia better. Even in the short period I had to work with the first folia of Or 5000 I was able to detect several corrections and possible manuscript preservation attempts by the initial scribe that are not easily visible in our black and white images. I plan to finish the study of the rest of the folia in the near future.

Our partner project, the ERC funded project Tracking Papyrus and Parchment Paths, An Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature, invited, on the occasion of the online inauguration of the PATh-website, to a confernce at the Sapienza Università di Roma, from February 25-27, under the heading: Coptic Literature in context - The Contexts of Coptic Literature, Late Antique Egypt in a dialogue between literature, archaeology and digital humanities. The project team of PATh and many international specialistes, among them our team members Heike Behlmer, Alin Suciu, and Frank Feder, presented papers to material, geographical, and text historical aspects with a special focus on the application of digital tools and methods. The papers included topics from the Scientific systematic study of inks (Ira Rabin and Tea Ghigo), about Copic literary rotuli and scrolls: a typological assessment (Alin Suciu), to Literacy of Christian Nubia (Adam Lajtar). More information about the conference and, of course, about PATh is available at: http://paths.uniroma1.it/

On the 22^nd November 2018 I had the pleasure to present my PhD thesis in a short talk at the University of Liverpool. I talked about the early research of my thesis which involves Coptic manuscripts from Touton in the Fayum between the 9^th and 11^th centuries CE. The presentation was done as part of the ACE (Archaelogy, Classics, and Egyptology) department's "Work in Progress" seminar series, organized by Charlotte Sargent and Elaine Sanderson, who are PhD students at the department. The seminar series covers a broad range of topics and students from any related discipline could apply to present their work.

It was a fantastic opportunity to for me to present my thesis in its very early stages to a group of brilliant young scholars and get some feedback from fellow PhD students. I obtained my BA in Egyptology from the University of Liverpool back in 2011, so I was very grateful for the opportunity to go back years later as a PhD student and see how the department evolved throughout the years. The ACE department is now part of th School of Histories, Languages & Cultures, but it's location remains unchanged, just behind the beautiful Abercromby Square.

My short stay in Liverpool was rounded off with a visit to the recently refurbished Egyptian collection of the World Museum, which has a rich range of objects brought from Egypt by explorers and archaeologists, most notably John Garstang. There are a few Coptic objects in the collection, although most of them are not on display.

Last month, members of our Göttingen team participated in a workshop on the Coptic Bible, held at the University of Helsinki from October 22–24. The workshop brought together several different projects from the fields of Coptology and Septuagint Studies: our own project (represented by Frank Feder, Alin Suciu, Troy A. Griffitts, Malte Rosenau, Felix Albrecht), the "Coptic Manuscripts from the Ilves Collection" project (Antti Marjanen, Ivan Miroshnikov), and the Göttingen Septuagint projects on the Books of Samuel (Anneli Aejmelaeus, Tuukka Kauhanen, Elina Perttilä). 

The workshop was perfectly organized by Tuukka Kauhanen and the Academy of Finland's Centre of Excellence Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions (CSTT) in collaboration with the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities. 

Our meeting was a great opportunity to discuss different approaches in working with digital methods and editing tools, as well as a nice opportunity to get special insights into ongoing research, such as Ivan Miroshnikov's amazing discovery of hitherto unknown fragments of the Letter to the Hebrews in Palaeo-Bohairic, the edition of the Sahidic Twelve Minor Prophets by Malte Rosenau and my own edition of the Greek Twelve Minor Prophets.
All together, nine interesting papers on different topics had been presented. 

We are very thankful for the Finnish hospitality and hope to further establish the (old and new) connections between Göttingen and Helsinki.

Felix Albrecht (currently Visiting Fellow at the CSTT Centre of Excellence in Helsinki)