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. 

 

 

 

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”.

It was with deep sadness and sorrow that we received the terrible news that Peter Nagel, the doyen of Coptic Septuagint Studies and most important supporter of our project, passed away last Thursday, August 1, 2024. As Professor of Christian Near Eastern Studies in Halle (Saale) and Bonn he taught and influenced several generations of scholars not only in Coptic Studies. It is difficult to list the many achievements and merits of Peter Nagel as an outstanding scholar of the 'old school'. Since this will be done in many places, we will concentrate here on his significant contributions to the study and edition of the Coptic Old Testament. It was Peter Nagel who launched and directed the first systematic attempt at a complete reconstruction and edition of the Coptic Old Testament, or the 'Coptic Septuagint', at the Seminar Christlicher Orient and Byzanz of the Martin–Luther–University Halle-Wittenberg in the late 1970s. After his move to the University of Bonn the project Koptische Septuaginta continued its work in Halle from 1994–2000 under his advice and direction. When it was already confirmed that our project would be funded at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities as apart of the long-term research funding program of the German Academies we celebrated Peter Nagel's 75th birthday and thanked him for his support and guidance with an international symposium at the Coptic Monastery in Höxter-Brenkhausen in April 2013. We were also able to honor Peter Nagel with a Festschrift celebrating his 80th birthday. This volume very fittingly was the first to appear in our new monograph series Texts and Studies on the Coptic Bible. It is difficult to describe in a few lines how much our digital edition has profited from the numerous and diverse analogue materials he has made available to us. It is, therefore, only appropriate that we have dedicated a special section in our digital resources menu to Peter Nagel's contributions to the study of the Coptic Bible, including his most recent editions.

Like Coptic Studies in general, the field of Coptic Biblical Studies in particular will for ever be connected with the name of Peter Nagel: ⲡⲉϥⲣⲁⲛ ⲛⲁⲱⲛϩ ϣⲁ ϩⲉⲛϫⲱⲙ ⲛ̄ϫⲱⲙ

The Coptic Old Testament Project has an open position for a Student Assistent. See the advertisement on the website of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony here.

The time has come to provide a progress report with the highlights of the second year that the project has been in operation. 

1. New dedicated Partner Project web page 

The website of the Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament now hosts a dedicated Holy Week Lectionary (=HWL) web space under the Partner Projects tab. The new space is fully functional and features blogposts and publications along with the three dedicated sections for the Holy Week Lectionaries: Sahidic Holy Week Lectionary, Bohairic Holy Week Lectionary, and Arabic Holy Week Lectionary. A synopsis of the entire Holy Week lectionary index, prepared on the basis of all manuscripts examined in the framework of the project, can be consulted in each of the three sections.

1.1 Sahidic Holy Week Lectionary section

The five lectionaries (270 leaves) displayed in the Sahidic HWL section are by now fully indexed, liturgically tagged, and transcribed. Meanwhile, the Manuscript Speculation Tool (=MST), created by Diliana Atanassova, Troy A. Griffitts and Ulrich B. Schmid for the reconstruction of pages in fragmentary manuscripts,[1] was further developed and adapted for the reconstruction of lectionaries. Besides, Diliana Atanassova and myself used the MST extensively for the reconstruction of the codex structure of another liturgical manuscript from the White Monastery library, namely the Sahidic Euchologion MONB.VE.[2] Thanks to the development of the MST and to our experience with the reconstruction of liturgical manuscripts, we are now able to reconstruct the codex structure of the individual Sahidic lectionaries despite their fragmentary state, see for example the codex structure of sa 299L.

1.2 Bohairic Holy Week Lectionary section

The list in the Bohairic HWL Lectionary section now includes nine Holy Week lectionaries (2710 leaves) along with the four Ṭuruḥat (272 leaves) for the Holy Week codices. All nine Bohairic HWL were indexed by Peter Missael and liturgically tagged by myself. In cooperation with the British Library, the Bohairic Holy Week lectionary bo 3000L will soon be the subject of a show case. I have already liturgically tagged and transcribed the bilingual Bohairic–Arabic texts of the 313 leaves. Its codex structure is also already retrievable. As for the other eight Bohairic HWL in the list, more than 1100 leaves have already been transcribed. The transcription was achieved with the support of our student assistants Peter Missael and Sophie-Charlotte Gissat.

1.3 Arabic Holy Week Lectionary section

As already mentioned in the project’s first year report, the list in the Arabic HWL section includes all bilingual Sahidic–Arabic (3 manuscripts, 238 leaves) and Bohairic–Arabic HWL (5 manuscripts, 1300 leaves) already included in the other two dedicated sections as well as the monolingual Holy Week lectionary ar 1L (185 leaves). All Arabic texts of the Sahidic–Arabic HWL, more than 280 leaves of the Arabic texts of the Bohairic–Arabic HWL, and 50 leaves of the monolingual ar 1L have already been transcribed by myself.

2. 14-day visit of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome

Diliana Atanassova and myself visited the BAV in Rome from June 5 to June 16, 2023 to carry out an autopsy of the manuscripts preserved in Rome and included in the project’s main sources. Besides, Diliana Atanassova consulted all Sahidic liturgical typika kept in the BAV and pertaining to her research in the framework of her DFG project AT 193/1-1 “The Hymns in the Coptic Liturgy of the White Monastery in Upper Egypt”. A detailed account of the Sahidic and Bohairic HWL autopsy results can be found in two dedicated blogposts (part I and part II).

3. Blogposts in the second year

- Elhage-Mensching, Lina, The Digital Edition and Critical Evaluation of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary: 2022 progress report. In: Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, 21 March 2023.
- Elhage-Mensching, Lina, A Visit to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 5-16 June 2023: Autopsying Coptic Holy Week Lectionaries (Part I). In: Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, 5 July 2023.
- Elhage-Mensching, Lina, A Visit to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 5-16 June 2023: Autopsying Coptic Holy Week Lectionaries (Part II). In: Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, 4 August 2023.
- Elhage-Mensching, Lina, Remarks on the translation of John 2:15 into Coptic and Arabic. In: Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, 20 February 2024.
- Missael, Peter, Sahidic influences in two Bohairic Holy Week Lectionaries. In: Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, 29 November 2023.

4. Publications in the second year

- Atanassova, Diliana / Elhage-Mensching, Lina (2023). Die sahidischen Euchologia des Weißen Klosters – eine kodikologische Bilanz. In: Diliana Atanassova, Frank Feder, Heike Sternberg el-Hotabi (eds), Pharaonen, Mönche und Gelehrte. Auf dem Pilgerweg durch 5000 Jahre ägyptische Geschichte über drei Kontinente. Heike Behlmer zum 65. Geburtstag, Texte und Studien zur Koptischen Bibel / Texts and Studies on the Coptic Bible 4, 61–78.
- Atanassova, Diliana / Griffitts, Troy A. / Schmid, Ulrich B. (2023). Manuscript Speculation Tool 2.0: Digital Support for the Reconstruction of Biblical and Liturgical Coptic Manuscripts. In: Diliana Atanassova, Frank Feder, Heike Sternberg el-Hotabi (eds), Pharaonen, Mönche und Gelehrte. Auf dem Pilgerweg durch 5000 Jahre ägyptische Geschichte über drei Kontinente. Heike Behlmer zum 65. Geburtstag, Texte und Studien zur Koptischen Bibel / Texts and Studies on the Coptic Bible, 79–94.
- Feder, Frank (2023). Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update. In: Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia (CCE), https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/cce/id/2188/.

5. Forthcoming publications

- Atanassova, Diliana / Feder, Frank (forthcoming). Die Bedeutung der biblischen Lesungen und der sahidischen Lektionare für die Edition der sahidischen Bibelübersetzung – Eine Zwischenbilanz. In: Felix Albrecht, Frank Feder, Martin Karrer (eds), Liturgische Traditionen: Ihr Nutzen und Stellenwert für die biblische Editionswissenschaft / Liturgical Traditions: Their Use and Value for Critical Editions of the Bible, Antike Schriftauslegung / Ancient Scriptural Interpretation.
- Atanassova, Diliana / Elhage-Mensching, Lina (forthcoming). The Digital Edition and Critical Evaluation of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary. Outline of a New Project in Coptic Studies. In: Chrysostom Nassis, Arsenius Mikhail, Daniel Galadza (eds), ΛΟΓΙΚΗ ΛΑΤΡΕΙΑ. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgy, Thessaloniki, 13–18 June 2022, Studies in Eastern Christian Liturgies.
- Atanassova, Diliana / Elhage-Mensching, Lina (forthcoming). The Anaphora of Saint James in a Sahidic Euchologion of the late 10th century. In: Proceedings of The Liturgy of St James Conference, Regensburg, 6–10 June 2022.
- Atanassova, Diliana (forthcoming). New Research on Coptic Liturgy 2012–2022. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Congress for Coptic Studies, Brussels, 11–16 July 2022.
- Elhage-Mensching, Lina (forthcoming). The Owner Family of a Sahidic–Arabic Holy Week lectionary: Arabic and Bohairic marginalia in the 14th century codex sa 16L. Ιn: Proceedings of the 12th International Congress for Coptic Studies, Brussels, 11–16 July 2022.
- Elhage-Mensching, Lina (forthcoming). Eusebian Tituli Psalmorum in the Coptic Psalter Codex sa 2033. In: Felix Albrecht, Reinhard Kratz (eds), Editing the Greek Psalter, De Septuaginta Investigationes, 511–521.