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)

Studying Coptic can be a lonely affair: there are only a handful of places in the world with ongoing projects devoted to Coptic studies, places where scholars and students can work not in pairs or small groups, but teams. One such place is Göttingen, Germany where the Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament project finds its home. Knowing that traveling to Göttingen would afford me a unique opportunity to immerse myself in a pool of Coptic expertise, I applied for a mobility grant from ATTR (Authoritative Texts and their Reception), an international research school funded by the Norwegian Research Council and of which I am a member. After receiving a generous grant, on September 1st, 2018, my wife and I flew from Oslo to Frankfurt and then took a train to Göttingen. 

Our two-month stay only disappointed by feeling too short. Göttingen is a beautiful and historic city with buildings relatively untouched by the destruction of the Second World War. While there, we were treated with warm hospitality: the Chair of the Steering Board, Heike Behlmer, before our arrival and despite being busy, arranged for us accommodation; upon arrival, Malte Rosenau, one of the project staff members, kindly picked us up from the train station; and on our last day, the project staff gathered to listen to me present part of my project and then threw us a farewell party. Our reception in the interim period was no different from these acts of kindness at the beginning and the end. 

Germany academia is sometimes stereotyped as being stuffy and formal, but at Lagarde-Haus – the headquarters of the Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament project – the atmosphere is informal, friendly, and even playful, but without sacrificing academic excellence and intellectual rigor. Serious conversations about Coptic linguistics or manuscript studies are often continued over lunch, coffee, and/or after-work beers. 

Being around so many expert Coptologists on a daily basis was invaluable for my own research into Coptic manuscripts dating from the Fāṭimid period and associated with Esna and Edfu. If I had a question about a specific manuscript or manuscript feature, I could, for example, walk into the next room and ask Alin Suciu. Questions about scribal practices could be answered down the hall in Chrysi Kotsifou’s office. Information about Coptic liturgy was no farther away than Diliana Atanassova’s desk, and Malte Rosenau and So Miyagawa were, among other things, great help with anything computer or software related. It was also during my time in Göttingen that I participated in the Summer School in Coptic Literature and Manuscript Production in Hamburg (discussed elsewhere on this blog by Joanna Hypszer) with Göttingen project members Alin, Diliana, Frank Feder, Heike, Malte, Joanna, and So Miyagawa, along with many other graduate students and researchers from around the world.

Readers paying attention to last names may have noticed another felicitous feature of the project in Göttingen: it is, in miniature, a model of the international nature of modern research. Regular project staff and collaborators include those from Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Japan, Poland, Romania, and the United States. The languages spoken by the staff are even more, including Latin which, unlike most academics who can only read it, Julian Delhez can actually speak fluently. 

Also deserving of thanks for their friendship and conversation during September and October, are project members Ulrich Schmid, Troy Griffitts, Uwe-Karsten Plisch, Suzana Hodak, and Theresa Kohl. As the world of Coptology is small, I have faith that I will see all my Göttingen colleagues again and look forward to doing so!