Our colleague, Diliana Atanassova, has started a new research project which focuses on Sahidic liturgical sources. The aim of the project is to identify, edit, translate and study the alphabetical acrostics as well as the hymns called “poiekon” and “trisagion,” which were chanted in the liturgy of the White Monastery, and to determine the liturgical codices to which they belong. Moreover, the project will deal with the “Sitz im Leben” of these hymns within the Coptic liturgy as a whole and the tradition of the White Monastery in particular.

Diliana's project will make a contribution to the study of the hymnography of the Coptic and the Byzantine traditions as a whole. It will help to explore, preserve and illuminate the manuscript heritage of the White Monastery as well as the Coptic liturgy celebrated there. The project is supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Seminar for Egyptology and Coptology, Göttingen University.

Julien Delhez, one of our doctoral students, prepares the edition, translation, and literary analysis of a Coptic text on the archangel Gabriel attributed to Archelaos of Neapolis. Here is a brief summary of his project:

"My PhD thesis focuses on Ps.-Archelaos of Neapolis’ Homily on the Archangel Gabriel (clavis coptica 0045). This writing has survived both in Sahidic and in Bohairic, the latter being a translation of the former. The Bohairic version was edited and translated by Henri de Vis in 1929. My aim is to provide an edition, translation, and literary commentary of the Sahidic text.

The main manuscript I am working on is a complete codex from Hamuli, dated 848 A.D., currently kept in the Morgan Library & Museum as M 583. I will compare this manuscript with the other known Sahidic fragments, which are kept in different locales around the world. Comparison will also be made with the Bohairic version, which is extant in one complete manuscript and in several fragments, as well as with the Arabic and the Ethiopic versions, which are attested in numerous manuscripts.

Special focus will be given to the analysis of the miracles performed by the archangel Gabriel. The role of the archangel in Ps.-Archelaos’ homily will be studied in relation with other Coptic texts dedicated to Gabriel. Finally, the authorship of the text raises a problem that will also be analysed in my thesis: while the homily on Gabriel is attributed to a certain “Archelaos”, this author seems to be a fictitious character invented by the Copts. Thus, I will document the work’s religious and literary context, as well as the milieu in which such a text may have been written."

Frank Feder's critical edition of the Coptic Sahidic version of Corpus Ieremiae is now available for free on his Academia.edu page. Thanks for this great gift, Frank!

This is a two-year fixed term position starting at the earliest possible date on or after October 15, 2016. An extension of the contract beyond the initial two-year term may be available. The project (planned completion date: December 31, 2022) is based in Berlin. The position is part-time (50%) on the public service scale TV-L E 13. There is the possibility (not yet finalised) for a full-time appointment from July 1, 2017, depending on funding being made available.

The appointee will be responsible for the following tasks:

•       Catalogisation of Coptic manuscripts, ostraca and papyri from German collections, chiefly from the Egyptian Museum and Papyrus Collection Berlin, in an online database

Requirements are specifically:

·       Ph.D. or M.A. (or equivalent) in the areas of Coptic Studies, Theology/Religious Studies, Egyptology, Christian Oriental Studies, Byzantine Studies or related fields. Opportunities for further training are available.

·       A solid knowledge of Coptic language and the textual tradition of Christian Egypt. Some expertise and experience in the area of Philology/Editions and Manuscript Studies/Codicology is welcome.

Candidates are expected to have:

·      Willingness and ability to quickly familiarise themselves with the tasks at hand

·       Familiarity with modern databases and online research

·       Language skills in Ancient Greek and German. Other language skills, in particular in French or ancient languages other than Coptic are helpful.

·      Excellent time management and good teamwork skills.

The Göttingen Academy of Sciences is an equal opportunity employer. In case of identical qualifications applicants with disabilities will be considered on a preferential basis.

Closing date: September 30, 2016

Please send your application (cover letter, CV, copies of relevant diplomas, publication list, if applicable) – in electronic form – to:

Professor Heike Behlmer (hbehlme at uni-goettingen dot de)

Please direct any enquiries about the project to the same address. General project information can also be found here.

On Thursday, September 8, the Digital Edition and Translation of the Coptic Sahidic Old Testament project will host Dr. Dylan Burns’s (Free University, Berlin) lecture “Blutrache, Kontroverse, und Gnostische Schriften entdeckt in Nag Hammadi. Die Entdeckung des Nag Hammadi Archivs.” The lecture will take place from 14:30 in the Lagarde-Haus (Friedländer Weg 11).

Dylan Burns (PhD Yale University, 2011) is a research associate and project manager of the DDGLC (Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic) Project at the Egyptology Seminar, Free University, Berlin.

Check Dylan Burns's profile on Academia.edu.

Five members of the Göttingen University and Göttingen Academy participated in the recently concluded 11th International Congress of Coptic Studies (Claremont, CA, July 25-30): Heike Behlmer, Frank Feder, So Miyagawa, Troy Griffitts, and myself.

Thus, Frank Feder organized together with Siegfried Richter (University of Münster) the panel “Prosp

ects and Studies for the Reconstruction and Edition of the Coptic Bible,” and spoke about “Reconstructing and Editing the Coptic Bible: The Münster-Göttingen Collaboration for a Complete Reconstruction and Edition of the Coptic Sahidic Bible.” In the same panel, 

Heike Behlmer presented a paper entitled “Paul de Lagarde, Agapios Bsciai and the Edition of the Coptic Bible.” Frank also organized with Christian Askeland (Indiana Wesleyan University) the “Coptic Digital Tools for Beginners Workshop.”

Troy Griffitts and So Miyagawa participated in the panel “Coptic Digital Humanities,” chaired by Carrie Schroeder (the University of the Pacific). So read a paper which he prepared together with Marco Büchler, from the Göttingen Center for Digital Humanities, who unfortunately could not attend the congress. Their talk was titled “Computational Analysis of Text Reuse in Shenoute and Besa.”

Finally, I delivered the paper “Recovering a Hitherto Lost Patristic Text: Greek and Coptic Vestiges of Melito of Sardis’ De Baptismo” in the panel “Early Christian Literature Preserved in Coptic,” organized and chaired by Timothy Sailors (Tübingen University).

The abstracts of all the papers presented at the congress, including those mentioned above, can be read HERE.

On May 17-21, 2016, the Coptic research group coordinated by Heike Behlmer (Seminar für Ägyptologie und Koptologie, Universität Göttingen) hosted in Göttingen the international conference “Shenoute and the Bible.” The conference was organized on the occasion of the annual meeting of the team that is producing the first critical edition of the works of Shenoute, which this year took place in Göttingen. This international team of scholars is coordinated by Stephen Emmel(Institut für Ägyptologie und Koptologie, Universität Münster). “Shenoute and the Bible” was sponsored and funded by the DFG-Sonderforschungsbereich 1136 “Bildung und Religion,” one of whose projects examines the re-use of the Bible in the works of Shenoute.

Besides the workshops on the critical editions and the translations of Shenoute’s works, the conference comprised a number of presentations, given by the members of the Shenoute team and of the Coptic projects currently hosted by the Göttingen University and Academy. For a complete list of the papers and speakers, see this post.

I would like to highlight just a few of the most important moments of the conference. On the first day, May 17, took place the public showcase “Window onto Egyptian Monasticism: Shenoute: 4th/5th century abbot and eminent Coptic writer,” during which Stephen Emmel, Bentley Layton (Yale University), Frederik Wisse, and myself spoke about Shenoute and his monastery.

The following day, May 18, Frank Feder (Göttingen Academy) and Ulrich Schmid (Göttingen Academy) introduced our project “Digitale Gesamtedition und Übersetzung des koptisch-sahidischen Alten Testaments,” which is hosted by the Göttingen Academy since January 2015. The evening of the same day, we visited the manuscript collection of the Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, where the director, Johannes Mangei, showed us the Coptic and Copto-Arabic codices brought by Heinrich Brugsch from Wadi Natrun in 1870.

On May 19, Martin Tamcke had a public lecture entitled “Von ‘Wir begannen, die Anachoreten in einem anderen Licht zu sehen’ zu ‘Jedermann braucht etwas Wüste’, Erhart Kästner’s (1904–1974) Zeltbuch von Tumilat und die Kopten.”

Finally, particularly interesting were the papers delivered by Diliana Atanassova (Göttingen Academy) on the liturgical manuscripts from the White Monastery, and by So Miyagawa (Universität Göttingen) and Kirill Bulert (MPI für Biophysikalische Chemie, Göttingen) on some remarkable results of the use of OCR software for digitizing Coptic (including manuscripts!). We also heard about a new and exciting manuscript discovery: Sebastian Richter (Freie Universität Berlin) spoke about a Sahidic papyrus fragment which seems to contain an early (anti?-)Origenist dialogue, which has surfaced recently in the collection of Leipzig University Library. The fragment has been edited and translated into English by Richter, and will soon be published in a collective volume. We look forward to finding out more about his discovery.

KELLIA: Koptische/Coptic Electronic Language and Literature International Alliance awarded.

A partnership between University of the Pacific -- Stockton, CA (Caroline Schroeder) and Georg-August Universität -- Göttingen (Heike Behlmer) to advance digital Coptic resources has received significant funding to build new web based tools for linguistic analysis.