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.