SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

manuscripts were initially made in a paper presented by Dr. Boud'Hors in a 1986 conference of Coptic Studies held at the Louvre. This curious Coptic community may have been an immigrant one, belonging to the Melekite Church of Alexandria. A closer look at these manuscripts may yield interesting results about this community. For example Copte 18, a Copto-Arabic Holy Lent Lectionary codex, significantly diverge from the same type of lectionaries used by the Coptic Orthodox community in Egypt. The Sahidic part of the collection is the most interesting. As mentioned above it is mostly grouped under call numbers Copte 129 through 133. They comprise more than 3000 parchment leaves which were bought in the late 19th century from Egypt from the collection of the famous library of St. Shenouda Monastery, or the White Monastery. Gaston Maspero and Urbain Bouriant were instrumental in making this bulk purchase, after they traced similar leaves, that were making their way into other European libraries, to this one source. Upon their arrival, the authorities of the BNF decided to group them in codices, using a peculiar method much different from that employed in England for similar material. According to Dr. Boud'Hors, the leaves were coated with a thin layer of an animal membrane (Pig belly lining) on both sides and the leaves were group together in a tightly bound codex. Such membrane gives the leaves a more opaque look and of course prevents the scholars from adequately inspecting the material. Needless to say that such conservation practice is not recommended. The contents of this part of the collection cover a variety of texts: Biblical, literary, liturgical, and of course writings of St. Shenouda. There are many related fragments to these ones found in libraries and museum collections all over the world. A microfilm copy of most of these is available at library of our Los Angeles Coptic Center. The collection also included texts from other Coptic dialects. The most important one is that of Copte 157 which is a part of a codex of 4th-5th century Akhmimic version of the Minor Prophets.

The majority of the survived leaves however are preserved in the Austrian National Library's collection under Call Number K11000. There is also a great number of Copt-produced Arabic manuscripts in the possession of BNF. These are cataloged under the Arabe (Arabic) call numbers. Discussion of these will be made on another occasion. Paris Coptic Exhibit: Over a year ago, the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris conceived an idea to have an exhibit to coincide with the plans in Egypt to celebrate the 2000 Anniversary of the visit of the Holy Family to Egypt. The result was an excellent art exhibit, held at their facilities, titled L'Art Copte en Égypte - 2000 ans de Christianisme . The exhibit ran from May 15 to September 3, 2000. It will be held next at another museum in France from September 30, 2000 to January 7, 2001. H.H. Pope Shenouda III visited the exhibit during his last visit to Paris. My visit to the library was on Sunday August 27, 2000. The exhibit did not only feature Coptic artifacts from French collections, public or private, but it included items from American, Belgian, British, Egyptian, German, Greek, and Russian collections. Over 280 items were displayed in several rooms and halls at IMA building, along with many posters, introducing the visitor to Coptic Egypt throughout the centuries. As usual everything was in French. It included items in different material with a variety of uses, ranging from devout to entertaining and from religious to secular. Their common theme was that they were produced by Coptic craftsmen throughout their long history which featured, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and even Arabic elements. To add more flavor to it, the organizers set up a temporary Old Cairo Cafe outside the IMA building complete with an authentic Egyptian Cuisine and seating. The hall of the exhibit was filled with wall- recessed displays and free standing ones as well, filled with these artifacts. I was as usual impressed with the manuscript section of the exhibit. This included the display of five of the manuscripts from the Morgan Library's Hamuli codices Nos.

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

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