SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

Arabic. Six of the items consist one to few folios. Four of the items are Modern trascriptions by European scholars from the 18th and the 19th centuries. Only one item is written on parchment (Or. 14331), while the rest are preserved on paper. Two of the items are Old Testament texts. Or. 1507 is an AD 1758 modern trascription of Dr. J. Smith of the Bohairic text of the Book of Leviticus. Or. 14544 is an AD 1792, illuminated Bohairic text of the texts of Job and Proverbs. Or. 1507 has a very interesting description of its origin. This catalog, on basis of the information supplied by its transcriber, describe it as, "Leviticus, in Coptic and Arabic, copied from MS 33 in the Hointingdon (?) Library which is dated 1671 AD." The manuscript is actually transcribed from the Huntington MS 33 of the Oxford Bodleian Library which contain the entire text of the Pentateuch in Bohairic and Arabic. Also this transcription places the Arabic text in parallel and to the left of the Coptic column which is the opposite of the arrangement in the original manuscript as well as all other manuscripts of this type. Or. 14544 has a typical arrangement to this type of biblical text. It includes the Copto (Bohairic)- Arabic complete text of the Book of Job, followed by Chapters 1-14 of Proverbs. Such arrangement is unique only to Bohairic manuscripts and needs further investigation in the future. Exhibit at the Amsterdam Allard Pierson Museum: During the same period another exhibit was held further away from t e Congress venue. It was staged in Amsterdam at the Allard Pierson Museum. It featured Coptic texts and artifacts found in four public and one private collections in Amsterdam: Allard Pierson Museum of the Universiteit van Amsterdam (APM) (13 items); Bijbels Museum Amsterdam (BMA) (4 items); J. C. Gieben of Amsterdam (GA) (1 item); Universiteitsbibliotheek Amsterdam (UBA) (11 items), and Universiteit van Amsterdam (Dept. of Papyrology) (UvA) (21 items).

The material of these items are: Bronze (1 item); limestone (3 items); Papyrus (18 items); Parchment (3 items); Plaster (2 items); Pottery (21 items); Sandstone (1 item); Textile (1 item). Thirty-eight of these items would qualify as manuscripts, covering such subjects as Biblical, Documentary, Literary, Liturgical, Private letters, and Magical. The language of these texts are Coptic (24 items, mostly Sahidic), Greek (13 items), and undetermined (1 item). Nineteen of these items are still unpublished but not too many of them with enough amount of writing to warrant publishing. The most unique of these texts is a Greek one from the 3-4th century, containing part of Origen's 'De Principiis'. In any case the compiled catalog by Dr. Magdalena Kuhn contains sufficient information for any scholar to pursue these items further, including codicological description and bibliographic citation. The display of the material was very professional. However the catalog and the display arrangement seemed at times more impressive than the material themselves! Brief Remarks on Selected Papers: The f llowing are summary and remarks on some of the interesting papers presented: Abd el-Shaheed, S. (Egypt). A Catalogue of unpublished "droug" from the 17th-19th Century in the Coptic Museum : This paper dealt with documents that the Coptic patriarchs and bishops issued, presenting their opinions concerning the faithful and matters of the Church. These documents were traditional called droug (sg. darg). Such documents were usually written or scibed by the Secretaries of the persons named as their author. The presenter dealt with the structure, content, subject matter, and their often elaborate illuminations. The material presented is part of the collection of the Cairo Coptic Museum, and they are dated between 17th-19th century. The presenter is heading a project to catalog this part of the collection. Atanassova, D. (Austria). Zu den Sahidischen Lektionarhandschriften der Karwoche . The author presented an interesting comparative study of the different identified fragments of the Pascha book in

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

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