Thursday, March 05, 2009

New Testament Manuscripts at the Benaki Museum

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According to the the Kurzgefasste Liste there are 30 registered MSS in the Benaki Museum in Athens. A team from CSNTM has been photographing manuscripts in this museum.

The musueum has a well-organized webpage which gives the following information (here) of their collection of Byzantine Art, including manuscripts:

Byzantine art

The Byzantine collection links the ancient Greek world to that of modern Greece. The collection is exceptionally rich, although it is not representative of all the different artistic tendencies and currents which flourished during the thousand-year Byzantine Empire, and is divided into two groups.

The first group comprises bronze and silver household and ecclesiastical vessels, miniature sculptures and enamels, ceramics, manuscripts, etc., many of outstanding quality and workmanship.

The second group includes Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons, through which the evolution and development of iconography from the Byzantine period and the Palaeologan renaissance can be traced in the workshops of Crete and the artistic production of Mount Athos, up to the early stages of the modern Greek painterly tradition.

A number of household vessels from the early Byzantine period (4th to 7th centuries AD) help to create a picture of the domestic surroundings of late antiquity. The rich selection of lamps and chandeliers is also of especial interest.

The important collection of decorative silver plates dating from the late 6th and early 7th century clearly preserves the subject matter of the artistic tradition of Greco-Roman antiquity and the manner of depicting the human figure. The Museum's collection of ceramic platters likewise offers a rich selection of decorative themes.

Several ecclesiastical vessels, censers and chalices, dating to the early Byzantine period, as well as other groups of objects such as matrices, tools and measuring instruments, cast light on contemporaneous trade, crafts and scientific advances.

The entrancing collection of Byzantine jewellery presents an obvious continuation of Roman forms and techniques, including golden necklaces and earrings set with sapphires, amethysts, emeralds and pearls, and exquisitely worked bracelets and rings decorated with Christian emblems.

A large group of crosses, reliquaries, amulets and miniature steatite icons are indicative of the rich production of small-scale works of art in Byzantium.

A number of superb censers and processional crosses are representative of ecclesiastical vessels and furnishings of the middle and late Byzantine periods.

Finally, it is worth noting that the general public has always reserved its greatest affection for the Benaki Museum's collection of Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons.

Up-date: edit

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Cologne: State Archive Building Collapses

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Just to show that manuscripts are never safe - the six-story state archive building in Cologne collapsed yesterday taking 65,000 manuscripts with it into the dust and rubble (a bbc report or for more try here).

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Call for Papers: ‘Texts beyond Borders: Multilingualism and Textual Scholarship’

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The European Society for Textual Scholarship, Sixth International Conference
‘Texts beyond Borders: Multilingualism and Textual Scholarship’

Academy for Science and the Arts (KVAB), Brussels, Belgium November 19-21, 2009
Deadline for proposals: 31 May 2009

Contacts between languages, especially translations, have always played a crucial role in the making of European culture, from Antiquity until today. Bilingual or multilingual documents, literary works created in another language than their creators’ mother tongue, translations and translated texts are special textual objects which require appropriate editorial treatment. The conference will explore how textual scholarship responds to multilingualism in its various forms, such as:
1) Scholarly editing and annotating: Using translations as witnesses to an “original” text
How do we edit ancient or medieval texts (or parts of texts) that are preserved only in translations? How can we handle those cases where translations do not appear to be based on direct witnesses to the text?...
2) Scholarly editing and annotating: Translations as literary objects
Is the original text the only source used by a translator? How did he use earlier translations? How can we trace the sources and tools used by a translator? ...
3) Book history, the history of reading and translations
Dissemination of translations; bilingual editions; the role of Bible translations in the history of philology; translations which become more popular than the original; texts which circulate first or more widely in translation than in their original form (e.g. Flemish performances of Michel de Ghelderode’s theatre prior to the French original); annotations and marginalia in languages other than the reader’s native tongue: how do readers respond to works not written in their own language? …
4) Authorship and translations
Revisions of translations by the author himself may contain precious interpretative information. Translations may seem less authoritative than other texts and editors might therefore be tempted to emend translations on a larger scale than in the case of “original” texts. ...
5) Multilingualism and scholarly editing
Do multilingual works of literature need other methods of editing than monolingual writings? It might also be necessary to make a distinction between different types of multilingual works (self- translations, ‘hybrid’ writings, …). Do these different types require different editorial treatments? Is it necessary to find adequate methods to edit works by authors writing in languages not their own? Or works not written in any “natural” language, such as nonsense poetry? …

The programme chairs invite the submission of proposals for full panels or individual papers devoted to the discussion of current research into different aspects of textual work, preferably focusing on the topics mentioned above. A selection of papers will be published in Variants: The Journal of the European Society for Textual Scholarship. Proposals and abstracts (250 words) should be submitted electronically to:
Caroline Macé, University of Leuven : Caroline.Mace@arts.kuleuven.be
and
Dirk Van Hulle, University of Antwerp: dirk.vanhulle@ua.ac.be

Deadline: 31 May 2009
All participants in the ESTS 2009 conference must be members of ESTS.
For information about membership, please visit the ESTS website http://www.textualscholarship.eu/

P. Oxy. 1353 = 0206 (1 Pet 5:5-13) for Sale!

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Today this announcement was made on the PAPY list by James S. Hollander:

It was kindly suggested [by a] fellow papyroligist that we use PAPY to inform the papyrologist community of a unique papyrus collection that we are helping to market and sell for a US seminary. Its Board of Trustees is exploring the sale of its papyrus collection, most of which (8 of 9) are from the well documented Oxyrhynchus excavation. The most interesting piece is a Fourth Century fragment of I Peter 5:6-12. It is written in a hand closely resembling that of the famed Codex Sinaiticus. I am assisting the board by contacting prospective interested parties and have prepared overview of the collection which you can be secured at the following link:

https://secure.logmein.com/f?KN67KujgTo.W9zzTvHKRolj7ssCk5qgr4UjPemxGf4e

In the coming weeks, we plan to email Offer Letter Instructions to those who might want to submit an offer to purchase this collection. We expect the collection to sell in a $ range of low-to-mid six figures. There is a possibility the fragments will sell separately, but we believe the collection will be worth more together. If you or an organization you are affiliated with would like the Offer Letter Instructions when we issue them, please e-mail me.


James S. Hollander

Managing Director

Corporate Development Associates, Inc.

5335 Far Hills Ave. Ste. 304

Dayton, OH 45429

937.439.4227-Office 937.439.5593-Fax
Email: jimhollander[at]cda-inc[dot]net

Website: www.CDA-Inc.net

Monday, March 02, 2009

SCRIPTO III

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SCRIPTO (Scholarly Codicological Research, Information & Palaeographical Tools) is a Postgraduate Programme at Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg supported by the Luise Prell Foundation, the Schirmer Foundation, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, and available to graduate Medievalists and Early Modern Specialists. It offers a systematic, research-oriented introduction to the study of medieval and early modern manuscripts and to methods of describing and interpreting them. SCRIPTO is a sort of bridge between research and practical work and combines research and instruction within the framework of a uniquely innovative course, at the end of which each candidate will be awarded a certificate from Friedrich Alexander University.

SCRIPTO consists of six modules that cover a broad spectrum of subjects (text typology; book illumination; palaeography; codicology; incunabula studies; informatics). There will be SCRIPTO research seminars, one of which will be given by Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge) at Bamberg. Participants will also have the opportunity to work on a common research project.

The German Manuscript Centres in Berlin, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Munich, Stuttgart and Wolfenbüttel are supportive of the SCRIPTO programme. The course will take place in cooperation with the manuscript departments of the Erlangen University Library, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, the City Library in Nuremberg and the Herzog August Bibliothek at Wolfenbüttel.

The international academic committee of the SCRIPTO programme is made up of the following scholars: Prof. Jacques Berlioz (Ecole nationale des chartes, Paris), Prof. Guglielmo Cavallo (Università degli studi «La Sapienza», Rome), Prof. David Ganz (King’s College, London), Prof. Eef Overgauuw (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin ? Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Representative of the German Manuscript Centres) and Prof. Ursula Rautenberg (Friedrich Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg).

SCRIPTO sessions will take place in Bamberg (Staatsbibliothek), Erlangen (Universitätsbibliothek), Munich (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek), Nuremberg (Stadtbibliothek) and Wolfenbüttel (Herzog August Bibliothek) at a fee of 850 Euros (which includes travel and accommodations for seminars outside of Erlangen ) per participant. Further information may be obtained online:

http://www.mittellatein.phil.uni-erlangen.de/scripto/scripto.html


SCRIPTO III 2009/2010
SCRIPTO III will run from 26 October 2009 until 27 January 2010. Applicants should write enclosing a full CV to:
Prof. Dr. Michele C. Ferrari
Friedrich-Alexander-UniversitätMittellatein und NeulateinKochstr. 4/391054 Erlangen (Germany)

The application deadline is 31 August 2009. The language of instruction is German. Foreign participants, however, will be able to take German language courses at Friedrich Alexander University if they so wish. They should mention this in their application.
Those applicants accepted for the course will be charged 850 Euros and will receive a document stating the terms of agreement and detailed information about the course, including the timetable. [HT: DISKUS]

New Unicode Font for Papyrology and Textual Criticism

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My colleague Stefan Green (exegetisk teologi) pointed me to Danny Zacharias (Deinde) who announced that a new unicode font for papyrology and textual criticism is available, IFAOGrec Unicode. There are also other versions for transliterations, and Coptic available. For description, samples and download, see here.

Up to this point I have been using Gentium (for Greek) in combination with Cardo (for some special sigla), but sometimes I haven't been entirely pleased. Anyway, this new font seems very nice and should be of good benefit for papyrologists and textcritics.

Comments on your experiences with fonts are welcome!