CSMC Newsletter

The new volume of Studies in Manuscript Cultures offers case studies on vernacular Chinese character manuscripts of Chinese dialect speakers, minority ethnic groups within China and Southeast Asia, and character manuscripts of genuinely ‘foreign’ peoples like the Vietnamese. Across this wide range, the focus is on manuscripts written in regional and vernacular adaptations of the Chinese script. This collection will be of interest to scholars and students interested in the philological analysis of East and Southeast Asian character scripts and manuscript traditions, but also the broader social contexts of manuscript use in traditional and modern society. The volume was edited by David Holm and is available open access on our website.

Every written artefact is unique, but only some have the elevated status of being an ‘original’. The new volume of manuscript cultures is dedicated to a series of such written artefacts and the people or institutions that make them special. The authors of the volume use the term ‘originator’ to describe these actors and their role during the production, use, and reception of a written artefact. The 14 contributions in this volume convey an idea of the variety of scenarios and contexts in which originators appear. The examples deal with very different manuscript cultures and types of written artefacts and thus demonstrate the fruitfulness of this concept, which is the result of intensive discussions in the research field ‘Creating Originals’ at our Cluster.

Wars are as old as mankind itself. But how old are peace treaties? In a new episode of her blog Mesopotamian Bulletins, the Assyriologist Cécile Michel shows us the oldest surviving written artefacts in which kings and states from the ancient civilisation affirm their intention to live together in peace. They date back to the 3rd millennium BCE and are fascinating precursors to today’s international agreements. This story is only one of five new entries in her French blog series ‘Mesopotamian Bulletins’, from which we regularly translate selected posts into English. All episodes are available on our website.

One of the most dangerous enemies of a manuscript is dust: It provides nesting material for insects, and it is an incubator for mould spores and a focus for acid precipitation. In the new episode of his video series on the ‘Written Artefacts of Nepal – Preservation and Documentation’, Bidur Bhattarai shows how this problem can be dealt with. Using soft brushes or a variable speed control HEPA (High-Efficiency Particulate Air) vacuum removes substances such as dust, mould, and insect and rodent remnants that might eventually damage manuscript folios or that might be transferred to other folios during use.

From 15–19 July, participants of our summer school on Hebrew Codicology learned the basics of manuscript description and Hebrew palaeography and received exposure to an expansive vision of current debates in Hebrew manuscript research. The one-week course was taught by Javier del Barco, Professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at the University of Madrid and a former Petra Kappert Fellow at the CSMC. The summer school was held in memory of Malachi Beit-Arié, one of the world’s foremost manuscript scholars, specialising in Hebrew manuscript culture. He passed away in October 2023.

While Armenians and Georgians have steadily developed their written heritage up to this day, the literacy of the Caucasian Albanians ended with the Arab conquest in the 8th century. Only a few specimens of their language have survived, mostly as palimpsests. Since 2022, Jost Gippert and his team have been researching ‘The Development of Literacy in the Caucasian Territories’ (DeLiCaTe) as part of an ERC project affiliated with the CSMC. Numerous materials are now available on a recently launched project website, including scientific publications, presentations, and posters. In addition, the page provides overviews of events associated with the project and the partners collaborating with DeLiCaTe.

Under Roman rule, Palmyra grew from a minor caravan station in the middle of the Syrian Desert to an important trade metropolis. Our new Artefact of the Month is one of the numerous inscriptions that have survived there: a funerary relief, carefully carved by local stonemasons seventeen centuries ago, showing two prematurely deceased children. What were their names, and what do the inscriptions reveal about their lives? Łukasz Sokołowski has taken a close look at this fascinating artefact.