CSMC Newsletter

CSMC researchers have published the first scientific study of microbiota associated with damaged parchment manuscripts from Kairouan’s historical library, marking a milestone in the cooperation with the National Heritage Institute and National Laboratory for the Preservation and Conservation of Parchment and Manuscripts (NLPCPM) in Tunisia. The study  shows that each parchment carries a highly individual microbiota shaped by its production, storage, and use. The presence of bacterial or fungal DNA alone does not necessarily mean that active decay is currently taking place. The findings can help inform future conservation strategies at the NLPCPM for protecting Kairouan’s manuscript heritage.

Where people care for someone or something, they leave traces: notes for family members, prescriptions doctors write for their patients, diligently copied prayer books, letters that sustain friendships, and records that keep institutions running. Written artefacts like these are deeply intertwined with caring practices. The new lecture series ‘Written Artefacts of Care’, running from 12 October to 14 December, explores how people have used handwriting to look after one another and what happens when these handwritten traces are lost, damaged, or ignored. Organised by the CSMC’s Equity and Diversity Unit, the series is part of the studium generale and open to all.

This summer, Kyle Ann Huskin and Ivan Shevchuk spent four intensive weeks as guests of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in Paris. They led an in-depth professional workshop for the BnF’s photographers on the application of multispectral imaging (MSI). ‘The BnF will have excellent operators in the future’, Ivan said upon his return. ‘In my ten years at the CSMC, this was an absolutely unique experience. Normally, I only work on one or two manuscripts per trip. Now there were many, and they were completely different.’ During their visit, they were also visited by a TV team: ARTE has produced a short clip on the project, which you can watch here (in French).

Learning to write is a formative event in a person’s life. This was no different 4,000 years ago, when writing itself was still a relatively new invention. In ancient Mesopotamia, literacy was remarkably advanced. In a new episode of her blog, ‘Mesopotamian Bulletins’, Assyriologist Cécile Michel explains why that was the case and how and for what purpose people learned to write in those days. Other new episodes cover topics such as the first attempts in the 19th century to decipher cuneiform writing, and whether and to what extent AI will support Assyriologists in the future. The ‘Mesopotamian Bulletins’ are published in their original French version. Selected episodes appear in English translation on the CSMC website.

What happens to written artefacts after their initial production? In the latest part of our interview series on the new Concepts and Methods Units, Steffen Döll, head of ‘Phased Transmission’, talks about material and invisible transformations, provenance, archives, and the challenge of developing concepts that work across cultural contexts. ‘Regarding phenomena such as editing, material addition, repurposing, rebinding, or recontextualisation across several cases, we ask whether they can be described using concepts that are meaningful across cultures. Likewise, a practice that is common in one region or type of institution may not occur in another. Such absences too may be historically significant and tell us something about the social or material conditions in which written artefacts were used.’ 

Edited by Chloé Agar, Niv Allon, Linda Hulin, Hana Navratilova, Tim Penn, and Marina Sartori

In Graffiti Quest, you step into an Egyptian world where walls speak. Ordinary and extraordinary people pen and carve quick insults, political slogans, prayers, and proud declarations—proof that ancient graffiti makers were just as likely to praise a king as to mock a colleague. This interdisciplinary volume invites you into the conversations sparked at a 2023 workshop, where archaeologists, historians, and epigraphers rethink how people engage with places and spaces. Featuring rare images, unpublished archival material, and fresh case studies, these proceedings offer you new tools and new stories that transform the way we read Egypt’s inscribed past.

By Vincent Engelhardt and Jakob Wigand

Publications by the Berlin State Museum have justified the presence of archaeological objects from the Abbasid residence of Samarra in its collections by referring to a supposed legal division of finds between the excavators and the Ottoman authorities. However, despite the institution’s refusal to grant access to external researchers, this article re-examines the archaeological excavations in Samarra conducted between 1911 and 1913 under the direction of the German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld. By critically engaging with existing scholarship and drawing on new archival evidence, we argue that a significant number of artefacts were unlawfully exported from the Ottoman Empire to Berlin and that no such legal division of finds ever took place. Additionally, we interrogate the institution’s exclusion of independent provenance research. In doing so, this article contributes to ongoing debates on provenance research, demonstrating how internal investigations tend to reinforce institutional narratives rather than foster accountability and transparency.