Egypt
New York Times (Anthony Julius)
The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole.
- Piecing Together The Priceless 'cairo Genizah'
Science Daily A well-known collection of historical texts, the Cairo Genizah is one of the most valuable sources of primary documents for medieval historians and religious scholars. The 350,000 fragments found in the Genizah include not only religious...
- Oxyrhynchus - The Dustbin Of History
Guardian Unlimited (Khaled Diab) Our collective memory of the past is mostly confined to grand figures and epic events, while the vast majority of humanity ends up in the wastelands of oblivion. Thanks to nearly half a million papyrus fragments uncovered...
- Book Review: The City Of The Sharp-nosed Fish
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2046517,00.html The City of the Sharp-nosed Fish: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt by Peter Parsons 320pp, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Review by Tom Holland: "Peter Parsons is uniquely well qualified to act as a guide...
- The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
The article from Biblical Archaeological Review is on the discovery of papyri at the beginning of the last century near the Upper Egyptian village of el-Behnesa. Two Oxford scholars named Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt were searching the...
- Oldest Christian Manuscript
A Christian codex written in 411 a.d. has had its missing last page found in a monasteries ancient olive oil storeroom. In the 11th century a monk worried that the last page of the codex would become lost so he recorded the inscription on the last page...
Egypt
Book Review: House of Windows
New York Times (Anthony Julius)
The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza by Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole.
About 120 years ago, a cache of manuscripts, mostly fragments, was discovered in the storeroom of an old Cairo synagogue. Its members had deposited them there over many centuries. This collection of documents managed to be both heterogeneous and comprehensive at the same time.
Adina Hoffman is the author of “House of Windows: Portraits From a Jerusalem Neighborhood.” Peter Cole is a poet and translator. As they relate in their engaging book “Sacred Trash,” the materials in the storeroom included letters, wills, bills of lading, prayers, marriage contracts and writs of divorce, Bibles, money orders, court depositions, business inventories, leases, magic charms and receipts. One early examiner of the cache described the scene as a “battlefield of books.” The most recent deposits were made in the 19th century; there were fragments that dated back to the 10th century. Another early visitor described the scene thus: “For centuries, whitewash has tumbled” upon the documents “from the walls and ceiling; the sand of the desert has lodged in their folds and wrinkles; water from some unknown source has drenched them; they have squeezed and hurt each other.”
- Piecing Together The Priceless 'cairo Genizah'
Science Daily A well-known collection of historical texts, the Cairo Genizah is one of the most valuable sources of primary documents for medieval historians and religious scholars. The 350,000 fragments found in the Genizah include not only religious...
- Oxyrhynchus - The Dustbin Of History
Guardian Unlimited (Khaled Diab) Our collective memory of the past is mostly confined to grand figures and epic events, while the vast majority of humanity ends up in the wastelands of oblivion. Thanks to nearly half a million papyrus fragments uncovered...
- Book Review: The City Of The Sharp-nosed Fish
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2046517,00.html The City of the Sharp-nosed Fish: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt by Peter Parsons 320pp, Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Review by Tom Holland: "Peter Parsons is uniquely well qualified to act as a guide...
- The Oxyrhynchus Papyri
The article from Biblical Archaeological Review is on the discovery of papyri at the beginning of the last century near the Upper Egyptian village of el-Behnesa. Two Oxford scholars named Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt were searching the...
- Oldest Christian Manuscript
A Christian codex written in 411 a.d. has had its missing last page found in a monasteries ancient olive oil storeroom. In the 11th century a monk worried that the last page of the codex would become lost so he recorded the inscription on the last page...