The Armeno-Greek papyrus is a manuscript from Egypt which bears Greek writing in Armenian letters. Its date is uncertain; it may be dated to the late sixth or early seventh century on historical grounds or the sixth or even late fifth century on paleographic grounds.
It is recognized as one of the most ancient, if not the most ancient, surviving examples of Armenian manuscript writing, predating the earliest dated Armenian books from the ninth century. The document is significant for the study of the early development of Armenian script styles. [1]
Scholars agree that the author was an Armenian. H. Dashian suggested that the author was an Armenian merchant, while Maurice Leroy thought it was written by an Armenian soldier in the Byzantine army in Egypt practicing his Greek. The papyrus has about thirty lines of text on each side. The contents of the text can be divided into five groups: short conversational phrases; verb conjugations; word lists grouped by subject; very brief stories ( chreiae ) about the philosopher Diogenes; and maxims. According to James Clackson, the document belongs to the tradition of Greek educational texts written on papyri in Egypt. [2]
The papyrus was acquired from an Arab dealer by Auguste Carrière, the chair of Armenian at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris, in or shortly before 1892. It was first studied in detail by H. Dashian in 1898. It was considered lost by 1937–1938, although study of the text continued on the basis of a photograph included in Dashian's study. It was rediscovered by historian Dickran Kouymjian in 1993 among uncatalogued Armenian manuscripts recently acquired by the Bibliothèque nationale de France. [3] The first full edition of the text was published with commentary by James Clackson in 2000. [4]
The codex was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term "codex" is now reserved for older manuscript books, which mostly used sheets of vellum, parchment, or papyrus, rather than paper.
A manuscript was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has come to be understood to further include any written, typed, or word-processed copy of an author's work, as distinguished from the rendition as a printed version of the same.
Palaeography (UK) or paleography is the study and academic discipline of the analysis of historical writing systems, the historicity of manuscripts and texts, subsuming deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysis of historic penmanship, handwriting script, signification and printed media. It is primarily concerned with the forms, processes and relationships of writing and printing systems as evident in a text, document or manuscript; and analysis of the substantive textual content of documents is a secondary function. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and printing of texts, manuscripts, books, codices and tomes, tracts and monographs, etcetera, were produced, and the history of scriptoria. This discipline is important for understanding, authenticating, and dating historic texts. However, in the absence of additional evidence, it cannot be used to pinpoint exact dates.
Penmanship is the technique of writing with the hand using a writing instrument. Today, this is most commonly done with a pen, or pencil, but throughout history has included many different implements. The various generic and formal historical styles of writing are called "hands" while an individual's style of penmanship is referred to as "handwriting".
Hieratic is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BCE until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BCE. It was primarily written in ink with a reed brush on papyrus.
The Elephantine Papyri and Ostraca consist of thousands of documents from the Egyptian border fortresses of Elephantine and Aswan, which yielded hundreds of papyri and ostraca in hieratic and demotic Egyptian, Aramaic, Koine Greek, Latin and Coptic, spanning a period of 100 years in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE. The documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives and are thus an invaluable source of knowledge for scholars of varied disciplines such as epistolography, law, society, religion, language, and onomastics. The Elephantine documents include letters and legal contracts from family and other archives: divorce documents, the manumission of enslaved people, and other business. The dry soil of Upper Egypt preserved the documents.
The Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the St John's fragment and with an accession reference of Papyrus Rylands Greek 457, is a fragment from a papyrus codex, measuring only 3.5 by 2.5 inches at its widest, and conserved with the Rylands Papyri at the John Rylands University Library Manchester, UK. The front (recto) contains parts of seven lines from the Gospel of John 18:31–33, in Greek, and the back (verso) contains parts of seven lines from verses 37–38. Since 2007, the papyrus has been on permanent display in the library's Deansgate building.
The "Magdalen" papyrus was purchased in Luxor, Egypt in 1901 by Reverend Charles Bousfield Huleatt (1863–1908), who identified the Greek fragments as portions of the Gospel of Matthew and presented them to Magdalen College, Oxford, where they are catalogued as P. Magdalen Greek 17 from which they acquired their name. When the fragments were published by Colin Henderson Roberts in 1953, illustrated with a photograph, the hand was characterized as "an early predecessor of the so-called 'Biblical Uncial'" which began to emerge towards the end of the 2nd century. The uncial style is epitomised by the later biblical Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. Comparative paleographical analysis has remained the methodological key for dating the manuscript, but there is no consensus on the dating of the papyrus. Estimates have ranged from the 1st century to the 4th century AD.
Demotic is the ancient Egyptian script derived from northern forms of hieratic used in the Nile Delta. The term was first used by the Greek historian Herodotus to distinguish it from hieratic and hieroglyphic scripts. By convention, the word "Demotic" is capitalized in order to distinguish it from demotic Greek.
Papyrus 37 designated by 𝔓37 is an early copy of the New Testament in Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Gospel of Matthew dating to the 3rd century, sometime around 250-260 CE, due to its affinities with 𝔓53, The correspondence of Heroninos and a letter by Kopres.
A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. Biblical manuscripts vary in size from tiny scrolls containing individual verses of the Jewish scriptures to huge polyglot codices containing both the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the New Testament, as well as extracanonical works.
Papyrus 75, designated by the siglum 𝔓75, is an early Greek New Testament manuscript written on papyrus. It contains text from the Gospel of Luke 3:18–24:53, and John 1:1–15:8. It is generally described as "the most significant" papyrus of the New Testament to be discovered so far. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been traditionally dated to the third century. It is due to this early dating that the manuscript has a high evaluation, and the fact its text so closely resembles that of the fourth-century Codex Vaticanus (B).
Ancient Egyptian literature was written with the Egyptian language from ancient Egypt's pharaonic period until the end of Roman domination. It represents the oldest corpus of Egyptian literature. Along with Sumerian literature, it is considered the world's earliest literature.
Armenian art is the unique form of art developed over the last five millennia in which the Armenian people lived on the Armenian Highland. Armenian architecture and miniature painting have dominated Armenian art and have shown consistent development over the centuries. Other forms of Armenian art include sculpture, fresco, mosaic, ceramic, metalwork, engraving, and textiles, especially Armenian carpets.
The Armenian alphabet or, more broadly, the Armenian script, is an alphabetic writing system developed for Armenian and occasionally used to write other languages. It was developed around 405 CE by Mesrop Mashtots, an Armenian linguist and ecclesiastical leader. The script originally had 36 letters. Eventually, two more were adopted in the 13th century. In reformed Armenian orthography (1920s), the ligature ևev is also treated as a letter, bringing the total number of letters to 39.
Michael Edward Stone is a professor emeritus of Armenian Studies and of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research deals with Armenian studies and with Jewish literature and thought of the Second Temple period. He is also a published poet.
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 216 is a rhetorical exercise by an unknown author, written in Greek. It was discovered in Oxyrhynchus. The manuscript was written on papyrus in the form of a roll. It is dated to the first century BC or first century AD. Currently it is housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (35) of the Yale University.
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 282 is a fragment of a Complaint against a Wife, in Greek. It was discovered in Oxyrhynchus. The manuscript, written on papyrus in the form of a sheet, is dated between 26 January 29 – 22 May 37. It is housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the Yale University in New Haven.
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 656 – is a Greek fragment of a Septuagint manuscript written on papyrus in codex form. This is a manuscript discovered at Oxyrhynchus, and it has been catalogued with number 656. Palaeographycally it is dated to late second century or early third century.
Armenian palaeography is a branch of palaeography that examines the historical development of Armenian script forms and lettering. It also encompasses a description of the evolution of Armenian writing.