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.
Papyrus is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge. Papyrus can also refer to a document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll, an early form of a book.
Sir Alfred Chester Beatty was an American-British mining magnate and philanthropist. A successful businessman, Beatty was given the epithet "the King of Copper" in reference to his fortune. He became a naturalised British citizen in 1933, was knighted in 1954 and was made an honorary citizen of Ireland in 1957.
A scroll, also known as a roll, is a roll of papyrus, parchment, or paper containing writing.
Thuluth is an Arabic script variety of Islamic calligraphy. The straight angular forms of Kufic were replaced in the new script by curved and oblique lines. In Thuluth, one-third of each letter slopes, from which the name comes. An alternative theory to the meaning is that the smallest width of the letter is one third of the widest part. It is an elegant, cursive script, used in medieval times on mosque decorations. Various calligraphic styles evolved from Thuluth through slight changes of form.
James McConkey Robinson was an American scholar who retired as Professor Emeritus of Religion at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California, specializing in New Testament Studies and Nag Hammadi Studies. He was a member of the Jesus Seminar and arguably the most prominent Q and Nag Hammadi library scholar of the twentieth century. He was also a major contributor to The International Q Project, acting as an editor for most of their publications. Particularly, he laid the groundwork for John S. Kloppenborg's foundational work into the compositional history of Q, by arguing its genre as an ancient wisdom collection. He also was the permanent secretary of UNESCO's International Committee for the Nag Hammadi codices. He is known for his work on the Medinet Madi library, a collection of Coptic Manichaean manuscripts.
Charles Robert Cecil Augustine Allberry was an English Egyptologist and Coptic scholar. He was best known during his lifetime for his 1938 partial translation of A Manichean Psalm-Book, and posthumously as the model for C. P. Snow's character, Roy Calvert, introduced in The Light and the Dark (1947). Allberry served in the Royal Air Force in the Second World War and was shot down and killed in 1943.
The Manichaean Psalm Book or Manichaean Psalter is a Manichaean text written in Coptic. It is believed to have been compiled in the late 3rd century or the mid-4th century. Excavated in 1929 as part of the Medinet Madi library, the Psalm Book is believed to contain remnants of some of the earliest extant Manichaean literature.
The Bodmer Papyri are a group of twenty-two papyri discovered in Egypt in 1952. They are named after Martin Bodmer, who purchased them. The papyri contain segments from the Old and New Testaments, early Christian literature, Homer, and Menander. The oldest, P66 dates to c. 200 AD. Most of the papyri are kept at the Bodmer Library, in Cologny, Switzerland outside Geneva.
The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri or simply the Chester Beatty Papyri are a group of early papyrus manuscripts of biblical texts. The manuscripts are in Greek and are of Christian origin. There are eleven manuscripts in the group, seven consisting of portions of Old Testament books, three consisting of portions of the New Testament, and one consisting of portions of the Book of Enoch and an unidentified Christian homily. Most are dated to the 3rd century CE. They are housed in part at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, Ireland, and in part at the University of Michigan, among a few other locations.
Papyrus 45, designated by siglum 𝔓45 in the Gregory-Aland numbering of New Testament manuscripts, is an early Greek New Testament manuscript written on papyrus, and is one of the manuscripts comprising the Chester Beatty Papyri, a group of early Christian manuscripts discovered in the 1930s, and purchased by business man and philanthropist, Alfred Chester Beatty. Beatty purchased the manuscript in the 1930s from an Egyptian book dealer, and it was subsequently published in The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri, Descriptions and Texts of Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible by palaeographer, biblical and classical scholar Frederic G. Kenyon in 1933. Manuscripts among the Chester Beatty Papyri have had several places of discovery associated with them, the most likely being the Faiyum in Egypt. Using the study of comparative writing styles (palaeography), it has been dated to the early 3rd century CE. This therefore makes it the earliest example of not only the four Gospels contained in one volume, but also the Acts of the Apostles. It contains verses in fragmentary form from the texts of Matthew chapters 20–21 and 25–26; Mark chapters 4–9 and 11–12; Luke chapters 6–7 and 9–14; John chapters 4–5 and 10–11; and Acts chapters 4–17.
Turkish or Ottoman illumination covers non-figurative painted or drawn decorative art in books or on sheets in muraqqa or albums, as opposed to the figurative images of the Ottoman miniature. In Turkish it is called “tezhip”, meaning “ornamenting with gold”. It was a part of the Ottoman Book Arts together with the Ottoman miniature (taswir), calligraphy (hat), bookbinding (cilt) and paper marbling (ebru). In the Ottoman Empire, illuminated and illustrated manuscripts were commissioned by the Sultan or the administrators of the court. In Topkapi Palace, these manuscripts were created by the artists working in Nakkashane, the atelier of the miniature and illumination artists. Both religious and non-religious books could be illuminated. Also sheets for albums levha consisted of illuminated calligraphy (hat) of tughra, religious texts, verses from poems or proverbs, and purely decorative drawings.
A Muraqqa is an album in book form containing Islamic miniature paintings and specimens of Islamic calligraphy, normally from several different sources, and perhaps other matter. The album was popular among collectors in the Islamic world, and by the later 16th century became the predominant format for miniature painting in the Persian Safavid, Mughal and Ottoman empires, greatly affecting the direction taken by the painting traditions of the Persian miniature, Ottoman miniature and Mughal miniature. The album largely replaced the full-scale illustrated manuscript of classics of Persian poetry, which had been the typical vehicle for the finest miniature painters up to that time. The great cost and delay of commissioning a top-quality example of such a work essentially restricted them to the ruler and a handful of other great figures, who usually had to maintain a whole workshop of calligraphers, artists and other craftsmen, with a librarian to manage the whole process.
The British Library is a research library in London that is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The Garima Gospels are two ancient Ethiopic Gospel Books. Garima 2, the earlier of the two, is believed to be the earliest surviving complete illuminated Christian manuscript. Monastic tradition holds that they were composed close to the year 500, a date supported by recent radiocarbon analysis; samples from Garima 2 proposed a date of c. 390–570, while counterpart dating of samples from Garima 1 proposed a date of c. 530–660.
"The Contendings of Horus and Seth" is a mythological story from the Twentieth Dynasty of Egypt found in the first sixteen pages of the Chester Beatty Papyri and deals with the battles between Horus and Seth to determine who will succeed Osiris as king.
Ethiopian manuscript collections are found in many parts of the world, the monasteries and modern institutions in Ethiopia maintaining extensive collections with some monasteries still centres of manuscript production.
The Gospel of Saint Nicholas is a Serbian illuminated manuscript written on parchment in 13th from the Monastery of St. Nicholas of Rošci, with size of 16x10.5 cm, 144 pages and 17 editions of text on each of the pages decorated with illuminations, initials and flags, gold and silver details. According to the historian Pavel Šafarik (1858), this Gospel he calls it "The Gospel of Queen Jelena", was written for Helen of Anjou, between 1240 and 1250.
The Medinet Madi library is a collection of Manichaean texts discovered at Medinet Madi in the Faiyum region of Egypt in 1929. There is a total of seven codices, some of which have been split up and held in different collections across Europe. The texts, many of which remain unpublished and untranslated today, were composed in the Lycopolis dialect of Coptic during the 5th century A.D.
'Manual on the Arts of Horsemanship' by al-Aqsara'i. Cairo, 1366.
