Palimpsests and Related Phenomena across Languages and Cultures

Jost Gippert, José Maksimczuk, Hasmik Sargsyan

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2024
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9783111552170
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: Literature

In the traditional view of European scholarship, palimpsests are parchment manuscripts from Antiquity or the Middle Ages whose original content has been erased, scraped away, or washed off and later overwritten with new content. This removed content is usually the focus of research. The present volume, which brings together eighteen papers prepared for two workshops at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures in Hamburg in 2021 and 2023, takes a broader perspective by going far beyond the borders of classical philology into the much less studied manuscript cultures of the Christian East (Aramaic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Georgian, Slavonic, Syriac), the Islamic world of Asia and Africa (Arabic), and East Asia (Japanese). It thematizes writing supports other than parchment that were suitable for palimpsesting; different practices applied in erasing and overwriting handwritten content and the various reasons for such undertakings; and the different methods that researchers can employ to reveal the content of the removed layers and the results that these methods can yield.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Removed and Rewritten: Palimpsests and Related Phenomena from a Cross-cultural Perspective
• Written Sources on the Use of Reagents in the Palimpsests Veronenses XV, XL, and LXII: Towards an Archaeology of Destruction
• Palimpsest Manuscripts in the National Library of Greece, with a Focus on EBE 192
• Some Reflections on Selected Leaves of the Palimpsest Manuscript Athos, Konstamonitou 99
• The Trials and Tribulations of a Palimpsest Reader
• Beyond the Invisible: Some Aspects of Syriac Palimpsests
• A Georgian Palimpsest Folio in an Athonite Greek Manuscript
• An Ancient Armenian Text of the Gospel of John in a Graz Palimpsest: Preliminary Observations
• Palimpsests from the Caucasus: Two Case Studies
• The Oldest Georgian Witness of the Martyrdom of St Febronia
• New Witnesses of the Jerusalem-Rite Lectionary: Georgian Palimpsests Ivir. georg. 47 and Ivir. georg. 59
• Linguistic Divergence in Armenian Bible and Lectionary Palimpsests
• Uncovering Lost Armenian Texts: Schøyen Collection MS 575 and the Armenian Translation of John Chrysostom’s Commentary on the Psalms
• A Survey of the Palimpsests among the Slavic Manuscripts of Mount Sinai
• Ethiopic Palimpsests
• Personal Qur’ans in Early Islam: A Case of Palimpsesting and Training
• Palimpsesting or Paper Reuse in Islamic Manuscripts of West Africa
• Palimpsests on Purpose: Rethinking Intentional Erasure and Layers in Manuscript Culture
• Inpainting with Generative AI: A Significant Step towards Automatically Deciphering Palimpsests
• Contributors
• Indexes