Scripts on Parade

From Antiquity to the Modern World

Manuscripts and Written Records
on Papyrus, Parchment, Paper, and other Materials

Specimens in a private collection
Reproduced by permission
Descriptions by Mildred Budny

PART I.  Welcome to this first exhibition on our re-launched website (May 2015).  We offer a sampling of specimens, with more to come.

1v rotated moreSo far:

I.       Cuneiform Tablets
II.     Antique & Byzantine Greek Texts
III.    Coptic & Syriac Texts
IV.    Hebrew & Judeo-Arabic Texts
V.      Arabic, Persian & Turkish Texts, plus a Bookbinding
VI.    Armenian New Testament or Lectionary

VII.   Ethiopic Manuscripts
VIII.  Sanskrit & Prakrit Palm-Leaf and Paper Manuscripts

Also:

You can visit the Gallery of Texts on Parade

Other Galleries are in course of installation for Latin, Western European Vernacular, and other Languages.

*****

Here are specimens (most are fragmentary) of manuscripts and documents in various languages, including secular and religious concerns.  They represent, for example,

  • Judeo-Arabic leaf, Yemen, 15th-century CErecords of transactions
  • the Qur’an/Koran in different copies
  • an Abbasid biographical collection
  • an apocryphal ‘Life of the Virgin’ in Byzantine Greek
  • an Armenian New Testament or Lectionary
  • a Psalter in Ethiopic Ge’ez
  • a Sermon manuscript in Ethiopic Amharic
  • a variety of Arabic and Ottoman Turkish texts using watermarked European paper
    and
  • the components of a composite Yemeni bookbinding with reused leaves from older manuscripts.

The Tags allow for searching for the specific script, language, type of text, writing medium, and other features.

*****

I.       Cuneiform Tablets

Search
Tablet inscribed with accounts in cuneiform on clay. Early Dynastic period (circa 2600-2500 BCE). (purchased in Michigan)
« of 2 »

II.     Antique & Byzantine Greek Texts

Search
Detail of the recto:
Added drawing or sketch in ink in the lower margin, partly torn away along with the lower outer corner of the leaf

« of 5 »

III.    Coptic & Syriac Texts

Search
Fragment of a leaf in Syriac on parchment, circa 9th century CE, possibly from a New Testament (purchased in London in the 1980s from the dregs of an antiquarian book-shop of antiquities-shop which closed down in the 1940s)
« of 7 »

IV.   Hebrew & Judeo-Arabic Texts

Search
Fragment of a leaf in Hebrew on paper, Yemen, 15th century CE (purchased online from an Israeli seller)
« of 4 »

V.    Arabic, Persian & Turkish Texts, plus a Bookbinding

Search
Yemeni bookbinding of the 15th century CE: 15th-century portion of the binding, with flap
Paper pastedown on the inside cover of the reused older portion of the same Yemeni binding of the 15th century CE (purchased online from Sweden)
« of 23 »

VI.     Armenian New Testament or Lectionary

Search
'Folio 2r' (purchased from Boyd Mackus)
« of 3 »

VII.   Ethiopic Manuscripts

Search
« of 9 »

*****

1v rotated cropped to tailpiece

VIII.  Sanskrit & Prakrit Palm-Leaf and Paper Manuscripts

*****

Next, please visit our Gallery of Texts on Parade.

*****