Beschreibung:

PALIMPSEST, in Christian-Palestinian Aramaic and Syriac, manuscript on vellum [Mt Sinai, Egypt, the underlying text 6th century, the overlying text c.700] An exceptional survival of considerable textual and historic interest of Christian Palestinian Aramaic, a Western Aramaic dialect used by the Melkite Christian community in Palestine and Transjordan between the 5th and 13th centuries and preserved only in a few inscriptions, palimpsests and manuscripts. The present fragment is from Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai. A fragment, the first text (the underlying text) 200 x 160mm (originally c.240 x 180mm), 2 columns of 22 lines (of originally 24) written in an exceptional Christian Palestinian-Aramaic uncial, blind-ruled, ruled space 190 x 140mm (originally c. 210 x 140mm); the second text (the overlying text), a single column of 15 lines written in black ink in a somewhat shaky Syriac Estrangelo book script, inscription in black ink in Arabic (browning and staining, edges frayed, underlying script on obverse very faded). Between two sheets of glass, green-cloth-gilt folding case by Aquarius. Provenance : (1) Monastery of St Catherine, Mt Sinai. There are three principal locations which have brought to light CPA manuscripts in Egypt (almost exclusively palimpsests): St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai; the Wadi El Natrun and the Cairo Genizah. An important Mt Sinai codex is the so-called Codex Climaci rescriptus (now in private ownership in the US; another single leaf from that codex, which contains Acts 21:14-25, forms Cod. Ms. Syr. 637 of the Mingana Collection, Birmingham). The present fragment is part of Codex Sinaiticus Zosimi rescriptus (Schøyen Collection, MS 35; also MS 37; St Petersburg, Russian National Library MS Syr. 16; SUB Göttingen, Codd. Mss. Syr. 28A; 28B), which, like the present fragment, belonged originally to the Grote collection (see Alain Desreumaux, Codex sinaiticus Zosimi rescriptus ). (2) Dr Friedrich Grote (1862-1922), German manuscript collector who by the end of the 19th century had built an impressive collection of manuscripts and fragments with a Sinaitic provenance. Several of his Syriac, Arabic, CPA and Georgian manuscripts are now in major libraries and collections: the Vatican library, the BnF, the British Library, among others. (3) Private collection, Berlin (1929). (4) D. MacLaren, sold at: (5) Sotheby’s 12 April 1954, lot 302, purchased by: (6) Dr Otto Fisher, Detroit. (7) H.P. Kraus, ‘ Monumenta Codicum Manuscriptorum ’ (1974), no 2. (8) H.P. Kraus cat. 165 (1983), no 28. (9) Schøyen Collection, MS 36. Text and script : The first, and most important, underlying text is Matthew 26:59-68; 26:70-27:2; 27:3-10. The script is almost identical to that of Codex Climaci rescriptus , considered the finest and earliest specimen of Christian-Palestinian Aramaic uncial extant. Parts of the present fragment completes Göttingen, Ms. Syr. 28B. With the exception of Codex Climaci rescriptus and Codex Sinaiticus Zosimi rescriptus , the language is represented in only a small scattering of fragments, all of which are in major institutions: a section of a Vatican manuscript (MS. Sir 623) with readings from Exodus; a handful of fragments from the Cairo Genizah; a few fragments from Khirbet Mird excavations in the 1950s (now Rockefeller Museum, Jerusalem; three fragments still in the library of St Catherine’s, Sinai (all 11th century); two leaves in the British Library (BL Add. 14450 and Or.1080.4.65a); a fragment in the Louvre, Paris; five leaves at the Bodleian, Oxford (MS Heb. e. 73 ff.42-3; MS Heb. b. 13, f.13; MS Syr. d. 32; 33 and Syr. c. 4); a small fragment in Philadelphia (Penn. E 16507r); and two leaves in St Petersburg (Greek, ms. 119 and Antonin, Ebr. B 958v). The second, overlying text, is written in a c.700 Syriac Estrangelo, similar in style to Mt Sinai Cod. Syr. 30 (dated 698). It is a table of contents of a codex that contained 11 texts, including 4 about the fathers who