Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 472, Ḥeshbon mahalkhot ha-kokhavim, by Abraham bar Hiyya Savasorda. This manuscript was written in Spain during the 15th century, in Hebrew, and it is a copy of the second part of a 12th-century two-part treatise. This second part, on astronomy, includes computations for solar and lunar eclipses between 1135 and 1136.
See the full online facsimile of this work in Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images and metadata at OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.
Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 267, De ludo scacchorum seu de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium … [etc.]. This manuscript was written in Italy in 1409, in Latin, with a few poems in Italian. It is a compilation, mostly in Latin, of religious, literary, historical, and natural-historical works, including classical and contemporary selections, as well as letters by humanist writers Francesco Petrarca and Donatus Albanzani. Over a quarter of the manuscript is devoted to the De ludo scachorum of Jacobus de Cessolis, a collection of sermons about the proper relationships between a king and various classes of subjects, compared to the rules of chess.
You can see the full online facsimile of this work in Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images and metadata at OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.
Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 37, Euclid’s Elements (in Arabic). This manuscript was written in Egypt, Iraq, or Syria, A.H. 502-504 (1108-1111), and it is Epitome or abridgement in Arabic of Euclid’s Elements, written on paper.
You can see the full online facsimile of this work at Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images and metadata at OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.
Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s Ms. Codex 681, Book of hours. This manuscript was written in France, between 1450 and 1500, in Latin, and it is a fragment of a book of hours with French script.
You can see the full online facsimile of this work at Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images and metadata at OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.
Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s Ms. Coll. 390, Item 409 – Śivamukhyasahasranāmastotra, 1671. This manuscript was written in Sanskrit and is used for public or private recitation or prayer and worship (pūjā), venerating and praising a thousand names associated with the Hindu deity Śiva. It is part of a larger work known as the Śivarahasya and it is presented as a discourse between Hara (Śiva) and his son Kumāra (known also as Kārttikeya).
You can see the full online facsimile of this work in Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images and metadata from OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.
“The Genizah Scribes at Work,” a lecture by Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, Professor of Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscript Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), Paris, was delivered April 25, 2018, at the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts.
In this lecture sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania, Judith Olszowy-Schlanger explored the social status, training, and working conditions of the scribes who produced the manuscripts found in the Cairo Geniza, a treasure trove of over 300,000 sacred and secular documents produced from the 10th to the 13th centuries and preserved for centuries in the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo), Egypt, until its dispersal among libraries around the world.
Professor Olszowy-Schlanger brings to life a wealth of information buried in what she describes as “a necropolis of discarded books, contracts, and letters.” By examining the physical evidence left behind in the mass of discarded documents, she uncovers the habits and practices of scribes of all types—from professionals to “mediocre hacks” to scholars producing their own libraries—in order to demonstrate the rich and complicated nature of Jewish book production in the Middle Ages. Her study ranges across the spectrum of manuscript production: from fragments revealing the time-consuming, lavish production of prayer books to a twelfth-century scribe’s diary containing drafts of legal documents and the remnants of young students attempts to learn how to write their alphabets.
The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies/Herbert D. Katz Center Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Manuscript Studies fellowship is supported in part by the David B. Ruderman Distinguished Scholar fund.
Dot Porter, Curator, Digital Research Services at the University of Pennsylvania Library, offers a video orientation to Penn Library’s LJS 224, Expositio in libros Posteriorum Aristotelis, by Paolo, Veneto. This manuscript was written in Italy between 1425 and 1475, in Latin, and it is a commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior analytics, in which syllogistic reasoning is applied to scientific proof or demonstration.
You can see the full online facsimile of this work at Penn in Hand and you can download all of the images and metadata at OPenn. You can also download a copy of this video from ScholarlyCommons, the University of Pennsylvania’s open access institutional repository.
