Colophon

The colophons of the Armenian manuscripts take a special place with their original and rich information among the medieval Armenian written monuments.
In the work we have attempted to thoroughly examine the components of the Armenian colophons, the latters’ diverse ways of expression. We have done some classifications of the Armenian colophons, according to the time of writing, the authors of colophons and the content. We have individually represented the units we encounter in the Armenian colophons, if possible, comparing this all with the identical manifestations occurring in other manuscript traditions.

This essay examines women’s scribal self-identification in Renaissance Italy through a study of colophons (scribal production notes) left by nuns at the end of the manuscripts they copied. Within the realm of female monastic book production, colophons are often thought to be formulaic and predictable texts that—though valuable for dating the manuscript and sometimes providing notes on production—do not offer much personalized information about the copyists. The author surveys a large number of nuns' colophons from fifteenth and sixteenth-century Italy and demonstrates that these female scribes presented a range of identities in the inscriptions they left – not all of them pious. The range of colophons reflects the diversity of women who were called to or placed in convent life in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy and demonstrates their adaptability to trends in both their religious community and the larger secular society. Treated as a genre of writing, these messages provide a vivid female-authored voice from the ‘anonymous’ walls of the convent and demonstrate how nuns creatively shaped their identity within the often-limiting strictures of monastic life. The study makes important contributions to Renaissance book history scholarship and reshapes an understanding of female agency in the period.

Նյութում համառոտ կերպով ներկայացված են հայկական ձեռագրական մշակույթում լայնորեն տարածված հիշատակարանագրության ավանդույթին առնչվող տեղեկություններ, ինչպես նաև գրավոր այս հուշարձանների կառուցվածքին, լեզվին և տարբեր դրսևորումներին վերաբերող հարցեր:

"Skiredj, Abu-l-Abbas Ahmed ibn al-Iyyashi Sukayrij al-Khazraji  Al-Ansari al-Fasi (d.1363/1943). Irshād al-mutaˋallim wa-al-nāsī fi sifat ashkāl al-qalam al-Fāsī

إرشاد المتعلم والناسي في صفة أشكال القلم الفاسي، لأحمد العياشي سكيرج، المتوفى سنة 1363هـ، .تحقيق ودراسة

والكتاب شرح منظومة القلم الفاسي لعبدالقادر الفاسي المتوفى سنة 1091هـ
هذا، بجانب إعداد دراسة عن القلم الفاسي ونشأته واستخداماته

This short essay aims to provide a few glimpses into the life of scholars in ancient Mesopotamia. What we focus on here, in particular, are textual sources that highlight his or her work ethics, tasks and aspirations. It is not the intention in this paper to discuss every aspect in the life of scholars in the ancient Near East, since a thorough study would go far beyond the scope of this paper. 1 It is, nonetheless, important to highlight certain key aspects, which set apart the Mesopotamian scholar from a common scribe engaged in tasks such as performing administrative duties or drafting letters. Some of these key aspects are vividly described in the well-known Autobiography of the Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, in which the king states as follows: 2 I learnt the lore of the wise sage Adapa, the hidden secret of all scribal art. I can recognize celestial and terrestrial omens (and) discuss (them) in the assembly of the scholars. I can deliberate upon (the series) " (If) the liver is a mirror (image) of heaven " with able experts in oil divination. I can solve complicated multiplications and divisions which do not have an (obvious) solution. I have studied elaborate composition(s) in obscure Sumerian (and) Akkadian which are difficult to get right. I have inspected cuneiform sign(s) on stones from before the flood, which are cryptic, impenetrable (and) muddled up. This famous statement is suitable to set the stage. The king portrays himself as a devout scholar capable of reading obscure inscriptions, deliberate upon difficult treatises, and engage in scientific discourse with other experts. How much of this account is mere fiction, to what extent the king received an education that allowed him to excel in these tasks, has been subject of  I would like to thank the organisers of the colloquium Écriture, Pouvoir, Légitimité, Affichage culturel, politique et identitaire en Orient & Méditerranée. IIIe millénaire av. – IIe millénaire ap. J.-C., Paris, 6–7 October 2016, for offering to publish my paper in the colloquium's proceedings. Much of the work for this study benefited from my participation in the project " Episteme als Konfigurationsprozess: Philologie und Linguistik im 'Listenwissen' des Alten Orient " (under direction of E. Cancik-Kirschbaum and J. Klinger, Freie Universität Berlin) within the framework of SFB 980 " Episteme in Bewegung. " A comparative study, investigating scholarly work in Egypt and Mesopotamia is currently being published (Cancik-Kirschbaum and Kahl 2018). Abbreviations in this study follow those of CDLI (http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/abbreviations_for_assyriology). For primary sources referred to in footnotes, the respective entry in the database of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI;

This article treats the Armenian manuscripts housed in the Vatican Library, offering an overview of their main contents and principal value, as well as surveying the scholarly work undertaken on the collection. After a brief sketch of some general facts and characteristic features of Armenian manuscripts in general, the main value of the Vatican Library's collection is discussed in relation to Armenian studies at large. Significant individual manuscripts are highlighted and situated in the larger context of Armenian history. Materials bearing upon Roman Catholic missionary efforts among the Armenians and Armenian Catholic communities are discussed, as well as "hybrid" manuscripts that combine Armenian elements with other linguistic, cultural, and confessional traditions.

The topic of the book is the study of the codicological features of Yemeni manuscripts (VI th -IX th c./XII th -XV th c.) trhough the analysis of the data recorded from a corpus of some 170 Yemeni manuscripts from Milan (Ambrosiana Library), Rome (Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and Corsiniana Library), the Vatican City (Vatican Library) and Sanaa (al-Maktaba al-Gharbiyya, Maktaba t al-Awqâf). The corpus of manuscripts was formed and studied according to the principles of the quantitative codicology and adopting a comparative approach. Typology of papers, cachtwords, arrangement of quires and colophons are some of the subjects treated.
The goal of this research is, on the one hand, to provide some codicological criteria for dating and localising Yemeni manuscripts lacking of these data and, on the other hand, investigating the historical, social and economical background connected with the Yemeni manuscript production.

The present article identifies a series of book scribes from the medieval dioceses of Oradea and Transylvania, active at home or abroad between the late fourteenth and the early sixteenth century. The study analyses the strategies of scribal identification, the geographical and chronological distribution of manuscripts, the types of texts copieds, as well as aspects related to palaeography and colophon formulas.

The essay takes into examination the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts of a the poem 'Nauta rudis...' which is attributed to Alcuin, but also considered a mere colophon. The peculiarity of its collocation in each codex and the layout of the lines are also discussed

The study of the scriptoria in Yerevan and its environs revealed the name of a productive scribe form the second half of the 17th century, who has copied about three dozens of manuscripts in Yerevan, Noragavit‘ and the Mother See of Holy Ejmiatsin. In his colophons, he always signed as Grigor Yerevants‘i and due to these scribal notes and colophons, we were able to find out some information about the scribe and his family as well, which helped us in the study of several manuscripts.
On the basis of the paleographic features of the manuscripts and the linguistic and stylistic analysis of their colophons, we have examined and identified 29 manuscripts completely or partially copied by the scribe Grigor. It should be noted, that their commissioners are representatives of various social groups and clergy, among them, two Armenian Catholicoi, Eghiazar I Aynt‘apts‘i (1682-1691) and Nahapet I Edesats‘i (1691-1705).
The list of the scribe’s manuscripts is presented in a separate table at the end of this article (see Table 1). The vast majority of them are kept in the Matenadaran of Yerevan (20 mss.), 4 manuscripts are in the manuscripts collection of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, 2 other manuscripts are in the manuscripts collection of the Mekhitarian Fathers of Venice, the rest are in the National Library of France (1 ms.), and the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of St. Petersburg (1 ms.). The current location of one manuscript is unknown (it was registered in the catalogue of the Armash monastery manuscripts).

In this article, we examine the relationship between Armenian dictionaries and colophons, which we present in three groups:
a. words which are known to dictionaries only from the colophons.
b. words which are known to dictionaries in one example, but the colophons give other testimonies.
c. words attested in dictionaries the older usages of which we find in the colophons of the Armenian manuscripts.
A number of new words that are not attested in Armenian dictionaries is also presented with the study of their formation structures.

Анализируется ряд эпизодов в истории русско-английских связей в сфере культуры в XVI в. Особое внимание уделено рассмотрению случаев заказа и покупки русских рукописных и печатных книг английскими купцами. Показано, что это было связано с необходимостью изучения англичанами русского языка, без знания которого торговые и политические контакты были бы затруднены.

In medieval Greek manuscripts, scribes often compared their completion of the transcription of a codex to a ship reaching a harbor. Scholars have noted that this nautical imagery shaped how poets conceptualized their work as an author, but the harbor metaphor also carried over to metaliterary and ekphrastic passages theorizing the affect of images and the built environment. Thus, a technical metaphor born to describe the physical labor of book-making was adapted to describe the intellectual labor of book-writing, image-making, and building. In the present study, I discuss the harbor metaphor via the concept of “terminality,” an impulse towards closure that inscribed the content of an object (logos, eikôn) or space (chora) within an experiential horizon. The terminus offers an opportunity to appreciate the often-overlooked importance of the letters themselves (the graphai) in the world before print. The graphê, quite simply, traced the contours of how other media were understood and perceived, providing assurance that literature and art were as well-regulated as the practice of scribal transcription.

Using epigraphic sources, this paper provides an analysis of how the city of Colophon's relationship with Rome developed over the course of two and a half centuries from their arrival as the Attalids' successors in Asia Minor until the end of Hadrian's reign.

Very few Greek and Roman agoras in western Asia Minor have been studied in detail. Most agoras
in Ionia and Aiolis remain unexplored, with the exceptions of Kyme, Priene and Smyrna. This brief paper focuses on some of the least known agoras of Ionia, namely the agoras of Notion,
an Ionian city situated approximately 50 km southwest of Smyrna.

The placement of v. 20 in Psalm 72 has long puzzled scholars and has raised a number of questions: Why is תפלה used? Why does the verse state that the prayers of David are ended? Where does this leave Solomon (v. 1)? Why is the verse placed after the doxology of vv. 18–19? And why is it found in the middle of the Elohistic Psalter? To solve these problems, a number of suggestions have been offered, none of which is entirely convincing. In this article, I suggest a solution based on insights gained from research on scribal habits and material culture. Departing from scholars such as Harry Y. Gamble, William A. Johnson, and Emanuel Tov, I argue that Ps 72:20 is likely not the conclusion of a collection but a frozen scribal colophon, originally intended to “close” a scroll. A possible analogy to such a fixation of a colophon is found in the Sumerian Temple Hymns.

In this article, we have examined the colophons of manuscripts copied by a productive scribe from the second half of the seventeenth century named Grigor Yerevants‘i, the codicological, historical, and linguistic features of these written sources. Due to the colophons, the article clarifies some facts related to the manuscripts of the scribe; the importance of the historical information provided by them is also emphasized, especially the details regarding the scriptoria of Etchmiadzin, Noragavit‘, Yerevan, and its environs.

В колофонах буддийских сутр, переведённых на монгольский язык с тибетского, встречается выражение debisker-tür baγulγabai (букв. «поставил(и) на подстилку»). Это монгольское словосочетание служит для передачи тибетского выражения gtan la phab — клише, используемого в колофонах переведённых с санскрита сочинений для обозначения завершения процесса работы переводчика или редактора с текстом. Необычный монгольский перевод этого словосочетания вероятнее всего объясняется ошибкой, произошедшей из-за сходства тибетских слов gtan («полностью, окончательно») и gdan («подстилка, подушка»). Случаи использования выражения debisker-tür baγulγabai отражают тенденцию в практике монгольских переводчиков и редакторов XVII–XVIII вв. — движение в сторону буквального перевода.

Colophons of Armenian manuscripts are replete with yet untapped riches. Formulae are not the least among them: these recurrent stereotypical patterns conceal many clues as to the schools and networks of production and diffusion of books in Armenian communities. This paper proposes a methodology for exploiting these sources, as elaborated in the framework of a Ph.D. research project about Armenian colophon formulae. Firstly, the reader is briefly introduced to the corpus of Armenian colophons and then, to the purposes of our project. In the third place, we describe our methodology, relying on lemmatization and modelling of patterns into automata. Fourthly and finally, the whole process is illustrated by a basic case study, the occasion of which is taken to outline the kind of results that can be achieved by combining this methodology with a philologico-historical approach to colophons.

In this article the origin of oldest Baltic texts is related to the Prague court (1365-1380) of prince Butautas, who escaped in 1365 from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and in Konigsberg converted to Christianity. It is made paleographic, codicological and linguistic analysis of following manuscripts: Codices of the Public and University Library of Basel (sign. F.V.2, Universitätsbibliothek Basel), Gebet (sign. XVI.G.35, Národní knihovna), Logica parva (TM 660, Antiquariat Les Enluminures). The origin of last manuscript is connected with Petrus Turnau, author of the manuscript Ordo religionis Ecclesie Orientalis  sive Grecorum etc. Per Petrum prutenum ibidem visus, sive examinatus in hac quoque forma plena fide conscriptus Anno incarnacionis domini M°CCCCxxiii°. Old Prussian Language in manuscripts is present in colophons.

In a former article (« The Geometric graves of Colophon after the excavations of H. Goldman, 1922. Reflexions on the burial customs of early Iron Age Ionia. », in A. Mazarakis Ainian (éd.), The Dark Ages Revisited. From the Dark Ages to the Rise of the Polis. Proceedings of the International Symposium in Memory of William D.E. Coulton, Volos, June 2007, Volos, 2011, 785-799.), I presented the preliminary results of my examination of H. Goldman excavation diaries related to the now called North-East necropolis.
Further study led to the reconsideration of the chronology of this necropolis through the identification of the fibulae present in great number in the graves (both adult cremations and children inhumations).
These identifications shed a new light on the colophonian 'lydianizing' or 'orientalizing' aristocracy and to the social history of the ancient Greek polis at the beggining of the 7th century BC, shortly before some colophonians fled to settle at Siris-Polieion.

Most cuneiform literary tablets contain copies of texts on earlier tablets. However, many of them include a part that, by definition, cannot have been copied: the colophon. Especially in the Late Babylonian period, colophons feature many unusual and learned writings, which have usually been regarded as a display of the scribe’s learnedness and ingenuity. This article offers a study of one such formula, and lists all known examples of it – totaling almost thirty, some of which were previously undeciphered. The group study of these colophons shows that the specific way in which the formula is written depends on the city and period in which the scribe lived. Thus, in the case of the formula under study Achaemenid tablets from Uruk use very learned writings, whereas early Hellenistic tablets from the same city contain straightforward, syllabic spellings. This pattern of distribution suggests that the interpretation of colophons as playgrounds for the scribes’ own imagination should to some extent be reappraised.

Lors de la saison de fouilles de 2011 a été découverte dans le sanctuaire de Claros la partie gauche d’une stèle sur laquelle sont gravés un décret d’Aigai et le décret réponse de Colophon-sur-Mer. Cette découverte permet de restituer l’intégralité de ces textes dont la partie droite a été publiée par Ph. Gauthier en 1999. On y apprend que les juges de Colophon sont venus à l’initiative du roi Attale Ier.