The Jacques (or Jack) Mosseri Collection arrived in Cambridge in 2006. After Schechter brought his famed hoard to Cambridge, Mosseri, a prominent member of Egypt’s Jewish community with a keen interest in its history, and knowing that other manuscripts had been buried, set about retrieving these from various places. Following his death, and with his family leaving Egypt, scholars lost track of the collection, but it re-emerged in the... Read More
Ben Outhwaite
on Fri 7 May 2021
Has tags: bulla, Dunash b. Labrat, Genizah Fragments, Gershom, Isaac Luria, Moses Maimonides, Mosseri, podcast, Stefan Reif
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Thu 6 May 2021
Languages Are Good For Us ● By Sophie Hardach ● Head of Zeus, 2021
Fustat’s multilingual community and the practice of stashing away sacred but worn out manuscripts make an appearance in novelist and former Reuters journalist Sophie Hardach’s new book, Languages Are Good For Us (2021). The book, written for a general audience interested in ‘the strange and wonderful ways in which humans have used languages’ is bursting with fascinating stories, ranging from cuneiform tablets, Linear B, the activities of medieval monks, and trading languages, to fairy... Read More
Has tags: Book, Genizah Fragments, language
Melonie Schmierer-Lee
on Wed 5 May 2021
The researchers of the GRU, toiling away with their noses to the manuscript coalface, are ideally placed to discover new and interesting fragments. Is that another scrap of Ben Sira? Maimonides’ handwriting? A join between two pieces, a drawing of a sailing boat, or an amusing stain? We discuss it over coffee, and chat about it in our office messaging system, and occasionally one might be written up for posterity in our long-running Fragment of the Month series. The others... Read More
Has tags: drawing, Genizah Fragments, Littman