I know that some friends and colleagues from Armenia are reading this blog, so I am pleased to invite you to a lecture I will give on May 12, 2018 from 12 o’clock at the Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (Matenadaran) in Yerevan.

The lecture is entitled “From Fragments to Codices: The Reconstruction of the Library of the White Monastery.” Here is the abstract:

“During the 12^th century, an Armenian community settled in the Monastery of Apa Shenoute, commonly known as the White Monastery, situated in Upper Egypt near modern-day Sohag. As a sign of their presence, the Armenians left a series of astonishing frescoes, which document their journey on the Nile, far away from their native lands. Alin Suciu’s paper introduces the monastery where the Armenian community once lived, and the vital role played by its library in the preservation of Coptic literature. During the period when the Armenians lived there, the White Monastery possessed the largest Christian library in Egypt, estimated to ca. 1000 codices. Unfortunately, the manuscripts have survived dismembered and scattered all over the world. As the library of this monastery probably contained copies of most ecclesiastical works existing in Coptic, the codicological reconstruction of its manuscripts is, to a certain extent, coextensive with the reconstruction of Coptic literature. The lecture focuses on the dispersal of the library of the Monastery of Apa Shenoute in modern times, and some of the problems that we encounter in the attempt to piece together its codices.”

The announcement on the Matenadaran website (in Armenian only).