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57-635: Before the discovery of these materials, there was only limited documentary evidence that Jews had settled in that area, and little that provided insight on their culture and daily life. Therefore, researchers deem this collection the most important finding of documentary sources since the discovery of the Cairo Geniza more than 100 years prior. In 2013, the National Library of Israel announced that it had purchased 29 pages from this cache of documents and another 250 or so in 2016. In 2020, they became part of

114-621: A document written on sheets of such material, joined side by side and rolled up into a scroll , an early form of a book. Papyrus was first known to have been used in Egypt (at least as far back as the First Dynasty ), as the papyrus plant was once abundant across the Nile Delta . It was also used throughout the Mediterranean region. Apart from writing material, ancient Egyptians employed papyrus in

171-409: A hard surface with their edges slightly overlapping, and then another layer of strips is laid on top at right angles. The strips may have been soaked in water long enough for decomposition to begin, perhaps increasing adhesion, but this is not certain. The two layers possibly were glued together. While still moist, the two layers were hammered together, mashing the layers into a single sheet. The sheet

228-618: A loanword of unknown (perhaps Pre-Greek ) origin. Greek has a second word for it, βύβλος ( byblos ), said to derive from the name of the Phoenician city of Byblos . The Greek writer Theophrastus , who flourished during the 4th century BCE, uses papyros when referring to the plant used as a foodstuff and byblos for the same plant when used for nonfood products, such as cordage, basketry, or writing surfaces. The more specific term βίβλος biblos , which finds its way into English in such words as 'bibliography', 'bibliophile', and 'bible', refers to

285-667: A majority of them hail from the northern Afghan regions of Bamiyan , Ghur, Rob, and Balkh. The contents were found in a cave close to the Iran-Uzbekistan border by a group of locals; this archive likely belonged to a family of Jewish traders who participated in the Silk Road trade in the region. The details surrounding their travel from these areas to their place of discovery to arriving at the locations where they’re currently kept are subject to much speculation. However, because they circulated amongst antiquities dealers before their purchase by

342-663: A matter of decades; a 200-year-old papyrus was considered extraordinary. Imported papyrus once commonplace in Greece and Italy has since deteriorated beyond repair, but papyri are still being found in Egypt; extraordinary examples include the Elephantine papyri and the famous finds at Oxyrhynchus and Nag Hammadi . The Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum , containing the library of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus , Julius Caesar 's father-in-law,

399-467: A space, nor do the majority seem to share an origin in terms of location and time period; they are presently linked together due to their mass purchase by the National Library of Israel. Nonetheless, the usage of the misnomer continues out of convenience and its evocation of the wider-known Cairo Genizah. In terms of geographic provenance,  while many of these objects’ origins are uncertain, 

456-486: A wide range of content. Among the literary fragments, the most popular categories are liturgical texts, Biblical and related texts, and Rabbinic literature. There are also materials with philosophical, scientific, mystical, and linguistic writings. Among the non-literary items there are legal documents and private letters. Also found were school exercises and merchants' account books, as well as communal records of various sorts. The normal practice for genizot (pl. of genizah)

513-442: Is of highly rot-resistant cellulose , but storage in humid conditions can result in molds attacking and destroying the material. Library papyrus rolls were stored in wooden boxes and chests made in the form of statues. Papyrus scrolls were organized according to subject or author and identified with clay labels that specified their contents without having to unroll the scroll. In European conditions, papyrus seems to have lasted only

570-598: Is the subject of a citizen-science project on the website Zooniverse . Project volunteers are enlisted to sort digitized fragments of the Cairo Genizah, in order to facilitate research on the fragments. The Friedberg Geniza Project is of great importance to research inasmuch as it includes all Genizah fragments and bibliographical data relating to them. Since 1986, the Princeton Geniza Lab has been studying and digitizing geniza manuscripts. Their projects include

627-626: The Cairo Genizah , is a collection of some 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the genizah or storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo , Egypt . These manuscripts span the entire period of Middle-Eastern, North African, and Andalusian Jewish history between the 6th and 19th centuries CE, and comprise the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in

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684-650: The Cambridge Antiquarian Society , one of the Papyri Graecae Magicae V, translated into English with commentary in 1853. Papyrus was made in several qualities and prices. Pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville described six variations of papyrus that were sold in the Roman market of the day. These were graded by quality based on how fine, firm, white, and smooth the writing surface was. Grades ranged from

741-798: The Hungarian Academy of Sciences , the National Library of Russia , Alliance Israélite Universelle , the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Library at the University of Haifa and multiple private collections around the world. Most fragments come from the geniza chamber of the Ben Ezra Synagogue, but additional fragments were found at excavation sites near the synagogue and in the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo. Modern Cairo Geniza manuscript collections include some old documents that collectors bought in Egypt in

798-569: The Islamic world , which originally learned of it from the Chinese. By the 12th century, parchment and paper were in use in the Byzantine Empire , but papyrus was still an option. Until the middle of the 19th century, only some isolated documents written on papyrus were known, and museums simply showed them as curiosities. They did not contain literary works. The first modern discovery of papyri rolls

855-537: The Kievian Letter . The Genizah remained in use until it was emptied by Western scholars eager for its material. A number of other genizot have provided smaller discoveries across the Old World, notably Italian ones such as that of Perugia . An 11th-century Afghan Geniza was found in 2011. The Cairo Genizah fragments were extensively studied, cataloged and translated by Paul E. Kahle . His book, The Cairo Geniza

912-560: The Letter of the Karaite elders of Ascalon ), are somewhat smaller, but still impressive: Goitein estimated their size at "about 10,000 items of some length, of which 7,000 are self-contained units large enough to be regarded as documents of historical value. Only half of these are preserved more or less completely." The number of documents added to the Genizah changed throughout the years. For example,

969-587: The Merovingian chancery was with a document from 692 A.D., though it was known in Gaul until the middle of the following century. The latest certain dates for the use of papyrus in Europe are 1057 for a papal decree (typically conservative, all papal bulls were on papyrus until 1022), under Pope Victor II , and 1087 for an Arabic document. Its use in Egypt continued until it was replaced by less expensive paper introduced by

1026-598: The Quran . Of particular interest to biblical scholars are several incomplete manuscripts of the original Hebrew version of Sirach . Solomon Schechter also found two fragments of the Damascus Document , other fragments of which were later found among the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran . The non-literary materials, which include court documents, legal writings, and the correspondence of the local Jewish community (such as

1083-451: The Scottish scholars and twin sisters Agnes S. Lewis and Margaret D. Gibson returned from Egypt with fragments from the Genizah they considered to be of interest, and showed them to Solomon Schechter "their irrepressibly curious rabbinical friend" at Cambridge. Schechter, already aware of the Genizah but not of its significance, immediately recognized the importance of the material. With

1140-673: The University of Oxford has a collection of 25,000 Genizah folios. Westminster College in Cambridge held 1,700 fragments, which were deposited by Lewis and Gibson in 1896. In 2013 the two Oxbridge libraries, the Bodleian Library at Oxford and Cambridge University Library , joined together to raise funds to buy the Westminster collection (now renamed the Lewis-Gibson collection) after it

1197-560: The 18th century, a library of ancient papyri was found in Herculaneum , ripples of expectation spread among the learned men of the time. However, since these papyri were badly charred, their unscrolling and deciphering are still going on today. Papyrus was made from the stem of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus . The outer rind was first removed, and the sticky fibrous inner pith is cut lengthwise into thin strips about 40 cm (16 in) long. The strips were then placed side by side on

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1254-461: The Afghan Genizah is documentary in nature. These include administrative documents, account books, miscellaneous lists, letters, and legal documents. These documentary files can generally be split up into two groups: the first includes documents from the early 11th century while the second group includes documents from the end of the 12th century and early 13th century. A majority of the documents in

1311-531: The Arts and Humanities Research Council and European Research Council-funded University of Oxford-based research project Invisible East. A genizah is a storeroom near a synagogue or Jewish cemetery that is dedicated to Jewish documents; spaces like these were created because Jewish law bans the discarding of writings that bore the name of God. However, the manuscripts found in Afghanistan have no known association to such

1368-438: The Genizah fragments related to Jewish merchant Abraham Ben Yiju in the book In an Antique Land . Papyrus Papyrus ( / p ə ˈ p aɪ r ə s / pə- PY -rəs ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface . It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus , a wetland sedge . Papyrus (plural: papyri or papyruses ) can also refer to

1425-774: The Mediterranean region, especially during the 10th to 13th centuries. Manuscripts from the Cairo Geniza are now dispersed among a number of libraries, including the Cambridge University Library , the Jewish Theological Seminary of America , the John Rylands Library , the Bodleian Library , the University of Pennsylvania 's Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies , the British Library ,

1482-435: The National Library of Israel, it is highly likely that they were illegally trafficked from their places of origin. Therefore, a controversy exists around the ethics of their acquisition and digitization by the institution, with some scholars arguing that it normalizes their use outside of their country of origin and encourages academic interest, thus further incentivizing the illegal antiquities trade. Other scholars advocate for

1539-550: The Princeton Geniza Project, a database of more than 30,000 records and 4,600 transcriptions of geniza texts. In early 2021, under the leadership of director Marina Rustow and in partnership with Daniel Stoekl Ben Ezra , the Lab began exploring machine learning as a method of transcribing geniza documents, using handwritten text recognition applications. Indian anthropologist and writer Amitav Ghosh recounts his study of

1596-456: The analysis and mass distribution of this information in order to substantialize and remedy the current knowledge in circulation about the Islamic world because these documents showcase the pluralistic coexistence of Muslims and non-Muslims during that period. They are currently being investigated as part of the University of Oxford’s Invisible East project. The majority (more than eighty percent) of

1653-507: The codex form, and in the Greco-Roman world, it became common to cut sheets from papyrus rolls to form codices. Codices were an improvement on the papyrus scroll, as the papyrus was not pliable enough to fold without cracking, and a long roll, or scroll, was required to create large-volume texts. Papyrus had the advantage of being relatively cheap and easy to produce, but it was fragile and susceptible to both moisture and excessive dryness. Unless

1710-532: The construction of other artifacts , such as reed boats , mats , rope , sandals , and baskets . Papyrus was first manufactured in Egypt as far back as the third millennium BCE. The earliest archaeological evidence of papyrus was excavated in 2012 and 2013 at Wadi al-Jarf , an ancient Egyptian harbor located on the Red Sea coast. These documents, the Diary of Merer , date from c.  2560 –2550 BCE (end of

1767-513: The culture and language of their contemporary society. The documents are invaluable as evidence for how colloquial Arabic of this period was spoken and understood. They also demonstrate that the Jewish creators of the documents were part of their contemporary society: they practiced the same trades as their Muslim and Christian neighbors, including farming; they bought, sold, and rented properties. The importance of these materials for reconstructing

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1824-461: The early medieval period, despite difficulties in interpreting the currency units cited and other aspects of the data. They have invariably been cited in discussions of the medieval Islamic economy since the 1930s, when this aspect of the collection was researched, mostly by French scholars. Many of the items in Cairo Genizah are not a complete manuscript, but are instead a fragment of one or two leaves, many of which are damaged themselves. Similarly,

1881-545: The financial assistance of his Cambridge colleague and friend Charles Taylor , Schechter made an expedition to Egypt, where, with the assistance of the Chief Rabbi, he sorted and removed the greater part of the contents of the Genizah chamber. Agnes and Margaret joined him there en route to Sinai (their fourth visit in five years) and he showed them the chamber which Agnes reported was "simply indescribable". The Genizah fragments have now been archived in various libraries around

1938-473: The first group deal with a Bamyan family that lived during the early Ghaznavid Period. In addition to the documentary texts, the collection also includes fragments of religious and literary works in a variety of different languages. Included in these religious works is a collection of prayers written in early Judeo-Persian. In 2024 The Oldest Hebrew Book Ever Discovered Afghan Liturgical Quire Cairo Geniza The Cairo Geniza , alternatively spelled

1995-479: The inner bark of the papyrus plant. Papyrus is also the etymon of 'paper', a similar substance. In the Egyptian language , papyrus was called wadj ( w3ḏ ), tjufy ( ṯwfy ) , or djet ( ḏt ). The word for the material papyrus is also used to designate documents written on sheets of it, often rolled up into scrolls. The plural for such documents is papyri. Historical papyri are given identifying names – generally

2052-540: The latter half of the nineteenth century. The first European to note the collection was apparently Simon van Gelderen (a great-uncle of Heinrich Heine ), who visited the Ben Ezra synagogue and reported about the Cairo Genizah in 1752 or 1753. In 1864 the traveler and scholar Jacob Saphir visited the synagogue and explored the Genizah for two days; while he did not identify any specific item of significance he suggested that possibly valuable items might be in store. In 1896,

2109-440: The long strip scrolls required, several such sheets were united and placed so all the horizontal fibres parallel with the roll's length were on one side and all the vertical fibres on the other. Normally, texts were first written on the recto , the lines following the fibres, parallel to the long edges of the scroll. Secondarily, papyrus was often reused, writing across the fibres on the verso . One source used for determining

2166-416: The method by which papyrus was created in antiquity is through the examination of tombs in the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes , which housed a necropolis containing many murals displaying the process of papyrus-making. The Roman commander Pliny the Elder also describes the methods of preparing papyrus in his Naturalis Historia . In a dry climate , like that of Egypt, papyrus is stable, formed as it

2223-851: The name of the discoverer, first owner, or institution where they are kept – and numbered, such as " Papyrus Harris I ". Often an abbreviated form is used, such as "pHarris I". These documents provide important information on ancient writings; they give us the only extant copy of Menander , the Egyptian Book of the Dead , Egyptian treatises on medicine (the Ebers Papyrus ) and on surgery (the Edwin Smith papyrus ), Egyptian mathematical treatises (the Rhind papyrus ), and Egyptian folk tales (the Westcar Papyrus ). When, in

2280-547: The number of documents added were fewer between 1266 and circa 1500, when most of the Jewish community had moved north to the city of Cairo proper, and saw a rise around 1500 when the local community was increased by refugees from Spain . It was they who brought to Cairo several documents that shed a new light on the history of Khazaria and Kievan Rus' , namely, the Khazar Correspondence , the Schechter Letter , and

2337-439: The pages of a single manuscript often became separated. It is not uncommon to find the pages of one manuscript housed in three or four different modern libraries. On the other hand, non-literary writings often lost their value with the passage of time, and were left in the Genizah while still more or less intact. The materials comprise a vast number of texts, including many parts of Jewish religious writings and even fragments from

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2394-615: The papyrus was of perfect quality, the writing surface was irregular, and the range of media that could be used was also limited. Papyrus was gradually overtaken in Europe by a rival writing surface that rose in prominence known as parchment , which was made from animal skins . By the beginning of the fourth century A.D., the most important books began to be manufactured in parchment, and works worth preserving were transferred from papyrus to parchment. Parchment had significant advantages over papyrus, including higher durability in moist climates and being more conducive to writing on both sides of

2451-507: The reign of Khufu ). The papyrus rolls describe the last years of building the Great Pyramid of Giza . For multiple millennia, papyrus was commonly rolled into scrolls as a form of storage. However, at some point late in its history, papyrus began being collected together in the form of codices akin to the modern book. This may have been mimicking the book-form of codices created with parchment . Early Christian writers soon adopted

2508-685: The social and economic history for the period between 950 and 1250 cannot be overemphasized. Judaic scholar Shelomo Dov Goitein created an index for this time period which covers about 35,000 individuals. This included about 350 "prominent people," among them Maimonides and his son Abraham , 200 "better known families", and mentions of 450 professions and 450 goods. He identified material from Egypt, Israel , Lebanon , Syria (but not Damascus or Aleppo ), Tunisia , Sicily , and even covering trade with India . Cities mentioned range from Samarkand in Central Asia to Seville and Sijilmasa , Morocco to

2565-408: The superfine Augustan, which was produced in sheets of 13 digits (10 inches) wide, to the least expensive and most coarse, measuring six digits (four inches) wide. Materials deemed unusable for writing or less than six digits were considered commercial quality and were pasted edge to edge to be used only for wrapping. The English word "papyrus" derives, via Latin , from Greek πάπυρος ( papyros ),

2622-488: The surface. The main advantage of papyrus had been its cheaper raw material — the papyrus plant is easy to cultivate in a suitable climate and produces more writing material than animal hides (the most expensive books, made from foetal vellum would take up to dozens of bovine fetuses to produce). However, as trade networks declined, the availability of papyrus outside the range of the papyrus plant became limited and it thus lost its cost advantage. Papyrus' last appearance in

2679-547: The tourist trade was developed in 1962 by the Egyptian engineer Hassan Ragab using plants that had been reintroduced into Egypt in 1872 from France. Both Sicily and Egypt have centres of limited papyrus production. Papyrus is still used by communities living in the vicinity of swamps, to the extent that rural householders derive up to 75% of their income from swamp goods. Particularly in East and Central Africa, people harvest papyrus, which

2736-403: The west; from Aden north to Constantinople ; Europe not only is represented by the Mediterranean port cities of Narbonne , Marseilles , Genoa and Venice , but even Kiev and Rouen are occasionally mentioned. In particular the various records of payments to labourers for building maintenance and the like form by far the largest collection of records of day wages in the Islamic world for

2793-564: The wild. During the 1920s, when Egyptologist Battiscombe Gunn lived in Maadi , outside Cairo, he experimented with the manufacture of papyrus, growing the plant in his garden. He beat the sliced papyrus stalks between two layers of linen and produced successful examples of papyrus, one of which was exhibited in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The modern technique of papyrus production used in Egypt for

2850-400: The world. The Genizah texts are written in various languages, especially Hebrew , Arabic , and Aramaic , mainly on vellum and paper, but also on papyrus and cloth. In addition to containing Jewish religious texts such as Biblical , Talmudic , and later Rabbinic works (some in the original hands of the authors), the Genizah gives a detailed picture of the economic and cultural life of

2907-564: The world. The Taylor -Schechter collection at Cambridge is the largest, by far, single collection, with nearly 193,000 fragments (137,000 shelf-marks). There are a further 43,000 fragments at the Jewish Theological Seminary Library . The John Rylands University Library in Manchester holds a collection of over 11,000 fragments, which are currently being digitised and uploaded to an online archive. The Bodleian Library at

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2964-557: Was made at Herculaneum in 1752. Until then, the only papyri known had been a few surviving from medieval times. Scholarly investigations began with the Dutch historian Caspar Jacob Christiaan Reuvens (1793–1835). He wrote about the content of the Leyden papyrus , published in 1830. The first publication has been credited to the British scholar Charles Wycliffe Goodwin (1817–1878), who published for

3021-472: Was preserved by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius but has only been partially excavated. Sporadic attempts to revive the manufacture of papyrus have been made since the mid-18th century. Scottish explorer James Bruce experimented in the late 18th century with papyrus plants from Sudan , for papyrus had become extinct in Egypt. Also in the 18th century, Sicilian Saverio Landolina manufactured papyrus at Syracuse , where papyrus plants had continued to grow in

3078-551: Was published by Blackwell in 1958, with a second edition in 1959. Jewish bankers in Old Cairo used a double-entry bookkeeping system which predated any known usage of such a form in Italy, and whose records remain from the 11th century AD, found amongst the Cairo Geniza. The Cairo Genizah Collections at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

3135-485: Was put up for sale for £ 1.2 million. This is the first time the two libraries have collaborated for such a fundraising effort. Many of the fragments found in the Cairo Genizah may be dated to the early centuries of the second millennium CE, and there are a fair number of earlier items as well as a number of nineteenth-century pieces. The manuscripts in the Genizah include sacred and religious materials as well as great deal of secular writings. The Genizah materials include

3192-467: Was then dried under pressure. After drying, the sheet was polished with a rounded object, possibly a stone, seashell , or round hardwood. Sheets, or Mollema, could be cut to fit the obligatory size or glued together to create a longer roll. The point where the Mollema are joined with glue is called the kollesis. A wooden stick would be attached to the last sheet in a roll, making it easier to handle. To form

3249-616: Was to remove the contents periodically and bury them in a cemetery. Many of these documents were written in the Aramaic language using the Hebrew alphabet . As the Jews considered Hebrew to be the language of God, and the Hebrew script to be the literal writing of God, the texts could not be destroyed even long after they had served their purpose. The Jews who wrote the materials in the Genizah were familiar with

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