PAST – Percorsi, Strumenti e Temi di Archeologia Direzione della collana Carlo Citter (Siena) Massimiliano David (Bologna) Donatella Nuzzo (Bari) Maria Carla Somma (Chieti) Francesca Romana Stasolla (Roma) Comitato scientifico Andrzej Buko (Varsavia) Neil Christie (Leichester) Francisca Feraudi-Gruénais (Heidelberg) Dale Kinney (New York) Mats Roslund (Lund) Miljenko Jurković (Zagabria) Anne Nissen (Paris) Askold Ivantchik (Mosca) This volume, which is one of the scientific outcomes of the ERC Advanced project ‘PAThs’ – ‘Tracking Papy- rus and Parchment Paths: An Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature. Literary Texts in their Geographical Context: Production, Copying, Usage, Dissemination and Storage’, has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme, grant no. 687567. I testi pubblicati nella collana sono soggetti a valutazione secondo la procedura del doppio blind referee In copertina: P. Mich. 5421 e una veduta di Karanis © Roma 2020, Edizioni Quasar di Severino Tognon S.r.l. via Ajaccio 41-43, 00198 Roma - tel 0685358444 email: [email protected] eISBN 978-88-5491-058-4 Coptic Literature in Context (4th-13th cent.): Cultural Landscape, Literary Production, and Manuscript Archaeology Proceedings of the Third Conference of the ERC Project “Tracking Papyrus and Parchment Paths: An Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature. Literary Texts in their Geographical Context (‘PAThs’)”. edited by Paola Buzi Edizioni Quasar Table of Contents Paola Buzi The Places of Coptic Literary Manuscripts: Real and Imaginary Landscapes. Theoretical Reflections in Guise of Introduction 7 Part I The Geography of Coptic Literature: Archaeological Contexts, Cultural Landscapes, Literary Texts, and Book Forms Jean-Luc Fournet Temples in Late Antique Egypt: Cultic Heritage between Ideology, Pragmatism, and Artistic Recycling 29 Tito Orlandi Localisation and Construction of Churches in Coptic Literature 51 Francesco Valerio Scribes and Scripts in the Library of the Monastery of the Archangel Michael at Phantoou. Two Case Studies 63 Eva Subías Further Reflections on the Byzantine Fortress at Oxyrhynchus: Martyrial and Funerary Church, Monastery and Arab Fort 77 Frank Feder Manuscripts Wanting Homes: Early Biblical Manuscripts from Hermoupolis Magna and Antinoupolis 93 Tea Ghigo, Sofía Torallas Tovar Between Literary and Documentary Practises: The Montserrat Codex Miscellaneus (Inv. Nos. 126‐178, 292, 338) and the Material Investigation of Its Inks 101 Nathan Carlig The Achmîm Papyri: Codicological Study and Reconstruction Attempt 115 Christian H. Bull The Panopolis Connection: The Pachomian Federation as Context for the Nag Hammadi Codices 133 Vicente Barba Colmenero, Sofía Torallas Tovar Archaeological and Epigraphic Survey of the Coptic Monastery at Qubbet el-Hawa (Aswan) 149 Andrea Hasznos No Literary Manuscripts from Elephantine? 161 Agostino Soldati A New Bifolium from the Monastery of Anbā Hadrà (Ms. Roma, Biblioteca Corsiniana, 280.C1) 169 Adam Łajtar Literary Manuscripts and Writing Supports in Christian Nubia in Context. Three Case Studies: Qasr Ibrim, Faras, Dongola 183 Part II Theoretical Approaches, New Methodologies, and Protocols of Analysis Applied to Coptic Literary Manuscripts and Their Archaeological Context Hugo Lundhaug The Fluid Transmission of Apocrypha in Egyptian Monasteries 213 Caroline T. Schroeder Understanding Space and Place through Digital Text Analysis 229 Angelo Colonna Contextualising Northern Egypt in Late Antiquity: An Archaeological Perspective from Western Delta 243 Ilaria Rossetti Reconstructing the Late Antique and Early Mediaeval Settlement Dynamics. Some Cases from the Eastern Delta 261 Tea Ghigo, Ira Rabin Gaining Perspective into Manuscripts Materiality: The Contribution of Archaeometry to the Study of the Inks of the White Monastery Leaves 273 Eliana Dal Sasso A Preliminary Census of Coptic Bookbindings 283 Francesco Berno For a Periodization of Coptic Literature: Methodological Issues, Manuscript Evidence, Open Questions 295 Julian Bogdani Defining Methodologies and Protocols for the Use and Re-use of Archaeological Legacy Data. The Case Study of the Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature 311 The Places of Coptic Literary Manuscripts: Real and Imaginary Landscapes. Theoretical Reflections in Guise of Introduction* Paola Buzi – Sapienza Università di Roma Abstract Coptic literary manuscripts – and therefore also the works contained in them – have been created, manufactured, exchanged, stored, and discovered in physical places. The majority of these places are a re-occupation of older ones. Cells, churches, basilicas, monasteries, and even villages were very often built inside the temples or their temene, re-using and taking advantage of their walls and internal subdivisions, and only in some cases involved partial or complete destruction. The well-known monk Frange, who was involved in several activities related to book production, chose as dwelling a pharaonic tomb, and lived in surroundings that were much more crowded than one might have imagined for a ‘hermit’, as the cells of other monks located only a very short distance from his dwelling. This state of affairs tells much about the modes of book production and circulation of culture in Chris- tian Egypt. This article – that also represents an introduction to the volume – aims to demonstrate that, when one wants to recon- struct the manuscript tradition of Christian Egypt, an investigation of the archaeological context is essential. In fact, in extreme cases, when manuscripts and texts have not survived, it is precisely the careful analysis of the geo-archaeological contexts that en- ables the reconstruction of a cultural landscape, a landscape where books were certainly produced but that fate did not preserve. Keywords Coptic manuscript tradition, archaeological context, manuscript archaeology, cognitive map. 1. Premise The present volume is mainly the outcome of the international conference Coptic Literature in Context. The Contexts of Coptic Literature. Late Antique Egypt in a Dialogue between Literature, Archaeology, and Digital Humanities, which took place at Sapienza Università di Roma on 25-27 February 2019, representing the third annual conference organised by the ‘PAThs’ project.1 As its title proclaimed, the aim the conference – exactly like that of the ‘PAThs’ project itself – was to create an effective dialogue among scholars active in different disciplines – including codicology, palaeography, papyrology, literature, history of early Christianity, epigraphy, art, archaeology, and ar- chaeom etry – and their related methodologies, in order to achieve a multispectral knowledge of late antique Egypt, in the consciousness that only a transdisciplinary approach may lead to the comprehen- sion of complex cultural phenomena such as the production of the ‘Coptic book’. Manuscripts – in their double nature of carriers of texts (and therefore of intellectual products) and material objects – were * The present article is one of the scientific outcomes of the ERC Advanced project ‘PAThs’ – ‘Tracking Papyrus and Parchment Paths: An Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature. Literary Texts in their Geographical Context: Production, Copying, Usage, Dissemination and Storage’, funded by the European Research Council, Horizon 2020 programme, project no. 687567 (PI: Paola Buzi, Sapienza Università di Roma), http://paths.uniroma1.it. 1 See http://paths.uniroma1.it/, where a detailed programme is also available. For a report of the conference, see Valerio 2019, 66-68. The two previous meetings – the conference The Coptic book between the 6th and the 8th century, Sapienza Università di Roma - Academia Belgica, 21-22 February 2017, and the round table Linking Manuscripts from the Coptic, Ethiopian and Syriac do- main: Present and Future Synergy Strategies, organised in collaboration with the projects Beta maṣāḥǝft and TraCES (Hamburg), Universität Hamburg, 23-24 February – have been published respectively in Adamantius 24 (2018), 6-210, and Linking Manuscripts from the Coptic, Ethiopian and Syriac Domain: Present and Future Synergy Strategies, COMSt Bulletin 4.1 (Spring 2018), 39-58; 69-78; 115-120, https://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/en/comst/publications/bulletin/bulletin4-1.html. 8 P B of course at the core of the meeting, but always in their connection with the geo-archaeological context of pro- duction, circulation and storage.2 This connection is exactly the purpose for which the ‘PAThs’ project was conceived. ‘PAThs’ – an abbre- viation, for ‘Tracking Papyrus and Parchment Paths: An Archaeological Atlas of Coptic Literature. Literary Tex- ts in their Geographical Context. Production, Copying, Usage, Dissemination and Storage’ – aims to provide an in-depth diachronic understanding and effective repre- sentation of the geography of Coptic literary production, Fig. 1. Logo of the 'PAThs' project. which is the corpus of writings, with almost exclusively religious content (Bible, homilies, hagiographies, canons, lives, etc.), produced in Egypt between the third and the thirteenth centuries in Coptic (i.e. the last phase of Ancient Egyptian language). The complex nature of the numerous scientific disciplines involved in ‘PAThs’ – mainly philol- ogy, codicology, and literature on the one side and archaeology, and geography on the other – is well represented by its logo (Fig. 1), which is inspired by the devotional footprints inscribed by pilgrims, monks, and devout people, not necessarily Christian,