Manuscripts and Archives Studies in Manuscript Cultures
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Manuscripts and Archives Studies in Manuscript Cultures Edited by Michael Friedrich Harunaga Isaacson Jörg B. Quenzer Volume 11 Manuscripts and Archives Comparative Views on Record-Keeping Edited by Alessandro Bausi, Christian Brockmann, Michael Friedrich, Sabine Kienitz ISBN 978-3-11-054136-6 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-054139-7 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-054157-1 ISSN 2365-9696 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2018 Alessandro Bausi, Christian Brockmann, Michael Friedrich, Sabine Kienitz, published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston. The book is published with open access at degruyter.com. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com | Gianfranco Fiaccadori (1957–2015) in memoriam Contents The Editors Preface | IX Prologue: Contemporary Practices of Archiving Dietmar Schenk How to Distinguish between Manuscripts and Archival Records: A Study in Ar- chival Theory | 3 Charles Ramble Archives from Tibet and the Himalayan Borderlands: Notes on Form and Con- tent | 19 The Ancient World up to Late Antiquity Cécile Michel Constitution, Contents, Filing and Use of Private Archives: The Case of the Old Assyrian Archives (nineteenth century BCE) | 43 Fredrik Hagen, with a contribution by Daniel Soliman Archives in Ancient Egypt, 2500–1000 BCE | 71 Jean-Luc Fournet Archives and Libraries in Greco-Roman Egypt | 171 Max Jakob Fölster Libraries and Archives in the Former Han Dynasty (206 BCE–9 CE): Arguing for a Distinction |201 Alberto Camplani Setting a Bishopric / Arranging an Archive: Traces of Archival Activity in the Bishopric of Alexandria and Antioch | 231 VIII | Contents Thomas Graumann Documents, Acts and Archival Habits in Early Christian Church Councils: A Case Study | 273 The Middle Ages Mikael S. Adolphson Weighing in on Evidence: Documents and Literary Manuscripts in Early Medieval Japan | 297 Michael Grünbart Securing and Preserving Written Documents in Byzantium | 319 Jürgen Paul Archival Practices in the Muslim World prior to 1500 | 339 Christian Müller The Power of the Pen: Cadis and their Archives From Writings to Registering Proof of a previous Action taken | 361 Emmanuel Francis Indian Copper-Plate Grants: Inscriptions or Documents? | 387 Epilogue: Why and how to compare Markus Friedrich Epilogue: Archives and Archiving across Cultures―Towards a Matrix of Analysis |421 List of Contributors | 446 Indices | 449 Preface Manuscripts and Archives is not only the name of a reading room at Yale University Library, but also the title of a British Library catalogue, which spans ‘Manuscripts and unpublished documents; Personal papers, correspondence and diaries; Family and estate papers; India Office Records and Private Papers; India Office Prints, Drawings and Paintings; Photographs’.1 The surprising company of manuscripts, i.e. single written artefacts, and archives, i.e. bodies of documents, is easily under- stood once the use of the latter term is not restricted to state institutions such as national archives, but seen as comprising all sorts of materials short of or even in- cluding printed books. Considerations of this kind led scholars at the Centre for the Study of Manu- script Cultures at the University of Hamburg (CSMC) to organise a conference enti- tled Manuscripts and Archives from 19 to 22 November 2014. In their announcement, they wrote: Archives are collections of administrative, legal, commercial and other records or the space where they are located. They have become ubiquitous in the modern world, but came into being not much later than the invention of writing. Following Foucault, who first used the word archive in a metaphorical sense as ‘the general system of the formation and transfor- mation of statements’ in his Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), postmodern theorists have tried to exploit the potential of this concept and initiated the ‘archival turn’. In recent years, however, archives have attracted the attention of anthropologists and historians of different denominations attempting to treat them as historical objects and ‘ground’ them again in real institutions. The archive is traditionally considered the counterpart of the library, the one storing rec- ords, the other housing literary works or ‘books’. There is evidence, however, that this in- stitutional division of labour is neither natural nor necessary, but reflects certain historical and social constellations. In societies with elite literacy, for example, records, letters as well as books and even artefacts may be kept together in the same place, or books may be used for recording important events and legal acts in the margins and in the blanks. On the other hand, complex organisations such as courts, states, temples, monasteries and others as a rule develop institutional ways to deal with the documents they produce, from exclusive places of storage to employment of professionals whose only task is to guard them and to keep them for eventual use. The conference will explore the complex topic of the archive in a historical, systematic and comparative dimension and try to contextualise it in the broader context of manuscript cul- tures by addressing the following questions: How, by whom and for which purpose are || 1 http://searcharchives.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=1&dstmp=151180 4535605&vid=IAMS_VU2&fromLogin=true (accessed on 27/11/2017) https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110541397-001, © 2018 Alessandro Bausi, Christian Brockmann, Michael Friedrich, Sabine Kienitz published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. X | Preface archival records produced? Is there any observable difference between literary manuscripts concerning materials, formats or producers (scribes)? Where are they stored, how organ- ised? Are there other objects stored together with the records? Which practices are involved inside the archive, and how and by whom are they used? Is there a term or a concept of the archive as opposed to library, museum, cabinet (of curiosities) and the like? Is there a rela- tion to historiography? Is there an archival science (archivology)? Eight of the seventeen original papers have been published in this volume in addi- tion to five other contributions that have been specially commissioned for it. The saddest lacuna here is the paper by Gianfranco Fiaccadori (1957–2015) entitled ‘Ar- chives in Ethiopia and Eritrea: from Antiquity to Early Modern. A Historical Survey’ as the author passed away before he could deliver it to print. As a tribute to him, we have dedicated this volume to the memory of this great scholar.2 The ‘Prologue’ of this work contrasts two contemporary modes of archiving: ‘modern’ institutional practices represented by Archival Science on the one hand and ‘traditional’ ways of keeping documents on the other hand, such as those used in Himalayan villages. This Gleichzeitigkeit des Ungleichzeitigen shows that, despite all differences over time and space, the desire to store written artefacts and to do so in a more or less organised manner for at least some time is deeply rooted in many cultures that use the technique of writing. Dietmar Schenk addresses archival prac- tices from a practitioner’s point of view. Drawing on classical authors from Archival Science since the late nineteenth century and on more recent developments in this field, he emphasises a broader interpretation of the famous ‘principle of prove- nance’, which requires the archiver to keep any items together that come from one and the same source. Since these items may not just include what are traditionally considered to be archival records, but literary manuscripts, non-textual artefacts and other objects as well, he suggests taking this as a starting point for comparison. In stark contrast to these ‘modern’ notions, archival practices in remote areas with their own distinct traditions are little known in the outside world. Charles Ramble provides insights into one of these traditions, namely the archives of Tibetan || 2 See Alessandro Bausi, ‘Obituary: Gianfranco Fiaccadori (1957-2015)’, in Scrinium: Journal of Patro- logy and Critical Hagiography, 11 (2015), 2–3; Paul Marie Glaouaër, ‘In memoriam: Gianfranco Fiac- cadori’, in Pount, 9 (2015 = Écrits de la mer Rouge), 241–242; Beatrice Daskas and Agostino Soldati, ‘In memoriam Gianfranco Fiaccadori (1957-2015)’, in Aethiopica, 18 (2015), 200–213, with biblio- graphy; still in print, Alessandro Bausi, ‘”Bisanzio e il regno di Aksum”’: il contributo di Gianfranco Fiaccadori agli studi etiopici’, in Agostino Soldati and Pierluigi Valsecchi (eds), Persona, trascen- denza e poteri in Africa - Person, transcendence, powers in Africa. In memoria di Gianfranco Fiacca- dori. Atti del Secondo Dies Academicus della Classe di Studi Africani della Accademia Ambrosiana, Milano, Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 12–14 novembre 2015 (Africana Ambrosiana, 2), Milano: Accademia Ambrosiana. Preface | XI communities in the Himalayas. He illustrates the differences between books and