JournalofCopticStudies 16 (2014) 69–87 doi: 10.2143/JCS.16.0.3066720 LEFT BEHIND: A RECENT DISCOVERY OF MANUSCRIPT FRAGMENTS IN THE WHITE MONASTERY CHURCH YALE MONASTIC ARCHAEOLOGY PROJECT BY STEPHEN J. DAVIS, GILLIAN PYKE, ELIZABETH DAVIDSON, MARY FARAG AND DANIEL SCHRIEVER WITH CONTRIBUTIONS BY LOUISE BLANKE This collaborative article focuses on recent excavations in the ancient church at the Monastery of St. Shenoute — i.e. the White Monastery — in Sohag, Egypt, as part of the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project (YMAP).1 1 Archaeological work at the Monastery of St. Shenoute — including survey, excava- tions, stratigraphic and architectural analysis, and art conservation — has taken place with the cooperation of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, first under the auspices of the Consortium for Research and Conservation at the Monasteries of the Sohag Region (2002–2007: directed by Elizabeth Bolman and Darlene Brooks Hedstrom), and more recently under the auspices of the Yale Monastic Archaeology Project (2008 to the present: directed by Stephen J. Davis and Gillian Pyke). Publications on the history of this work include: Peter Grossmann, Darlene Brooks-Hedstrom, Mohamed Abdal-Rassul, and Eliza- beth S. Bolman, “The Excavation in the Monastery of Apa Shenute (Dayr Anba Shinuda) at Suhag, with an Appendix on Documentary Photography at the Monasteries of Anba Shinuda and Anba Bishoi, Suhag,” DOP58 (2004), 371–82; Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, “An Archaeological Mission for the White Monastery,” Coptica 4 (2005), 1–26; Peter Grossman, Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom, Saad Mohamad Mohamad Osman, with a con- tribution by Hans-Christoph Noeske, and in collaboration with Mohamad Ahmad Abd al-Rahim, Tarik Said Abd al-Fatah, and Mahmud Abd al-Mugdi, “Second Report on the Excavation in the Monastery of Apa Shenute (Dayr Anba Shinuda) at Suhag,” DOP 63 (2009), 167–219; Elizabeth S. Bolman, Luigi De Cesaris, Gillian Pyke, Emiliano Ricchi, and Alberto Sucato, “A Late Antique Funerary Chapel at the White Monastery (Dayr Anba Shenouda), Sohag,” BulletinoftheAmericanResearchCenterinEgypt 195 (Summer 2009), 12–18; Elizabeth S. Bolman, Stephen J. Davis, and Gillian Pyke, “Shenoute and a Recently Discovered Tomb Chapel at the White Monastery,” JECS18.3 (2010), 453– 62; Stephen J. Davis, with contributions by L. Blanke, E. Bolman, D. Brooks Hedstrom, M. Burgoyne, T. Herbich, B. Layton, S. Mohammed, G. Pyke, and P. Sheehan, “Archaeol- ogy at the White Monastery, 2005–2010,” Coptica 9 (2010), 25–58; Elizabeth S. Bolman, Stephen J. Davis, Luigi De Cesaris, Father Maximous el-Anthony, Gillian Pyke, Emiliano Ricchi, Alberto Sucato, and Nicholas Warner, with contributions by Mohammed Abdel Rahim, Louise Blanke, Wendy Dolling, Mohammed Khalifa, Saad Mohammed, and Anna Stevens, “The Tomb of St. Shenoute? More Results from the White Monastery (Dayr Anba Shenouda), Sohag,” BulletinoftheAmericanResearchCenterinEgypt 198 (Spring 2011), 31–38. 997680.indb7680.indb 6699 113/02/153/02/15 009:339:33 70 S.J. DAVIS – G. PYKE – E. DAVIDSON – M. FARAG – D. SCHRIEVER In it, we report on the discovery of manuscript fragments that shed light on the history of the White Monastery library, a collection that contained over 1,000 books, the largest in medieval Egypt.2 A large percentage of extant Coptic literature — including the writings of the monastic leader Shenoute — originally derived from that collection, and as a result the monastery has played a central role in the development of Coptic studies as a historical field. Our paper has four parts. First, we describe the archaeological context, and our methods of excavation, cataloguing, and photographic documen- tation. Second, we report on the data discovered, including the material and number of fragments, the languages and scripts represented, patterns of ornamentation, and text types. Third, we present a case study related to the discovery of a Coptic fragment that belongs to the Shenoutean corpus. Fourth and finally, we draw conclusions about the implications of this find for our knowledge of the textual and architectural history of the site, including the light it sheds on where manuscripts were stored in the monastery. The Excavation of the So-called “Candle Room” in the White Monastery Church Since 2006, Bentley Layton (Yale University), in collaboration with architect Michael Burgoyne, has led a project to document the architec- ture of the church.3 Their goal has been to record the current state of the building and in the process to reconstruct its earlier stages of develop- ment, including restoration work performed by the Comité de conserva- tion des monuments de l’art arabe and the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) during the twentieth century.4 One of the areas still to 2 On this library, see Tito Orlandi, “The Library of the Monastery of Saint Shenute at Atripe,” in: Arno Egberts, Brian P. Muhs, and Jacques van der Vliet (eds.), Perspectives onPanopolis:AnEgyptianTownfromAlexandertheGreattotheArabConquest, Leiden/ Boston 2002, 211–232; and Stephen Emmel, “The Library of the White Monastery in Upper Egypt,” in: Harald Froschauer and Cornelia Römer (eds.), Spätantiken Biblio- theken:LebenundLesenindenfrühenKlösternÄgyptens, Vienna 2008, 5–14. 3 The authors would like to thank Bentley Layton for his valuable contributions to the work of YMAP and the preparation of this article. 4 On the restoration of the White Monastery Church by the Comité in the early twen- tieth century, see Cédric Meurice, “L’intervention du Comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe au couvent Blanc de Sohag,” in: Anne Boud’hors and Catherine Louis (eds.), ÉtudescoptesXI:Treizièmejournéed’études(Marseille,7–9juin2007), CBC 17, Paris 2009, 1–12. The SCA’s conservation and reconstruction of the church in the 1980s and 997680.indb7680.indb 7700 113/02/153/02/15 009:339:33 RECENT DISCOVERY OF MANUSCRIPT FRAGMENTS IN THE WHITE MONASTERY 71 be surveyed was a wall recess filled with rubble at the south end of the east wall of a room located in the northeast corner of the church, at the top of a second flight of stairs to the north of the sanctuary. In recent times, this room had been used for the storage of charcoal and used can- dles, and as a result it has come to be commonly designated as the “Can- dle Room” [Figs. 1 and 2]. The investigators suspected that the recess might provide access to a space under the northeast staircase that had not yet been recorded. An archaeological investigation of the recess and the floor of the room was undertaken by archaeologists Gillian Pyke and Louise Blanke in 2011 and 2012, starting with the floor in order to avoid cross-contamination of archaeological deposits. The excavation of the Candle Room floor took place December 7–11, 2011. First, the stored contents of the room were removed and tempo- rarily relocated to the roof of the church for the duration of the work. These contents included a number of woven plastic mats that had cov- ered the entire floor surface, forming a separation layer between the upper modern material (e.g. charcoal and candles) and earlier deposits. All deposits below the mats were treated as archaeological in nature and excavated using a single-context method consistent with that used by YMAP throughout the White Monastery. Each discrete feature and deposit was identified using a locus number and fully documented in terms of its location, size, shape, identification and composition, associated finds, and relationship to other features via a locus sheet, photo-documentation, and a 1:20 plan. Within each locus, finds of each distinct material (i.e. bone, pottery, charcoal etc.) were allocated a unique find number (prefixed WM) within the overall site recording system. The first deposit (Locus 1128) was a 1cm thick layer of dust that cov- ered the whole room and contained modern materials, such as fragments of floor plaster, brick, candle, charcoal, newspaper, cardboard, and folded 1990s is documented in a set of unpublished Arabic-language reports filed at the White Monastery inspectorate. The two most detailed accounts of this work are: (1) Muḥammad ‘Abd al-Rasūl Muḥammad, Jamāl Ḥamādah al-Baṣīlī, and ‘Alā’ al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir Zakī (eds.), Taqrīr‘ana‘mālal-tablīṭbi-l-Dayral-Abyaḍal-atharī [ReportonthePavement Work at the Ancient White Monastery], 31pp. (covering the years 1984 to 1996); and Muḥammad ‘Abd al-Rasūl Muḥammad, ed., Iktishāfātal-athariyabiḥafā’irminṭaqatal- Dayral-AbyaḍgharbSūhāj [TheArchaeologicalDiscoveriesinExcavationsintheDistrict oftheWhiteMonastery,westofSohag], 92pp. (covering the years 1986 to 1993). Copies of these two reports were made available to Stephen J. Davis and Gillian Pyke of YMAP in December 2011. Davis has privately produced tables of contents in English for both and has begun work on summaries/translations of their contents as a basis for future study. 997680.indb7680.indb 7711 113/02/153/02/15 009:339:33 72 S.J. DAVIS – G. PYKE – E. DAVIDSON – M. FARAG – D. SCHRIEVER pieces of paper with prayers written in Arabic (petitions left by recent visitors). In addition, a few ancient sherds of pottery were recovered. Below this deposit, three breaks in the plaster floor were found: a large one running in parallel to the north wall (Locus 1129), a smaller one in the southwestern corner (Locus 1130) and one in the western central part of the floor (Locus 1131) [Fig. 3]. Fragments of parchment and paper with Coptic or Arabic writing, as well as some fragments of textile and leather, were found in all four of these loci (the upper layer of dust and the three breaks in the plaster floor beneath). These fragments were recovered in three stages. Many were handpicked from the deposits prior to sieving, others were identified and separated as a result of sieving, and still others were handpicked from the already sieved material in the better-lit conditions of the expedition workroom. The first two stages were performed by Pyke and Blanke, with Stephen Davis assisting.