>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Pause ]
>> Fenella France: Thank you so much for being here.
I'm Dr. Fenella France, the chief of the Preservation, Research,
and Testing Division and on behalf of our director Mark Sweeney
and the Preservation Directorate we're pleased to host Father Justin
of the Sinai St. Catherine's Monastery Library
and Michael B. Toth President of B. Toth Associates
and they'll be discussing their seminal work
and digitally collecting, preserving and studying ancient texts
at the monastery in the Sinai desert.
Our division and the library are very proud
to continue our relationship with one of the world's oldest libraries
and such pioneering technical work.
When the Library of Congress was founded in 1800,
which we think is old, the abbots and monks
of St. Catherine's Monastery had already been preserving the world's
cultural heritage for well over a millennium.
Amidst the library's 150th anniversary
in 1950 a library supported team finished microfilming 1687
manuscripts and 1742 [phonetic] automonfilimins
in the monastery library that are now available
in our collection for study.
And now 62 years later under the leadership
of his imminent Archbishop Damianos in collaboration
with the early manuscripts electronic library, Father Justin,
Mr. Toth and his team, some
of whom we have here today are conducting spectral imaging studies
of under-text on 135 Palimpsest in the monastery library.
This builds on the spectral imaging techniques
and systems we've been using here in the library for the past five years
to study our collection objects.
We're delighted to contribute to these techniques and capabilities
and look forward to working with the archbishop and monks
in their continued preservation of such wealth of cultural heritage.
Father Justin was born in Texas and developed a passion
for byzantine history at the University of Texas.
After he was ordained, Father Justin became a monk
in St. Catherine's Monastery in 1996.
Amidst our large institution here in D.C. it's easy
to forget Father Justin's role as a librarian is but part
of his chosen life of prayer and esthetic reflection
in a very isolated and un-hospitable place.
Mike Toth began his management of these major cultural projects
with the Archimedes Palimpsest Project in 1999.
He since managed programs ranging from a 6th century medical work
by Galen to David Livingston's 1871 Field Diary and was featured
in a September Washington Post article.
Please join me in welcoming here to the library, both on site all of you
and our 110 remote participants today, two individuals
who quite literally stand out in the community.
Father Justin and Mike Toth.   [ Applause ]

[ Pause ]
>> Father Justin: St. Catherine's Monastery located at the base
of Mount Sinai is the oldest monastery in Christendom.
A [inaudible] account of the 40 martyrs at Sinai Raithu is one
of the text that allows us to speak of an established Christian presence
at Sinai from the latter 3rd-Century.
But from the 4th-Century the area was an important goal for pilgrims.
When Egeria visited the site around the year 383,
she went as a flourishing monastic presence
and was herself even then following an established pilgrim route.
She attended services at the chapel of the burning bush.
At the chapel on the summit of Mount Sinai, another chapel
of the prophet Elias a short distance below the summit
and commented approvingly on the passage of the scripture
that were read concerning the events that had taken place
at each of these holy sites.
In all of this when we assume the existence at Sinai in the 3rd
and 4th-Centuries of manuscripts of the scriptures, services
and other theological and spiritual texts.
St. John Climacus lived in the late 6 and 7-Century.
He was tonsured a monk at the peak of Sinai at the age of 19.
After the repose of his elder he lived for 40 years in a cave
at some distance from every other dwelling where it is recorded
that he prayed much and wrote books.
This is evidence of the copying of text at Sinai.
St. John was subsequently elected abbot
and composed his immortal spiritual guide,
"The Ladder of Divine Ascent."
The manuscripts were practical texts for use in the services
or to inspired the monks who lived in the area.
Materials that would allow for the production of manuscripts
or completed text were brought to the area with great difficulty.
The deterioration of such texts through use was checked by the dry
and stable climate and the extreme isolation
of the monastery protected it from destruction.
In this way, the present library
of St. Catherine's Monastery had its beginnings.
Manuscripts were kept in the central cenobium or in many of the skeets
and hermitages throughout the south Sinai and later centuries
as the number of monks in the area declined,
the manuscripts were brought to the central monastery and stored
in rooms where they would be safe.
One such room is a second floor of the 4-story tower of St. George
which projects from the north wall of the monastery.
This room could only be reached by a ladder placed
against the inside wall and by passing through three doors.
The walls of the tower are made of granite blocks some three feet thick
and narrow windows provide for light and the circulation of air.
It was in this room that many manuscript fragments were discovered
in 1975 during the renovation of the tower.
These are collectively known as the New Finds.
Nikiphoros [foreign language] was a monk of Sinai
in the early 18th century.
He was an accomplished calligrapher and there are a number
of manuscripts in his hand.
When he was elected archbishop in 1729, he commissioned members
of the brotherhood to gather the manuscripts and books
into rooms opposite the archbishop's quarters this was completed in 1734.
Such was the state of the library when it was seen and described
by Agnes Smith Louis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson,
twin Sisters from Cambridge England on their first visit
to St. Catherine's in 1892.
They left a description of what they saw.
"The manuscripts are very much scatters.
Some Greek ones being in the show library
and the Arabic ones partly there and partly
in a little room half way up a dark stair.
The Syriac ones and those supposed to be the most ancient are partly
in this little room and partly in a dark closet approached
through a room almost as dark.
There they're reposed in two closed boxes and cannot be seen
without a lighted candle."
HP Morton visited St. Catherine's Monastery in the middle 1930s
and was shown the library.
He writes, "The books are no longer neglected.
They're stored in a room where they're like a bank vault
with the more precious volumes kept behind a locked grill.
The books were posed on shelves and most of them there are paper labels
on the spine on which titles are written in Greek and Arabic.
I was shown the famous Codex Aureus with its illuminated pages
and many other ancient and valuable manuscripts now rightly kept
under lock and key."
In 1951, "All of the manuscripts and books were moved
to a new building constructed along the south wall.
The library is on the third floor.
The manuscripts were kept at the balcony level
and the early printed books at the lower level of the room."
Today we can say that the main library contains 3304 manuscripts.
The greater number of these are in Greek reflecting the fact
that the monks of St. Catherine's Monastery have been predominantly
Greek throughout the history of the monastery
but Sinai has also been a place
of pilgrimage revered throughout the orthodox world
and this is also reflected in the library
which contains significant numbers of manuscripts in Arabic, Syriac,
Georgian and Slavonic and smaller numbers in Armenia, Ethiopian,
Latin, Persian, Polish and Hebrew.
This broad selection of languages is unique among orthodox
monastery libraries.   It should be noted that over 300

of the manuscripts are copies of the scriptures.
The Greek manuscripts were arranged by subject.
Copies of the holy scriptures, commentaries, liturgical text,
services, prayer books, music manuscripts,
writings of the church fathers, the monastic fathers, cannons,
histories, classical Greek texts and dictionaries.
The Arabic manuscripts contain some
of the oldest Christian text in Arabic.
The underwriting of one pontiff says dating from the 8th century
and another manuscript dating from 859.
They include works on paper that predate the use of paper
in Europe by almost 200 years.
The Syriac manuscripts date from the 4th century while many were brought
from Syria and the holy land others were written at Sinai.
The Georgian manuscripts date from the 7th century and include text
and translations that belong
to the earliest period of Georgian literature.
Manuscripts in Slavonic include text written within a generation
of the invention of the Slov alphabet
by Saints Cyril and Methodius.
They are of the greatest importance in an understanding
of the transmission of the religious and cultural heritage of Byzantium
through the Slovic peoples.
One manuscript has been instrumental in the recovery
of an important document from early church history.
Eusebius records that Aristides of Athens was the first
to make a defense of the Christian faith before a Roman Emperor.
Speaking to the Emperor Hadrian in the year 124.
Apart from the few quotations preserved
by Eusebius this earliest Christian apology had been lost.
Until Randell Harris from Cambridge was studying the Syriac manuscripts
at Sinai in the year 1889.
This manuscript unique in all the world contains a text of the apology
of Aristides but the words were somehow familiar.
As it turns out St. John of Damascus who lived
in the 8th century had incorporated the apology of Aristides
into his tale of [inaudible] thus the text
of the apology itself had been preserved
but it was only this manuscript that allowed such an identification
and the recovery of an important moment
in the history of the early church.
Manuscripts of the Septuagint are rare.
This slide shows the opening of the Book of Exodus
from the 12th-Century manuscript
that contains Genesis, Exodus and Leviticus.
The margin is filled with commentary drawn
from the writings of the fathers.
This commentary is important giving us insights into these passages
of the scripture as they were understood in the early church.
Yet another manuscript contains a [phonetic] homily
of Saint Theodore the Studite who was born in 759
and eventually became abbot of the venerable Monastery
of Stoudios in Constantinople.
He was [inaudible] abbot of the outbreak of iconoclasm
under the Emperor Leo the Thracian,
a development that he steadfastly opposed.
A man of austere sanctity and iron will his homilies addressed
to the monks set forth the principles of religious life.
They did much to make the Monastery of Studious, the very model
of what a cenobitic community should be.
There's nothing left of the original binding of this manuscript.
It now consists of separate signatures,
a very few holing together in twos or threes of what remains
of the sewing that originally bound the manuscript together.
The pages are stiff and show the rough marks of the knife
that was used to pair the skins in the preparation of the parchment.
Even so the leaves are very well preserved.
The [inaudible] gives the text of a prayer in the name of the patron.
Leo [inaudible] abbot and [phonetic] prespiter who longs
to be established in the Kingdom of Heaven.
It also gives the date of the [phonetic] indiction
and the year 6594 from the creation of the world and concludes
with a prayer, "The end glory be to the."
Someone has done the math and added in pencil
that the year 6594 corresponded to the year AD 1086.
Almost every homily begins with the words [foreign language] brothers
and fathers.
And thus there is a Constant reiteration of the letter alpha
at the head of each homily.
But each of these is different throughout the manuscript.
A number of these take the form of a bird.
Here a peacock grasps a column.
The feet of the bird forming the transverse bar of the alpha.
Here it is a hawk that grasps the column more aggressively.
But there is another decorative element employed
by the artist, the serpent.   Here serpents face each other.

Another bites his own tail
and others bite parts of the letter form.
Here is an alpha formed by one serpent biting another.
Each initial letter becomes an occasion for artistic ingenuity
that the scribe copied out the homilies.
At the conclusion of one chapter,
the scribe has carefully formed the text to make a cross
which contains these luminous words.   "May we find at the end the things

which eye have not seen nor ear heard nor have injured
into the heart of man which God have prepared for them that love him.
May we all attain under that which is now and shall be here
after by the Grace and love for men of our Lord Jesus Christ with whom
to the father and the holy spirit be glory, honor and dominion now
and ever and unto the ages and ages.
Amen." And the scribe has drawn out the amen connecting the letters
with ornamental lines and adding a leaf at either end
to form a decorative border.   It is easy to think

of 3304 manuscripts containing 1,800,000 pages not
to mention the New Finds, the scrolls, the large
and significant collection of early printed books all
in their overwhelming numbers, but each manuscript is the work
of a patient scribe working
with different materials recording the text of importance.
Even very serious theological manuscripts can be adorned
with an unexpected Grace and ingenuity.
Each manuscript is unique and each is yet another facet of the Library
of Sinai contributing to our understanding
of the spiritual heritage
that is preserved there for over 17 centuries.
But now I would like to ask,
how is the present community showing its responsibility for holding
such a treasure in its care?
On the space of St. Catherine's in 2001,
the monastery opened its newly renovated [inaudible] This contains
nine rooms opposite the church that were used from early times
to store precious items and away,
the rooms retained their original function they're now open
to the public.
The most important icons, manuscripts vestments
and ecclesiastical objects and metalwork are now
on display in some 35 cases.
The cases are high security and completely airtight
with carefully controlled fiber-optic lighting allowing
for the responsible display of these objects.
This museum has been referred to as Heaven's Gate and as one
of the world's great small museums.   Foremost among the manuscripts

on display are the best preserved leaves
of the Kodak [inaudible] Sinai open beneath a bronze cross dating
from the 6th century.
These leaves record the incident described in numbers 2011
"and Moses lifted up his hand
and with his rod he smoked the rock twice and the water came
out abundantly and the congregation drank and there be also."
There's signs of a tab that was once attached to the edge of the page.
We know that at Egeria in the 4th century were marked on the passages
of scripture that we read concerning each of the places
in the areas that she visited.
This page had been marked to allow precisely such a reading.
It is especially appropriate that these pages have remained at Sinai.
A second example of the monastery's responsibility
for the library is its plans for the renovation of the library building.
An esthetic design was provided by Demetri Porphyrios one
of England's most trusted architects and a specialist
in using traditional materials.
The area to the left of the central stairwell will be for the storage
of the manuscripts and archives and early printed books.
This will also include a reading room.
The area to the right
of the stairwell will contain a seminar room, conservation workshops
and an area for the digital photography of the manuscripts.
Completed drawings have been approved by the monastery
by the Egyptian Supreme Consul of Antiquities and now
by the St. Catherine Foundation.   Yet another instance

of responsibility is the conservation program.
The monastery library is noteworthy in the lack of restoration
that has taken place in the past.
Because the monastery was so isolated and so poor,
and one must add because of the monk's desire
to protect the library,
the manuscripts were to a large extent left
alone. They form today perhaps the most significant collection
of intact Byzantine bindings.
It is fortunate that only now are conservatives working
with the manuscripts, now when there is so much care to preserve as much
as possible to intervene only if it is necessary to do so.
The current program is under the direction
of Nicholas [phonetic] Pitwood one
of England's most respected conservators.
Over the course of several years trained conservators filled
out complex ten page forms describing the state
of each manuscript in great detail and drawing sketches
of significant parts of the binding.
They also photographed the binding of each manuscript.
This information has been entered into a database
to which could be added the scholarly information
for each manuscript.   The database will guide

and coordinate any program of intervention.
This photograph shows Nicholas [inaudible]
and Maria [inaudible] both of whom were trained in conservation
at the Khandelwal Institute, a part of the University of London.
Nicholas is a native of Patmus and has worked extensively
with the Library of St. John the Theologian there gaining remarkable
incites into manuscript binding techniques.
In 2002 Archbishop Damianos received a letter
from the British Library informing him of the formation
of the Codex Sinaiticus digitization project
and inviting him to participate.
He bristled at the sight of the letterhead, British library
and dictated an icy response,
"that given our differences there is no way
in which we could collaborate on such a project.
But a very pious [inaudible]
from England was visiting Sinai at the same time.
He had heard about the project and was able to convince the archbishop
that this was very important
and that the monastery should participate
in spite of our differences.
He then spoke to the administrators of the British Library telling them
that it had been a serious mistake to have a junior member
of staff write an informal letter to the Archbishop of Sinai.
The next letter had to come from the director
and it had better be form and polite.
[laughter] In due time a second letter arrived,
this time from the director of the British Library
who signed [inaudible] "I remain your imminence's most
obedient servant."
[laughter] The archbishop was willing to discuss matters
and the following March in 2003 he met in Athens with Scott McKendrick,
keeper of the Codex Sinaiticus the British Library
and his superior John Tuck, head of British Collections.
This led to a series of planning sessions which culminated in March
of 2005 with a signing of the partnership agreement
between the British Library, the Library of the University
of [inaudible], the State Library of Russia in St. Petersburg
and St. Catherine's Monastery.
As a result of this collaboration all existing pages
of the Codex Sinaiticus were conserved and photographed
with a high resolution digital camera.
The most important contribution
of this project was the conversation photography and transcription
of the pages and fragments of the Codex Sinaiticus at Sinai
which had never before been edited or published.
In 2009 the Codex Sinaiticus website was launched.
Every folio of this manuscript can be viewed as well
as a new transcription correcting earlier transcriptions.
That same year a conference was held at the British Library
at which many spoke about the history
and significance of the Codex.
As a direct result of this project many documents relating
to the history of the Codex Sinaiticus in Russia, Germany,
England and Sinai have now been made public.
The publication of the papers given
at this conference is the one objective
that has not yet been completed.
The presentations relating to the recent history
of the codex were the greatest importance.
They describe the bewildering complexity of this history
which had less to do with Constantin Tischendorf than with the might
of the Russian empire and the vulnerability
of St. Catherine's Monastery at that time.
In 2010, a quality facsimile
of the Codex Sinaiticus was published the first
to contain all existing leads and fragments of this manuscript.
The Codex Sinaiticus digitization project has been a monument
to what can be achieved when institutions are willing
to put aside differences in the interest of furthering scholarship
and the study of the holy scriptures.
The photography of manuscripts at Sinai has a long history.
In 1892 Agnes Smith Lewis
and her twin sister Margaret Dunlop Gibson photographed the whole
of the Codex [inaudible] convinced that it merited using one-third
of the thousand film exposures they had brought with them.
They used a Kodak camera with a 6-inch lens
and took 12 second exposures.
This is the first time a Sinai manuscript had been photographed
in its entirety.
These photographs inspired other scholars to join them
on subsequent expeditions for the study and eventual publication
of the text of this manuscript.
The Library of Congress sponsored an expedition in 1950
to photograph the Sinai manuscripts for micro film.
Three cameras were in operation and the goal was
to photograph 25 manuscripts with each camera each day.
In 7 months they filmed 1687 manuscripts selecting those
that they felt were the most important.
They also filmed all of the Arabic and Turkish [inaudible]
and took 1284 photographs of the Sinai illuminations on 4 by 5 film.
The photographers filled
out standard forms listing the manuscript number
and other information and this was taken
as the first shot for each reel.
The reverse of one of these forms preserves a candid note written
by one of the photographers to staff at the Library of Congress.
The resulting microfilms have been an invaluable reference
and have allowed scholars to study the Sinai manuscripts when travel
to view the originals was not possible.
[laughter] The monastery subsequently photographed the
manuscripts that had not been included in the Library
of Congress program thus creating a complete microfilm record
of the Sinai manuscripts.
In April of 1996 a study was submitted
to Archbishop Damianos suggesting that digital photography had matured
to the point where a program of the photography of the Sinai manuscripts
with high resolution digital cameras was now viable.
It was clear even then that this is how information would be captured
and shared in the future but there were many reasons
to be cautious about such a proposal.
A digital archive requires a long term commitment.
Images must be stored and multiple copies at several locations.
Data must be migrated as the technology continues to develop.
But the archbishop was quick to see the advantage of such a proposal
and promised the commitment that it required.
This was seen as a part
of the overall conservation program although allowing access
to the Sinai manuscripts it would also protect the originals.
Color information and minute notations that had not been visible
on the microfilm images would now be available to scholars.
Our first goal was a safe handling of the fragile manuscripts.
Our second goal was to set the resolution standards high enough
to ensure a long term viability of the resulting images.
Resolution standards that seemed unnecessarily high now are certain
to become common place in the future.
In September of 2002 we installed the Sinar Digital camera mounted
on a conservation book cradle made by Allen Buchanan in London.
At its lowest resolution images were captured
in 16 bit non-interpolated color with a 6 mega pixel CCD.
The camera also has a macroscan function
in which photographs are taken in quadrants
that are then stitched together automatically effectively increasing
the resolution to 20 mega pixels.
A second camera was added to our program just a year --
just last year made by Stokes Imaging in Austin Texas.
This camera has a 48 mega pixel CCD.
The mechanics that support the manuscript switch photography are
the same but many of the functions have been automated making
for more efficient image capture.
Lighting is provided by LED units that have been calibrated
to provide a full colors spectrum allowing the photography
of manuscripts without the use of flash.
The plan renovation of the entire library building will include a
special room for digital photography allowing the further expansion
of our program.
Everything is now in place for the monastery to build
up an important digital library that will allow us
to share these precious manuscripts with scholars around the world.
It would be better no doubt to live in silence and isolation to be
so cut off from the outside world as to be able to ask
with St. Paul the first hermit.   "Tell me

therefore I pray you.
How fair is the human race are new home springing up in ancient cities?
What government directs the world?
But no monastery is so isolated as it once was
and Archbishop Damianos has said that,
"Perhaps this isn't a Providence of God for it is now especially
to the world needs to be reminded of the spiritual heritage preserved
for so many centuries in the Sinai desert."

The oldest Greek manuscript in the old collection is number 212,
a lectionary dated the 7th century.
But this manuscript is also a palimpsest.
The parchment was taken from earlier manuscripts
and the original writing can be seen beneath the later text.
The original text had headings in green or red.
Here one can see the verse [foreign language] "hark unto me oh Lord."
But not all of the original script is from one manuscript.
The last leaves show a different text somewhat more legible
than the earlier leaves.
Another manuscript is Arabic 514 dated to the early 10th century.
This is a larger manuscript and scholars have detected four
or possibly five different text in the underlying script.
At least one of these is a scripture in the Syriac Peshitta text.
Some of the text are parallel
with the later script while others are at right angles.
A number of the New Finds manuscripts are Palimpsests.
This is a liturgical scroll with the upper text in Arabic.
The underlying script is in a large
and generously spaced Greek majusculed script.
The most significant Palimpsest at Sinai is the Codex Syriacus
which I referred to briefly earlier.
We know that the first translation of the gospels
in the Syriac was made around the year 160
by Tatian the disciple of St. Justin martyr.
He wove the four gospels into one continuous narrative.
The first translation of the four separate gospels was made
around the year 180 and is called the old Syriac.
Later other translations were made that supplemented the old Syriac
as a result this translation survives in only two manuscripts.
One is in the British Library
and the other is a Codex Syriacus at Sinai.
This is a Palimpsest and the significance was first realized
by Agnes Smith Lewis on her visit to Sinai in 1892.
The underlying text is quite faint on most pages.
On the recommendation of the British Museum,
they even applied hydrosulfite ammonia to some of the leaves
in an effort to make the faint underlying text more clear.
Unfortunately much of it remained unreadable.
We know that the scriptures were written in the first century.
Thirty-six manuscripts of the scriptures written on papyrus dating
from the beginning of the 3rd century.
What happened in the 2nd century to account
for what we see emerging in the 3rd?
This is the central question facing scholars in their study
of the text of the New Testament.
The Codex Syriacus is an important witness to the text as it was
in the 2nd-Century and thus of the greatest importance.
Recent advances in digital photography techniques promise
to recover more of these Palimpsest texts.
These texts could be considered the last frontier of the Sinai Library
and such a prospect is very exciting.
A public library exists for the preservation of its manuscripts
and books and for the furtherance of scholarship.
It is difference that a monastery that exists to carry
on the ancient cycle of daily services with times for work
and for reading and prayer.
Sinai is notorious for its remoteness
and for the inaccessibility of its manuscripts and of the treasures,
but the programs that we have noted
in this presentation have been established at the instigation
of Archbishop Damianos who has been a monk at Sinai since 1961
and archbishop since 1973.
These programs employ the latest technology
but they also support the monastery in its age old commitments,
helping to preserve these precious manuscripts even as we develop ways
to share them and increase an appreciation of them.
It is the archbishop who has said, "It is not right
that we should hide our light under a bushel.
Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel
but on a candle stick and it giveth light
and to all that are in the house."   [pause]

[ Applause ]   >> Mike Toth: Good afternoon.

I'm Mike Toth, President of RP Toth Associates.
It's been our privilege to support two of the great libraries
of the world, one here the Library of Congress and one in the middle
of the Sinai Desert St. Catherine's Monastery.
I have to say, you know, there's some similarities between them.
Both have one of the most advanced spectral imaging systems
in the world.
Both have tunnels that lead between them [laughter]
and with one monastery established in Byzantine times
and the other part of the Legislative Branch
of the U.S. Government, I have to say we're quite experienced
at working with Byzantine politics.
[laughter] But as Father Justin noted our role is to literally
and figuratively bring new light to the collections
at St. Catherine's Monastery and we do so in collaboration
between St. Catherine's Monastery the Sinai
and the early manuscripts electronic library.
This is funded by a generous grant from the --
from Arcadia and as Father Justin noted his imminence Damianos
and the monks of St. Catherine's Monastery have been leaders
in trying to bring these ancient texts to new light.
Our role on this project,
in parallel with the ongoing digitization that is taking place
at the monastery, is to make the undertext legible and to preserve
that for future generations from these Palimpsest.
These pieces of parchment that have been scraped off overwritten
with new text and we're trying to reveal that undertext.
As Father Justin noted we have at least 135 new Palimpsests.
Whenever we look at leaves on a Palimpsest, it always seems
that we're flipping to a new leaf that was previously not thought
to be Palimpsests and we find new material.
This is directed by Mike Phelps.
He's the President of the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library
and as I noted is funded by Arcadia.
We have a broad team of technicians, scientists,
scholars who are all working literally spanning the globe
from Greece to Hawaii to try to make these data available to the public.
As I said we're trying to make the undertext legible.
We're publishing this or making sure this information can be
published online.
Our secondary goal is to optimize the spectral imaging.
This is where we have -- in fact, we were talking earlier at lunch
about it -- a feedback loop between the Library of Congress
and St. Catherine's Monastery
as we both optimize our spectral imaging systems to try
to make sure we get the best results from them.
Our role, the role of our team, the role of RB Toth Associates has been
to take technologies that are used for other applications
and apply them to the study of cultural heritage.
We use earth resource technology, medical imaging,
sometimes even particle physics
to advance the study of historic manuscripts.
I'll give you some background on this.
We started out with the Archimedes Palimpsests,
we've worked with the David Livingston Diaries and now
with the Palimpsests at St. Catherine's Monastery,
bringing these technologies that were developed
for totally different applications and applying them to the study
of our cultural heritage.
We started back in 1999 with the Archimedes Palimpsests
at the Walters Art Museum.
I'm pleased to see Abigail Quandt is here from the Walters
who is responsible for the physical preservation
and conservation of that object.
During the course of this ten year program, she disassembled it,
cleaned it up and we had the good fortune of using spectral imaging
and really developing our techniques,
not only the imaging techniques but also the data management techniques,
the metadata, the processing, the whole system that was needed
to render the earliest copy of Archimedes work visible
and this is all available online for free use.
The owner who's a private owner remains anonymous to most
of you has made it available through a creative commons license
by which he continues to hold the copyright
but it's free use for anyone.   If you want to put it on a T-shirt

or a coffee mug, you can do what you wish.
There are more restricted free use creative common
so it offers a broad range of capabilities
for establishing intellectual property
but also making information available.
When we were finishing up the Archimedes Program in 2007 and as
as I was retiring after 28 years of government service,
I got a phone call from Fenella France who had heard
about our spectral imaging program in 2007.
This was in September.
She said, "Hey we have this big map here at the Library
of Congress called the Waldseemuller Map, printed in 1507.
First one to show America.
Some call it America's Birth Certificate and we want
to spectrally image this before it goes
into this argon sealed case for 20 to 30 years."
I said, "Sure.
We'd be very interested in doing this.
When do you need this?   Some time early next year?"

"No, we need it done by November."   Now mind you this is in September.

So we got the van together and we -- we needed a new camera.
We brought Ken Boyds to the non-board
and used our new monochrome camera.
As you can see from the left hand picture,
a lot of wires, and everything.
A lot of duct tape but we managed to image the 12 sheets of this map
and have the spectral images now for Conservation and Preservation
to use while the map is sealed in the case
for scholars and curators as well.
As well as to check the impact of the environment,
this argon sealed environment, the limited light
on the map during the duration of its exhibition.
Since then the library has purchased its own spectral imaging system.
This is the same as the system that is now being used
at St. Catherine's Monastery.   I won't go into a lot of detail

but basically we have these LED light panels, light emitting diodes
that emit in the full spectrum of light.
Not only the visible, the blue, the green, the yellow, the red,
but also the ultraviolet down at 365 nanometers
and the infrared up to 1050.   1050 nanometers.

This is developed by Dr. Bill Christiansberry who's also here
today with Equipoise Imaging integrated
with the MegaVision camera which is this monochrome camera
with no filters in front of it and this the library has used for
and is using on a regular basis now for the study
of the cultural objects here at the library.
Since then we also worked on a Syriac Galen Palimpsest owned
by the same Individual who owns the Archimedes Palimpsest.
We did that in just a year but the study continues.
I just came back from Paris where a team
of scholars is using the information from the undertext trying
to not just -- not just decipher it but also trying to identify the use
of herbals in ancient medicine as part of a broader study.
This is where we had an individual named Megan Hill join us
as an intern who is now working with Fenella France
down in the spectral imaging lab.
We also worked on David Livingston's Diaries at the --
in the National Library of Scotland trying to reveal overtext
that was written in berry juice on top
of the London Standard Newspaper.
[laughter] This was funded by our National Endowment for Humanities.
Now with each of these programs,
each of these spectral imaging programs and all others
in between we further advanced our systems.
"We" meaning the scientists and the technicians who are working
on the technical systems.
We also advanced our data handling capabilities and our ability
to share and disseminate the information,
all of which is critical to larger programs.
We've also worked with the Walters Art Museum on the digitization.
Not spectral imaging, but just the digitization just
as Father Justin is doing at St. Catherine's Monastery
of their manuscripts in their library at the Walter's Art Museum.
Started with the Islamic manuscripts and is continued with --
and is continuing now with the western manuscripts.
This is where we really had to advance the cataloging
and the metadata schemas that are needed to for large amounts
of information, not just a single Palimpsest but for large numbers
of codices and manuscripts.
Also some of us have worked in the Middle East such as
with the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage.
Here again, just straightforward digitization, which brings us
to St. Catherine's Monastery
with basically the same team we started out with.
We have Dr. Roger Easton from RIT as one of the imaging scientists.
As I mentioned Bill Christiansberry with Equipoise Imaging
and Keith Knox our third imaging scientist who is now in --
moved from Rochester, New York to Maui, Hawaii, a real hardship.
So the three of them other students and technicians who served
as the core imaging team now working with a broader team,
working with the monastery in collaboration
with the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library
to advance the spectral imaging of the Palimpsest
at St. Catherine's Monastery.
What this does at St. Catherine's and some
of our other broader programs is it brings our work with a large amount
of manuscripts and codices and our spectral imaging to a unified
and integrated program where we can handle large amounts of material
but also the advanced scientific capabilities that are needed.
I won't go into much detail of spectral imaging
but basically you mount the object,
in this case a manuscript, on a flat plane.
You have the camera over it just as I showed at the Library of Congress.
You then take pictures in the various spectral bands.
Now some of these bands in their own right will reveal information.
The UV will show you information that's used frequently in forensics.
Sometimes with the iron gall ink you'll get a good response
in the ultraviolet.
Pencil and some of your carbon black inks will respond to the other end
of the spectrum in the infrared.
Neither of which are visible to the eye.
So mono-spectral using just the UV
or using just the infrared sometimes provides information that is useful
and can provide scholars and curators and conservators
with additional information.
But what we find we have to do here where we have multiple text
and underlying text is process the images.
In this case Keith Knox and Bill Christiansberry working
with Mike Phelps and Roger Easton does the same with his students,
where you combine the various spectral bands.
You combine a red with a UV.
Where you combine two or three and as a result you end
up with a what we call a pseudo color image
where you have the undertext
in one color while the overtext is in another color.
We can make this color whatever you want.
If you want them at 10% for those who are red/green color blind,
we'll make it purple for you.
We also have one that's called a sharpie
which where we suppress the overtext.
So you can't see the overtext but you only see the undertext.
Some scholars and curators
and conservators prefer one, some prefer the other.
So this is a product of the digital processing that is conducted
by the -- the scientists after the imaging.
So it's not just the imaging that gives you this product.
You have to have that back-end processing capability.
So St. Catherine's Monastery is, as I said, is a five year program.
We're now in year two of this and we have --
Father Justin showed the library.
We're over in this little suite in the corner while the rest
of the library is being restored.
On the one hand it fills me with joy that the library is finally going
to be renovated, on the other hand I contemplate jackhammers and cranes
as we're trying to do this long duration imaging.
So we'll see what the impact is on that.
We have two rooms.
One is the imaging room here with Megan Hill who takes a leave in --
to support our quality assurance and with Damien who also works
on our -- as an imaging operator.   One room is set up for imaging.

The other room is set up for quality control.
There's a back and forth between the two technicians
who are operating them.   One does the imaging.

The other one checks the previous image.
If they don't get a good image, if there's vibration
or something they'll re-shoot it.   So this is a back and forth.

They get about 36 image sets a day.
Each image comprise -- each image set comprises 31 different images
that are all -- that can be combined in different permutations there.
As I said this isn't Hollywood.   This isn't quick.

You don't just -- as they did in "National Treasure,
Book and Secrets" -- although they did borrow Bill's idea
for using fiberoptics here.
You don't just say hey let's take a look at the IR
and five seconds later, the IR pops up.
It takes a significant time, significant work
and a number of advanced algorithm.
At times it is a little bit like filming on location.
It is a rather spartan environment there and we get
around in any means possible.
We are fortunate as Father Justin noted to have
wonderful access to the objects themselves whether they're fragments
whether they're bound codices
or whether they're full pieces of manuscript.
Access in getting to the monastery is another matter.
We fly into -- this is the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula and just
for those of you who haven't looked at Google Maps, which this is,
fly into Sharm el Sheikh make a big question mark like run up around
and into the [phonetic] lawdy where St. Catherine's Monastery is located
in the shadows of Mount Sinai and Mount St. Catherine.

We schlepped everything in by air.
We -- that's usually a question of what sports equipment we're carrying
and we then drive it over land and bring it in through the --
the low entry passage and into the monastery,
carry it up the six flights of stairs and away we go.
Now since we set up this program there have been some changes
in the region.
One, which we always knew is we are working in a zone
that is controlled by a peace treaty.
We actually land in zone A. We cross
through the Multinational Forest Checkpoint into zone B
under the Camp David Accords.   But of course on January 25, 2011,

there was significant upheaval in Egypt.
As a result the Sinai has been really in a vacuum
and we've had to deal with that.
Just after we came out on our last --
on our December visit there was a kidnapping
and there have been other kidnappings since then
of tourists going to St. Catherine's Monastery.
That's not really -- you know, we can deal with kidnappings,
it's the broader range of possible issues with travel that we've had
to deal with and try to plan around.
This warning from the Foreign Commonwealth Office
of the British Government which is very specific in terms
of only essential travel in the South Sinai outside Sharm el Sheikh.
So that's something that we've had to deal
with in our logistics and our planning.
We also have very limited infrastructure both
with regard to facilities.
There are not conference rooms there.
There is not opportunity to, you know,
to gather around our computers outside the monastery.
Courtyards work very well, in the winter you have a fire going.
In the rooms themselves, one of the big challenges is electricity.
Not only the state of electricity itself but the electrical ground.
In the dry desert climate there is terrible electrical ground
as I found out one day as I'm changing a light bulb
in a chandelier and I came
out to give Father Justin the light bulb shaking my arm
after getting jolted up to the shoulder,
and he got a new light bulb and I think it's power to both his faith
and his common sense that as good common sense
that he brought a stepladder so he can get above it
and put the new light bulb in.
So we have to be careful that -- it does one thing to my arm
but it does very bad things to computers.
We have a number of challenges that [inaudible]
and our team are dealing with.
We've got a lot of material, a lot of data that we have to address
so I've cited some of the other challenges in terms of the security.
We have limited collection opportunities.
We're trying to broaden those using a wonderful team
of Greek technicians.
Father Justin and his assistant [inaudible] We have very limited
Internet access when it rains.
I think Father Justin said the data rate was down to .06 bits per second
and we have a very long logistics chain.
There is no -- there's no Best Buy, there's no Radio Shack for hundreds
of miles so we have to have a good sparing policy.
Technical challenges are significant.
We think we've addressed the image collection.
Many of those challenges we're still working on quality assurance.
This is something Megan Hill has been working on nights and weekends
to update some of our checklists.
Processing, the data storage and management
and the dissemination access to the data, those are all things
that we really are working on now to address as a broader architecture.
Through all our programs we've worked on spiral implementation
where we start small and work up to it.
When we did David Livingston's Diaries, Doug Emery and I went
in with a small hand held camera,
tried with a hand held light panel not to get good quality images
but just to see if spectral imaging would work.
The sedges are high.   In New Mexico we did the same thing.

With the Archimedes we did that.
We had an initial study phase here at St. Catherine's Monastery.
First thing we do is assess, will this work?
And then we go through develop a capability, make --
see how that works, feed it back into the system and move on.
Define the requirements.   You know what do the scholars want?

What do the curators want?   What do the stakeholders want?

Integrate all the technology.
Work on the -- develop the work processes themselves
and standardize across the system.
This has to work end to end from Greece to Hawaii and it also has
to work for five years, ten years however long so we have to establish
and document what we're doing.
We schedule out what we're doing well in advance
so that we can be sure that everything is in place
and we're not arriving in the middle of the Sinai without something
and for those of you who are in the program management,
I have to have the requisite [inaudible] chart here
but there are a lot of details we need to address.
I also work with a small woman-owned business called Eagle Ray
and we work on government contracts,
major information technology contracts.
And the two things we emphasize are not the technology.
In bringing IT to bare -- bringing any new technology
to bare it is not the technology.
It's the work processes and the skills of the people.
The people and the processes
that we find are the key things to a successful program.
The technology, it may break but usually your technology
with good planning is going to be in place and is going to operate.
It's making sure the people know how that technology will work,
that they have the skills to do so, and using standards,
using documentation to make sure that that can be implemented
over the course of the program
and that's what we've applied to our programs as well.
Where we integrate not only the equipment
but the processes and the team.
When it started with the Archimedes Palimpsest Project, we were working
with Will Knoll and Abigail and we had Roger, Bill,
and Keith the imaging scientists.
We had [inaudible] Birdman out at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
In fact that's when we first brought Doug Emery in as our data manager.
Same team with the Library of Congress here working
with Dr. Fenella France, brought Ken Boydston in as our camera engineer
and then with the National Library of Scotland
with Adrian [phonetic] Wizniki and now at St. Catherine's Monastery
with Mike Phelps, Father Justin, Claudia Wrap, our scholar
and a little more head gear, a little more facial hair
but it's not Capitol Hill and we get the job done though.
[laughter] Risk mitigation is critical.
We've got to try to minimize -- we talk about personal security risk,
but we look at the risk of the program.
And when we're aware of something we try to take precautions
and make sure that you know, we don't bump our heads
on some program thing that's coming up.
So we at the end as I said we work on feedback and at the end
of each session we say, "Hey are we red on this or are we green
on this or are we yellow?"
We're advancing toward green on all of these thanks to good teamwork.
One of the main things is quality control.
As I said, when you have that -- when you have that much information,
if you have errors that crop in early on you're going
to have major problems downstream.
So we have checklists throughout for each of --
each of the activities we're doing.   Independent verification validation.

Where we're always double checking what the camera operator's doing.
And all this brings us to a large amount of data
and the approach we're taking toward that,
the approach that I first coined the term script
to spatial a couple years ago where it's just like a satellite
over the globe where you have geospatial imaging.
Well we have our camera over the object
and so you establish the coordinate system on that
and link your information to that object to that coordinate system.
Data management is a major issue especially in this environment,
especially where we have large amounts of granite dust
that can really muck up your hard drives and computers.
Doug Emory is our data manager with Emory IT and he has been responsible
for planning the end to end flow of data.
A lot of numbers.
We can have maybe almost 50 terabytes of data.
So what's that mean?
Well if you were to put all these images together
in a full length movie and you were to watch it
on Netflix 24 hours a day, it would take you two and a half years
to look at all of these images so that's the amount of data.
That's the number of images we're going to wind up on this thing.
So we have to manage that effectively and manage it well
and we were talking over lunch about cataloging and the importance
of not having the same catalog number for
books here in the library.   The same is true for our file names.

If we have the same file name for something we're going to lose data.
And ultimately it comes down to preservation and when you look
at what we're doing in the context of a 1400 year history
of the monastery in a Christian presence in the Sinai it is
but a blip on the right end of the time chart.
We've gone through papyrus scrolls,
we've gone through parchment codecies gone through paper books.
The monastery library established, you know,
1729, sisters came along 1892.
You know, finally in 2009, you know, this team comes in to the --
to the Sinai and starts working on digitization
and we have the digital product is the unique record of some
of these undertexts and if we lose that, then you've got to go back
and either image it again or you know, try --
and try to do all that processing.
So how do we get these to last even 10%
of the time for, you know, 140 years?
Much less 1% of the time 14 years in 1s and 0s.
How do we ensure those 1s and 0s did not become obsolete
and get lost over time?
That is the major challenge we all face whether it's St. Catherine's
Monastery in the Sinai or the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill
in Washington, D.C. Key for us is standards.
We established these in the Archimedes Palimpsest Project.
This has become in effect the metadata standard
for the Archimedes Palimpsest Project.
How we are going to --
what information's included with the data.
That's the defactor standard now
for most spectral imaging programs that's used here at the Library
of Congress, it's used at St. Catherine's Monastery.
It's been used on other programs.   All these are availing online.

Doug has also worked on the cataloging,
working with the digital Walters which is also online
to assure catalogers in a virtual process can catalog the
information available.
As I said this is all available and we put all of the information
out in flat files for access.
Now we're working with what he calls cat icon which is a cataloging tool
at St. Catherine's Monastery where we can enter information in both
at the monastery and remotely about the original object
and we're working on a number of data management issues now.
Scholarship, of course, is the final -- not the final process.
It is who we are supporting.
We are supporting scholars and curators.
Claudia Wrap is the lead scholar on this.
They're working to provide not transcriptions of the undertext
but to identify and describe what are in those undertexts there.
I say it's not the end because as I said earlier there's
that feedback loop.
The scholars working with the scientists sitting down
and saying hey, I can't read this.   In our meetings in Paris

on the Syrian Galen Palimpsest the scholars are asking,
"Hey are these two dots original with the ink
or is one an artifact there?"
I sent that back to the imaging scientist and they are going
to get back to provide a response to scholars.
Same will be true on the St. Catherine's Monastery
on the Palimpsest imaging project
where the scholars will have questions.
We need to establish back and flow --
back and forth flow of information.
We've been very, very appreciative and very fortunate
to have the full support of archbishop Damianos and the team --
the monks, I don't know what you call a group of monks --
but the monks of the monastery working in collaboration
with the Early Manuscripts Electronic Library
and it has been a privilege and an honor to work with them,
to bring our full team strengths and capabilities to bear on this program
with Doug as the data manager and Bill, Roger and Keith.
I think I've mentioned those people except for Nikos Arkansas
who was critical to working to develop the relationship that he
and Mike Phelps and [inaudible] developed with the archbishop
and with the monastery and Damien
who is our key camera operator there.
So the question always comes, what have we found?
And we'll turn to Father Justin to address what has --
what is some of the initial results of this program?
[ Applause ]   [ Pause ]

>> Father Justin: The wilderness of Sinai began
to receive its first hermits
and ankerites during the great monastic movement
of the 3rd and 4th-Centuries.
Sinai's a stark desert like the [phonetic] water natruen
or other early monastic centers in Egypt.
But above all Sinai is a place where God revealed himself
to prophets Moses and Elijah.
The first monks who came to the area and the pilgrims
who followed them soon after revered Sinai as an intrinsic part
of the holy land, the far reaches of the holy land.
This myth at Sinai was also from the 3rd and 4th-Centuries,
a part of the Greek speaking world.   In the middle of the 6th-Century,

the Emperor Justinian will order the construction of a basilica
and high surrounding walls
at the traditional site of the burning bush.
Sinai however distant was still within the parameter
of the Byzantine empire or the Roman empire
as they would still have called it.
Monasticism flourished in this severe wilderness.
At one time there was some 600 monks living in the mountains
and valleys of the South Sinai.
In the 7th-Century, Sinai became a part of the world of Islam.
We know least about the history of Sinai
in the centuries immediately following.
But there is evidence that pilgrimage to Sinai was not halted
by the Arab conquest of the peninsula and monks continued
to come to this remote wilderness attracted
by its austerity its biblical associations and its reputation
as an established center of monasticism.
[inaudible] of Sinai who lived
in the late 7th-Century compiled narratives concerning the holy
fathers and their tradition of the spiritual Meadow by John Moscus.
He described Sinai as a place of austerity.
Conditions there could be dangerous but it was also a place
where there dwelt holy anchorites.
It was a place where remote chapels would suddenly become luminous
in the presence of holy angels.
We have treatises by three saints whose spiritual text form a
distinctly Sinai school of esthetic theology.
John Climacus the abbot of Sinai who lived in the late 6
and early 7 century wrote a spiritual guide called,
"The Ladder of Divine Ascent."
Ezekiel the priest who lived around the 8 and 9th century was abbot
of the monastery of the burning bush.
He wrote an ascetic treatise on watchfulness and holiness.
He -- [inaudible] of Sinai is known to us only
from his work 40 text on watchfulness.
He lived in perhaps the 9th of 10th century.
The writings of these three saints had a profound influence
on the development of later orthodox spirituality.
At the same time we know little about Ezekiel the priest
and we only have the name of [phonetic] Herlothious of Sinai.
Where so little is known
from traditional historical accounts the surviving material evidence
becomes all the more important.
What do the manuscripts in particular tell us
about Sinai at this critical time?
Earlier this year, I became fascinated
with Sinai Greek New Finds [phonetic] magiskil two.
This is a manuscript of the epistles of St. Paul written
in parallel Greek and Arabic dated in the 9th century.
It was among the manuscripts recovered from the tower
of St. George in 1975 collectively known as the New Finds.
Because it is a manuscript
of the scriptures it has been assigned a number [inaudible]
in the Gregory Alan numbering system.
It is also a Palimpsest made from manuscript leaves
where the earlier text was erased
and a valuable parchment used a second time.
I was able to photograph the leaves and fragments of this manuscript
with the high resolution digital camera that we installed last year
as an expansion of our project to create a digital archive
of the Sinai manuscripts.   This is not a large manuscript.

It measures 24.2 by 18.2-centimeters.
That is about 9 and a half by 7-inches and contains 120 leaves.
It is written in parallel Greek and Arabic 20 to 22 lines per page.
Using a heavy black carbon
ink, had pieces opening initials and notations are written in red,
a brilliant vermillion that still retains its gloss.
There is nothing left of the binding except for a few threads
that are still attached to several
of the quires from the origin sewing.
How much survives and how much is missing?
The manuscript contains all the epistles of St. Paul
in the Traditional order.
Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians,
Philippians, Colossians, First and Second Thessalonians,
Hebrews, Titus and Philemon.
The only epistles not present are First and second Timothy
which would be expected to precede Titus and Philemon.
Manuscripts were never traditionally foliated.
The scribe would write the text in units
of four double leaves called by-folia
which were then folded together to form a quaternion.
He would write a number at the top right corner of each quire to ensure
that these were done in the correct order.
These numbers can help us reconstruct the parts
of the manuscript that are now missing.
The first surviving quire number is [phonetic] yoda theta
that is 19 on folio 13 recto.
From this we note that the first 144 folios only 12 survive.
We now have only six leaves and fragments from Romans,
First and Second Corinthians and Galatians begins on folio 7 recto
after which it is fairly complete.   The last quire number is lamda beta.

That is 32 on folio 101 recto.
The epistle to the Hebrews ends on folio 109 verso with Hebrews 1012.
The remainder of that chapter
and the following three chapters are missing.
First and second Timothy could have followed the epistle to the Hebrews.
The first five folios
of the manuscript contained the epistle Titus beginning
with Titus 211 and concluding with the epistle de Philemon.
All of this is exactly what one would expect
when a manuscript loses its original binding,
it disintegrates from either end.
Only a few leaves now survive in the beginning and end
of the original manuscript.   The middle part is fairly complete.

Each epistle begins with a headpiece drawn in black and red
of which no two are alike.   As space allowed at the end

of each epistle the scribe wrote out words in cross form.
At the end of the epistle to the Ephesians
for example we find the words [phonetic] opland galon.
That is a good shield where St. Paul had written, "Wherefor take
under the whole armor of God that you may be able to astern
in an evil day and having done all to stand."
On folio 58 recto following the conclusion of the epistle
to the Colossians, the scribe wrote [foreign language] if we read eddy,
ending in epsilon [phonetic] yoto for eddy ending in atea, we have,
"The hand perishes but the writing endures."
The text of the epistles
in this manuscript is not the standard Byzantine text
but includes many readings
that scholars feel are earlier and to be preferred.
Here are three examples.
On 19 versa we read in Galatians 428 [foreign language]
"Now ye brethren is Issac wise are the children of promise."
Many early manuscripts have this verse in the first person plural.
Where such textual variants exist one must weigh the relative merits
of each in an effort to determine
which is more likely the earlier reading.
Scholars feel that the use of the first person plural was due
to the influence of the first person pronoun in verse 26.
And verse 28 however the second person plural is to be preferred.
On folio 32 recto we read in Ephesians 5, 8 through 9,
"For you were sometimes darkness but now are ye light in the Lord.
Walk as children of light for the fruit of the light is
in all goodness and righteousness and truth."
Where our manuscript reads [foreign language] "for the fruit
of the light" many manuscript read [foreign language]
"for the fruit of the spirit."
Scholars prefer the reading of our manuscript.
The reading from the fruit of the spirit was an attempt
to harmonize this verse with Galatians 522.
And on 58 verso the first verse of the first epistle
to the [inaudible] ends with the words [foreign language]
"Grace be unto you and peace."
It does not continue with the words found in many manuscripts
"from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ" scholars feel
that this shorter reading is more likely the original
but later scribes expanding the text so that it conforms
to this salutations found in other [inaudible] epistles.
As manuscripts were copied harmonization was common.
This tendency can account for all three of the variance noted above.
A careful review of this manuscript shows
that it retained significant textual variations even
in the 9th century it preserved what are felt to be earlier readings.
Now careful review of the Arabic shows that in most of the instances
in which it departs from the Greek, it agrees with the Syriac.
This leads us to conclude that it was translated from the Syriac
and such textual variance
between the two were simply left in juxtaposition.
In two instances the manuscript includes commentary.
On folio 7 recto we read in Galatians 1, 3-4, "Grace be to you
and peace from God the father and from our Lord Jesus Christ
who gave himself for our sins that he might deliver us
from this present evil age."
Three red dots in the text lead to a comment written below
in red [foreign language] He calls this age evil because of sin.
On folio 15 recto we read in Galatians 317 "In this I say
to the covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ,
the law which was 430 years after cannot [phonetic] disennull
that it should make the promise of an effect."
In writing about the passage of 430 years from Abraham to the giving
of the law Paul is quoting Exodus 1240.
Four red dots direct us to a chart above written
at right angles to the text.
The chart has little to do with the epistle to the Galatians but much
to do with the translation of the book
of Exodus from Hebrew into Greek.
The Hebrew for Exodus 1240 may be translated.
Now the time that the children of Israel dwelt in Egypt was 430 years.
Joseph among others tells us that the Jews translated the Torah
from Hebrew into Greek at the invitation of Ptolemy the second
who was king of Egypt from 283 to 246BC.
This translation is commonly known as the [phonetic] sub turgent
from the tradition that there were 70 or 72 translators.
But Exodus 1240 in the sub turgent says, "And The sojourning
of the children of Israel while they sojourn in the land of Egypt
and the land of Canaan was 430 years."
The 430 years now includes the time
that the patriarchs sojourn in the land of Canaan.
We find both chronologies in the writings of Josephus
and the antiquities of the Jews but 2 chapter 9 he writes,
"and 400 years did they spend under these afflictions
for they strove one against the other, which should get the mastery?
The Egyptians designed to destroy the Israelites by these labors
and the Israelites designed to hold out to the end under them."
Yet in chapter 15 of that same book he writes, "They left Egypt
in the month of [phnetic] santicus on the 15th day
of the lunar month 430 years after our poor father Abraham came
into Canaan but 215 years only after Jacob removed into Egypt."
Then Josephus merely divide the time of 430 years in half assigning 215
to the time the patriarchs went in Canaan and 215
to the time the children of Israel were in Egypt.
A search for the chronology that is given in the table
of our manuscript leaves three published examples.
Two of them are from the [foreign language] published
in 8 volumes in 1844.
But first in a note on the same verse Galatians 317
and the second in a note on X76 where Saint Stephen refers
to the children of Israel having been in Egypt 400 years.
This chronology has also survived in a fragment on a commentary
on Galatians by the 9th century patriarch Fortius.
The table given in our manuscript
and these three published texts are an attempt to use the genealogies
of the patriarchs to arrive at a more exact chronology
for the time they spent in Canaan
and the time the children of Israel were in Egypt.
We read in Genesis 124 "now Abraham was 75 years of age when he departed
from [inaudible]" In Genesis 215 we read "now Abraham was 100 years
of age when his son Issac was born to him."
The first lines of our chronology read Abraham
from 75 to 100, 25 years.
That is 25 years had passed from the time he came to dwell in Canaan
until the birth of Isaac.
We read in Genesis 2526 that Isaac was 60 years old
when Rebecca bore the twins Jacob of Esau.
The letter opposite the name Isaac is C the Greek numeral for 60.
Unfortunately we're not told in the scriptures how old Jacob was
when Joseph was born to him but he can discover this
by a certain triangulation.
We are told in Genesis 4146 that Joseph was 30 years old
when he was taken out of prison and brought into the presence of pharaoh
to interpret his dream in which he foretold that there would be 7 years
of plenty followed by 7 years of famine.
It was the ensuing famine that caused Joseph's brothers to come
to Egypt to buy grain and it was on their second trip
when they had brought Benjamin with them
that Joseph revealed himself to his brethren.
And Joseph said into his brethren, "I am Joseph.
Doth my father yet live?"
And his brethren could not answer him for they were troubled
at his presence and Joseph said into his brethren "come near
to me I pray you" and they came near.
And he said, "I am Joseph your brother whom he sold into Egypt.
Now therefore be not grieve or be angry
with yourselves that you saw me hither.
For God did send me before you to preserve life
for these two years hath the famine been in the land and
yet there are five years in which they shall neither be earring
nor harvest."
Joseph was then 39 years of age for he was 30
when he was presented the pharaoh there had been 7 years of plenty
and 2 years of famine had elapsed.
Joseph's brothers returned to Canaan bringing back
with them their aged father Jacob and his entire household.
Joseph presented his father to pharaoh and Jacob said to pharaoh
"the days of the years of my life during
which I am sojourning are 130 years."
If we subtract 39 from 130,
we find that Jacob was 91 when Joseph was born.
This is the number next to his name in our chronology.
The first symbol is a kappa,
an obsolete Greek letter retained for the number 90.
Kappa alpha are the Greek numerals for 91.
The next text is entry is easy for we read in Genesis 5022.
"And Joseph dwelled in Egypt he and his brothers
and his fathers whole entire household
and Joseph lived 110 years."
The Greek letters [inaudible] are the numerals for 110.
25 plus 60 plus 91 plus 110 equals 286.
The years from the arrival of Abraham in Canaan
to the death of Joseph in Egypt.
If we subtract this from 430 the total number
of years we arrive at 144.
The chronology given in your manuscript has
in Egypt 144 years the Greek numerals wrote new delta.
All together 430 the Greek numerals [inaudible] The 11th century Greek
historian George Sadrinas writes "After the death
of Joseph the Hebrews were enslaved to the Egyptians for 144 years."
So then the entire time of the Hebrews in Egypt was 215 years.
Joseph lived to be 110.
He was 39 when his father and brother came to live in Egypt.
71 years of life remained to him.
If we add 71 and 144, the number of years he pass in Egypt
after his death, the result is 215, that is the exact number of years
that we find in Josephus.
This is a vindication of the history of Josephus.
He must also have known the same chronology
that is given in our manuscript.
12 rubrics indicate readings for feast days.
None of these is in keeping with the later [inaudible] cycle
of readings for the epistles.
Some of these co-inside with what we know about the [inaudible]
of Jerusalem in the 10th century.
Those that do not are evidence that even then a certain variation
in the cycle of readings was still to be found.
Five notations added in black ink in a later hand specify readings
from the epistle to the Hebrews for the first Saturdays and Sundays
of lent and these do follow the later [phonetic] tipican
of Constantinople.
These rubrics and subsequent notations point to the use
of this manuscript in liturgical readings.
A palimpsest is a manuscript
where the original writings have been erased
and the valuable parchment used a second time.
In most cases, the original Writing survives
as a faint image visible under the later text.
Recent advances in digital photography techniques have made it
possible to recover these faded texts.
They are photographed using separate narrow bandwidth of light
in what is known as multispectral imaging.
Specialists then process and combine these images searching
for the combination that will best clarify the underlying writing.
Good results are not guaranteed.
But in many instances the text that was all
but invisible before now becomes legible.
Many advances have been made in this field by the team of scientists
that assemble from a number of different institutions to work
on the Archimedes Palimpsest a 10th century manuscript whose underlying
text contain otherwise unknown works of Archimedes,
speeches by Hesperides and other writings.
Important volumes have recently been published
that explain the techniques developed for the recovery
of the original script and critical editions of the resulting text.
These same scientists have been giving funding
for a five year program to photograph the Palimpsests at Sinai.
The Sinai manuscripts often present a different set of challenges
but important progress has been made here as well.
In May of this year and this past September,
we photographed our manuscript with multispectral imaging techniques.
All of the leaves were taken from three different earlier manuscripts.
Approximately two-thirds of the leaves are from a volume that was
of the same size and format.
As a result the upper writing is directly
over the lore making it much more difficult to decipher.
But the original text is clear on several leaves
and on folio 72 verso we read about a letter
that the [inaudible] Arcadius sent a reply
to pope Innocent concerning the thrice blessed John.
This would be St. John [phonetic] chrisison and a reference
to the turbulent events surrounding his banishment from the capital.
The last five lines are a quotation from the letter.
In this passage we also find in the chronicle
of Michael [phonetic] Glecause a 12 century historian
who wrote a comprehensive history of the world to the death
of the emperor Alexis [foreign language] who died in 1118.
"All men are good understanding note this very thing that those things
that occur according to ignorance neither God nor laws punish."
If this is a chronicle of the events that took place
in the early 5th century it would be all the more important.
Four single leaves are from a 7th century work called the [phonetic]
pendext of holy scripture by [foreign language]
who became the abbot of the [inaudible] outside Jerusalem.
The pendext of holy scripture is a compendium of the teachings
of the scriptures and the fathers of the church arranged in 130 chapters.
On fasting, "he who would unite himself to God
through a pure fast needs
to undertake what is really the most perfect fast and not be enslaved
to passion and cultivate a profound quietude in all things."
[inaudible] was a witness to the destruction of Jerusalem
by [inaudible] in 614 and his
compendium includes an account of the 44 monks at the Lavra
who were killed at that time.
The remainder of the manuscript consisting of 16 by-folia
and four single leaves was taken from what would have been a large
and beautifully written manuscript.
These underlying text contain passages from Hezekiah, Jeremiah,
the epistle of Jeremiah the lamentations
of Jeremiah and Baroque.
There's also one leaf from the book of Ecclesiasticus.
It has long been known that there are considerable differences
between the Hebrew and the Greek sub turgent text
of the book of Jeremiah.
Differences that go beyond that are translation.
The Greek text is one-eighth shorter than the Hebrew.
Passages in a different order and those passages that are missing
in the Greek occur at various places throughout the text.
Included among the Dead Sea Scrolls were text
of Jeremiah follow the Greek version proving that both versions
at one time existed in Hebrew.
These issues have been addressed by Albert [phonetic] Petersma,
one of the translators of the book of Jeremiah
for the new English translation of the sub turgent published
by Oxford University Press in 2009.
A certain lack of homogeneity has been detected
in the Greek text of Jeremiah.
Henry Saint John Thackeray in 1903 made a division
between the first half the book to chapter 28 and the second half
from chapter 29 to the end.
He suggested that these were the work of two translators.
Emanuel Tov in 1973 wrote an influential essay
in which he accepts the division proposed by Thackeray but argues
for a reviser of the second half.
A careful review of certain formulated phrases
in their translations does confirm and duality in the book.
The division however as suggested by Albert Petersma should be seen
as chapters 1 through 32 and chapters 33 to the end.
The differences are also better explained as conceptual.
In the first part Jeremiah functions as the conduit
of divine oracles whereas
in the sequel he proclaims the divine word harking back
to past oracles as appropriate
and historical terms the two cover the same period.
There are textual differences between our manuscript
and published critical editions of the text.
In two places, passages of Jeremiah are in a different order.
Perhaps our manuscript will be able
to make its own contribution to these studies.
On the by-folium now formed by folios 114 recto and 111 verso,
passages have been set off by crosses and dots
at the beginning of each line.
These passages are not included in the book of Jeremiah but are quoted
as such in the writings of Theadora Decius the 5th century bishop
of Cius in Syria who compose many important scriptural communitaires.
Although there is no evidence that Theadora knew Hebrew he did have
at his disposal the three alternative translations
to the sub turgent made from the Hebrew in the second century
by [inaudible] from which he quotes.
These alternative translations have not survived apart
from such quotations.
It is evident that the scribe of our manuscript was diligent to include
in his text additional passages attributed to the prophet Jeremiah.
This is an important in another instance as well.
The scribe of the Greek upper text in writing out the epistles
to St. Paul was careful to set off quotations with marks in the margin
at the beginning of each line.
A note written in red indicates the source of each quotation,
for example, whether it is from the book
of Genesis [inaudible] or Isaiah.
On 32 verso Ephesians 514 is set off with such quotation marks.
We read [foreign language] "wherefore he sayeth awake now
that sleepth arise from the dead and Christ shall give the light."
A marginal note in red identifies the source of this quotation
as the apock a from Jeremiah.
There are other Byzantine manuscript that make this same attribution.
It was also noted by [inaudible] a Decon of Alexandria
and later bishop Asulca in the 5th century
and by George the [foreign language] in the 9th century.
Origin wrote that when St. Paul introduced this text
by the words [foreign language] he was making reference
to an authoritative text that was either a saying he had read in one
of the prophets or a saying inspired by the Holy Spirit
as an encouragement to re-penitence.
The majority of early [inaudible] sought the origin of such a text
in the conical Old Testament or the epigrapher.
Among the Dead Sea Scrolls are texts that have been attributed
to an epigrapher of Jeremiah.
A work of that name survives in [inaudible] as well as in Arabic
and [inaudible] versions.
The work is Christian in its present form
but may go back to a Jewish original.
Other passages exist in early Christian writings attributed
to Jeremiah that have not been collected
in critical editions of that text.
All of these would allow a better understanding
of the attribution we find our manuscript.
We have seen the Sinai Greek New Finds [inaudible] too is an
important manuscript for the study of the text of the epistles
of St. Paul both in Greek and in Arabic.
Marginal notes offer clarifications about the chronology
of the time the children of Israel were in Egypt as understood both
by Jewish and Christian historians.
But the recovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls
and early Christian [inaudible] text we are in a better position
to consider the ascription of Ephesians 514
to the epigrapher Jeremiah.
The cycle of liturgical readings indicated
in this manuscript is a great interest because it is so early
and because it differs from what later became the standard cycle both
in Jerusalem and in Constantinople.
Multispectral imaging has revealed underlying texts
with three different manuscripts.
The fearless preaching of St. John Christensen touched off contest
that eventually involved Alexandria, Constantinople and Rome.
A history of this time would be of great interest.
The [phonetic] pendex of holy scripture a compendium written
by anticus Palestine, the abbot of the Lavra [inaudible]
in the early 7th century deserves to be better known.
The text of the prophetical books of the scriptures and especially
of the prophet Jeremiah preserved in this manuscript may prove
to be very important as scholars continue
to assess the complex history of these Texts.
These considerations are based on a study
of the manuscript in its own right.
A search through the Sinai manuscripts dated to the 9th century
in both the old collection and the New Finds fail
to locate another manuscript written by the same hand.
It remains an open question for now whether the manuscript was written
as Sinai or brought to Sinai; even so,
we can confidently place this manuscript
within an important historical context.
From the 7th century the holy land came under Arab rule
and Constantinople became more remote.
It was then that Jerusalem and the neighboring monasteries emerged
as centers for Greek letters.
This included Sinai which remained an intrinsic part of the holy land.
These writings were predominantly theological
where visiting state institutions had come
to an end it was a religious affiliations that continued.
The Sinai library contains numerous Greek manuscripts dating
from the 7th to the 9th century.
Number 212 is a lectionary from the 7th century.
It is also a Palimpsest and will be included in our imaging project.
New Finds majuscule 5 and 56 dated from the 8th
or 9th century is a [inaudible] giving hymns
and oaths for feast days.
These are the oldest surviving manuscripts containing the cannons
composing I am verse attributed to St. John of Damascus.
New Finds 26 dated to the 9th or 10th century is a school text
of the Iliad giving lines of the poem alternating with notes
on vocabulary and grammar.
All of these manuscripts speak of continuity at Sinai
after the 7th century as Greek
remained the language of converse, study, and prayer.
The oldest scribal signature in the Sinai library is found in Greek 32.
An 8th century manuscript of the songs
and odes concluding with the B attitudes.
Having written the entire manuscript
in a heavy majuscule Greek the scribe added his own name in Arabic.
He wrote, "Remember me my brother for the sake of God"
and below the [inaudible] had been written in the place
of God Mount Sinai by the center Michael the disciple
of [foreign language] The oldest Arabic manuscripts
at Sinai are dated to the latter half of the 8th century
or the beginning of the 9th based on their orthography.
By the middle of the 9th century we have dated manuscripts.
New Finds 14 and 16 a manuscript of the gospels bears the date 859.
Arabic 151 is a manuscript of the epistles of St. Paul
in the acts of the apostles.
The [inaudible] states that it was translated in Damascus
and written in the year 867.
Where the Greek manuscripts speak of continuity they speak of change.
As Christians adopted Arabic as Their native language
and found their place within the world of Islam.
The same time witness the translation
of the scriptures another important text into Arabic and the beginnings
of Arabic as an instinctive language
for Christian expression and discourse.
The manuscript we have been studying becomes all the more significant
if it is seen in the context of this critical time.
The Greek and the Arabic texts side by side, the one speaking
of a heritage preserved and the other of its transmission
to a new and different world.   Thank you.

[pause]   [ Applause ]

>> Fenella France: Thank you both so much.
I think you -- it's just just a wealth
of knowledge that's been shared with me, with all of us.
I know my mind is just imploding here.
[laughter] I'd like to open this up to questions for the benefit
of those remote viewers that we have, I will repeat the question
and then hand over to either Father Justin or Michael Toth.
Do we have any questions?   Yes.

>> Participant: Have you found any more Caucasian Albanian
in the last couple of years?
>> Fenella France: The question is has there been any Caucasian
Albanian volumes found in the last few years?

>> Father Justin: We have a manuscript written in Georgian
but it is a Palimpsest and underneath are passages
of a language that had been unknown up until that time apart
from a few inscriptions that were recorded on stones
and this is called Caucasian Albanian.
It is not the Albania of the modern country but was a language spoken
by peoples in the area of Georgia.
It was a great challenge to decipher because it was a language
that had been otherwise unknown but the alphabet was recorded
in a Turkish manuscript and the challenge was undertaken
by professor Aleksidze who is the head
of the manuscripts department in Georgia.
The break through came when he saw that the same word occurred 7 times
and then the epistles of St. Paul when St. Paul is describing all
of the difficulties he has gone through.
He says I was afflicted.   I was tormented.

I was shipwrecked and this matched perfectly
with what he was reading in the text.
And so because it was discovered to be a copy of the scriptures
from that he was able to expand it and he was able
to recover this text written in an otherwise unknown language.
Quite a heroic feat and the text have been beautifully published
in a large folio volume in the last few years.
Professor Aleksidze was doing all of his work in a dark room
with a hand held ultraviolet light and he even damaged one of his eyes
because he was working so intently
under dangerous levels of ultraviolet light.
So one of the advantages of our program is that it spares scholars
from exposure to such dangerous circumstances.
>> Participant:   [ Inaudible ]

>> Father Justin: He hopes that we can recover more of the text
than he was able to see through multispectral imaging
and he has also identified a few other fragments
that may also contain Caucasian Albanian
so he among others is quite eager to see us photograph these passages.

The project in photographing the former manuscript was limited
to one text but now the same scientists are dealing
with a whole collection.
They're finding that some of their approaches work.
Some of them deem to be refined and we had postponed the photography
of some critically important text until next year
when we will be confident that we are photographing text
in the best possible manner.
So next year we hope to photograph the fragments
that are in Caucasian Albanian.
We hope to photograph a glycolytic manuscript that has what appears
to be water damage but we did a test and we were able to recover the text
from areas where there is no text under visible light and the pinnacle
of all of our work would be the Codex Syriacus which was identified
and then published in many editions by the twin sister's and by scholars
at Cambridge University in the 1890s.
We're confident that even there we can recover more text


>> Fenella France: I have a couple questions
from a very patient remote viewer.
So I won't forget those of you at the back.
One question was are both spectral and straight imaging being used
and I believe the answer is yes.
And if you can also at the same time answer are all Palimpsest visible
to the naked eye or have there been some surprises?

>> Father Justin: We began the project
to photograph the manuscripts with visible light some years ago
and that is continuing but it is continuing around the times
when we photograph the manuscripts with multispectral imaging
and the photographs I showed
of this manuscript were taken from both projects.
They had complained both the visible light images


Sometimes you can see the faded types underneath
and that gives you the understanding that there's Palimpsest text
but sometimes there's no ink left and you can only tell
that there must have been a Palimpsest text
because you can see ruling lines that go
at right angles to the present text.
For the first time we're using transmissive light
where you shine light from underneath the text.
We found that even if there's no ink left many times the letters would
have etched into the parchment
and even though there's nothing visible left
of the ink transmissive light will show where the parchment is thinner
and you can read the text that used to be there.
>> Fenella France: Gentleman at the back.
>> Participant:   [ Inaudible ]

>> Fenella France: The question was is the -- sorry.
I'm going to shorten it.
Is there any evidence that links these manuscripts


>> Father Justin: One would wish that there were [laughter]
because there was a historical overlap.
The library of Alexandria existed when there were evidence
of monks living at Sinai pilgrims going there
and the use of Manuscripts.
So one would wish that there were but I can't say


>> Fenella France: And just before I take this question,
there is a sign in sheet.
Did it get stopped somewhere or did someone --
or did it get right to the front?   did it come right to the front?

>> Participant:   [ Inaudible ]

>> Participant: We haven't seen it.   >> Fenella France: Okay.

Can you pass this forward?   >> Participant:

[ Inaudible ]   >> Fenella France: Please.

And while we're locating it.
>> Participant: John maybe it's behind your back.
>>> Fenella France: Okay.   We have a question over here.

Yes.   >> Participant: Yes.

Are you aware of references to or actual master plans or diagrams,
celestial charts, anything like that?
>> Fenella France: The question was are there references
to celestial charts or maps in the library collection?

>> Father Justin: The procedure for the
multispectral imaging is the photography of the text,
the processing of the images, they will next be given to the scholars
who are familiar with the Sinai manuscripts according
to the language of their expertise.
Their task will be to make the initial identification
of age based mostly on orthography and a preliminary identification
of the text and then we want to make the text freely available
to scholars so that anyone can use these materials
in these very early stages of the project.
So we have not yet assigned text to scholars for identification.
I try to leap ahead of the project in my presentation
to show the contents of one of the manuscripts but we have not
yet gotten to that point in the overall project.
We do have very, very important maps in the monastery.
I think the most famous one must be the illumination
of [foreign language] who traveled all the way to India in [inaudible]
in the 6th century and then wrote a text.
There are three illuminated manuscripts of this work.
One of them is in Sinai and it contains a very important map
of the world but also it contains the zodiac showing the planets.
It has another zodiac based on the fruits that come in to season
at each of the months and it's a real treasure
into how the world was understood by someone who is trying
to base himself so carefully on the biblical record
and then make diagrams of how this worked out in actuality.
>> Fenella France: We have one pretty detailed one from remote
which I'm going to take to read directly which is,
when was the cycle of liturgical reading solidified and when then did
that cannon get rearranged so where we have the sequence of Luke,
Pentecost, 14, 16, 17, and reverting to Luke 15.
Are those original schedules in Sinai famous books?
>> Father Justin: The cycle of reading the scriptures in a pattern
so that in the course of daily worship you read them in sequence
and in the course of the year you read all
of the scriptures must be very ancient but the specific readings
for feast days was settled differently in different regions
and that's why you see a cycle of readings emerging in the church
of Jerusalem which was different from the cycle of readings emerging
in the church of Constantinople and at the very time
when I was studying this we had the student
in Rome named Dannielle Gallanza who is writing his dissertation
on this very topic and he's the one that looked at the readings
that are included in this manuscript.
He said, "None of them reflect the later practice of Constantinople."
About three-fourths of them would reflect what we know about the right
of Jerusalem in the 10th century but we also know
that even then there was a certain fluctuation so we do find things
in with differences at that time that later became more standardized.

>> Fenella France: A question from down in the back.

>> Participant: Was the remote location of the monastery,
how were the ancient texts assembled [inaudible]
>> Fenella France: The question is with the remote location
of the monastery how was the collection brought together?
>> Father Justin: The remoteness has much to do with the survival
of the manuscripts because the monastery has never been destroyed
and never been abandoned in all of its 17 centuries
so that is quite a remarkable record of continuity.
In 614 the Persians [inaudible] Jerusalem.
It wasn't worth their while to come all the way to Sinai
and that is one example of how the isolation protected the monastery
but also we have data loggers that have recorded the temperature
and humidity over the course of several years now and we see
that by nature even if a room is not insulated in the modern sense
of the word, the humidity level remains quite constant
and humidity is more critical than temperature.
The changes are gradual and we found that the humidity level varies
between 20% in the summer to 30% in the winter.
So by nature it is quite dry and quite even and both
of these factors have had much to do with the preservation.

Writing materials or completed manuscripts were brought
to the monastery with great difficulty and then
that would ensure that they were kept there.
We know that some of the manuscripts were written in Sinai and we know
that others were brought there and there are some
that might be either one case or the other.

With the decline in numbers, manuscripts were set aside
with the later community being inclusively Greek.
The Arabic and the Syriac and the Georgian would have been set aside
so all of these contributed to the preservation of the text just
because they were not being used and the reason --
one of the many reasons they have reached us in such an intact state.
>> Fenella France: We have one more remote question here, which is,
how did the monastery come to own manuscripts in Slavonic?
So early within 100 years of the invention of [inaudible] --


>> Father Justin: We know that Sinai has been the destination of pilgrims
from all over Christendom and this is true no less of the Slavic world.
So these very, very early text would have been brought by pilgrims
and have been used at Sinai for the benefit of pilgrims
or for Slavic speaking monks who came to dwell there.
The monastery does have an extremely early and important collection
of manuscripts written in gliocoliddic.
When St. [inaudible] was first asked to bring the Christian message
to the Slavic peoples they had no written language
and they said trying to preach Christianity to people
without a written language is like trying to write in the water.
So they learned the Slavonic language, they invented an alphabet
where one sound could be rendered by the Greek letter they used that
but where the language had a complex sound they could not be rendered
by one Greek letter, they made up another letter
and it's quite difficult alphabet and was only used for some centuries
and then as I understood it it was later modified
to make the Slavonic alphabet that is still used
in the Russian orthodox church
and that alphabet itself was further modified by Peter the Great
to make the modern [inaudible] alphabet.
So because of the climate and because of the necessitous
of the Slavic lands not many manuscripts
from that early date survive but the ones that were brought
to Sinai do survive and they are a reminder to Russians
who presently visit the monastery that this has been a place
of Russian pilgrimage going back to very early times.
>> Fenella France: Okay.   One more question from the audience.

There we go.   >> Participant: Yes.

I'm very interested in the conditions of course
at Sinai are extremely dry as you said and what it kind
of accommodation is necessary in order to be able to image parts
of the manuscripts I would imagine would be quite stiff [inaudible]
>> Fenella France: The question is in terms of consideration
of the preservation of the parchment what special accommodations are
needed during the imaging of materials with very low humidity?
>> Father Justin: As I understand it the ideal
for parchment is 50% humidity and 50-degrees Fahrenheit
with circulating air so you do not have a stagnate conditions.
The archbishop and I visited the [inaudible] in Milan
when we were there for a conference and they showed us manuscripts,
Byzantine manuscripts and I was astonished
at how flexible the parchment was
because I'm used to conditions at Sinai.
It is too dry for parchment.
The parchment has become stiff and brittle
and requires very, very careful handling.
My advantage is that on most manuscripts the binding is also
dilapidated and because of that it is weak and opens very easily.
We do have to be very careful in handling it.
Some conservators have said we should seal off the library
and raise the humidity levels but others have said
that would be a grave mistake because it is change
that causes deterioration and where they have reached [inaudible]
under these conditions for so many centuries we should leave them
in the same conditions and not be creating an artificial environment
that then perhaps might not be maintained
because the electricity supply at Sinai is so unstable.
We -- in the renovation at the new library we plan to line the walls
with a hydroscopic material that would absorb humidity if it goes up
and give off humidity if it goes down and with a sealed room
that has been prepared in that way, we hope to achieve
absolutely uniform humidity so that we would have a stable environment
without needing to create that artificially.

>> Fenella France: And just to take a little bit
through that we have been having discussions over lunch
about potentially collaborating and doing further research in terms
of conditions because it's a very unique, wonderful environment
with very low pollution but yes a lot of dust.
One quick question I saw a hand at the back.
If we make that very quick and just to --
I want to also thank all our large number
of questions we've had from online.
I will actually get a copy of the transcripts and Father Justin
and Mike Toth are willing we'll get answers back
to you for those questions.
So please if you can be patient with us.
One last question.
>> Participant: Do you [inaudible] text to the [inaudible]
>> Fenella France: The question was are the Greek texts compared
to the oldest 3rd century Greek texts?

>> Father Justin: The oldest manuscripts of the Sinai are
from the 4th century and in the past, scholars especially scholars
of the scriptures looking for the earliest manuscripts to try
to use textual criticism and arrive at the earliest level
of the text have valued manuscripts written in majuscule far more
than manuscripts written in minuscule
which is the continuous running hand that you see in manuscripts
from about the 10th century on.
But I think scholars today are realizing
that a text may only survive in minuscule that goes back
to a lost majuscule and so even the minuscule manuscripts must be taken
very, very seriously in trying to arrive
at what may be earlier levels of the text.
So the earliest manuscripts by their very nature are the greatest
importance but scholars are now realizing
that later manuscripts can be no less important in a study of a text.

>> Fenella France: Well thank you.
I want to actually thank Mike Wilson and Ray Privot and [inaudible]
for the logistics of pulling this all together
and making sure we have both you and 110 remote call
in participants online but can I thank you for your attendance
and please join with me again for a very, very warm welcome
and thank you to our two speakers today.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.