MORE ON THE CAIRO GENIZA
EXODUS FRAGMENT, now on display in the Israel Museum. The
Art Daily has an article:
Rare 7th-8th C. Scroll Fragment in First-Time Public Display
JERUSALEM.- The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, announced the unveiling of an extremely rare and never-before-exhibited Hebrew scroll fragment from what is known as the "silent era" – the six-hundred year period from the 3rd through 8th centuries CE from which almost no Hebrew manuscripts have survived. The fragment, dating from the 7th or 8th century, is believed to have been part of the Cairo Genizah, a vast depository of medieval Jewish manuscripts discovered in Cairo's Ben Ezra Synagogue in the late 19th century.
The manuscript is a fragment of a Torah scroll from the book of Exodus (13:19-16:1), which includes the Song of the Sea, widely recognized as one of the most beautiful examples of biblical poetry. The Song celebrates the Israelites' safe crossing of the Red Sea, praises the Almighty for vanquishing their enemies, and anticipates their arrival in the Promised Land.
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The main new information is about the private owner of the manuscript and its recent movements:
Until the late 1970s, the Song of the Sea manuscript was part of the Hebrew manuscript collection of Lebanese-born American physician Fuad Ashkar. Dr. Ashkar was not aware of the historical significance of the Song manuscript until he contacted Professor James Charlesworth at Duke University, now the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. Carbon analysis proved that the manuscript dated from "the silent era" of Hebrew biblical manuscripts and was therefore one of a few of its kind ever to have surfaced worldwide. The fragment was subsequently housed in the Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Special Collections Library at Duke University.
In 2004, Prof. Charlesworth brought the manuscript to the attention of Dr. Adolfo Roitman, and it is now on extended loan to the Museum. Since its arrival in Jerusalem, the manuscript has undergone extensive conservation treatment, undertaken by Michael Maggen, head of the Israel Museum's Paper Conservation Laboratory, in consultation with Duke University.
The article also has a nice close-up of a passage in the manuscript.