From Oct. 18 to 20, nearly 200 experts and scholars from over 70 universities and research institutes across 16 countries and regions -- including Germany, the United Kingdom (UK), the United States and Japan -- gathered in Turpan for the Seventh International Symposium of Turfan Studies. The topics ranged from heritage conservation to the evolution of Silk Road culture.One of the contributors to MOTP2 is mentioned:
Peter Zieme, a professor at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Germany, conducted a philological study on a manuscript fragment from Turpan now kept in Berlin. The fragment contains texts in both Old Uygur language and Chinese.Prof. Zieme translated the Old Turkic fragments of the Book of Giants for MOTP2.
A couple of years ago I saved an article on the Sixth International Symposium of Turfan Studies, but didn't get around to posting it: Experts share new achievements in Turfan studies (huaxia, Xinhua).
URUMQI, Aug. 25 (Xinhua) -- A conference on the inheritance and development of Turfan studies has attracted over 100 domestic and foreign scholars to the city of Turpan in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.While I'm at it, here's a 2023 post from the Religious History Nerd's Blog which deals with a closely related discovery: The Ancient Secret Of The Dunhuang Cave.The sixth International Conference on Turfan Studies was held from Monday to Wednesday, during which experts shared their latest findings and visited archaeological sites.
[...]
The discovery of a long-hidden library in a cave near Dunhuang, China, was one of the great archaeological finds of all time. And if you’ve never heard of it, you aren’t alone.I've been waiting a long time for an excuse to post those links.[...]
The Turfan and Dunghang manuscript discoveries are comparable in significance to the Dead Sea Scrolls for medieval Manichean (Manichaean) studies and (I know less about this) medieval Central Asian Buddhism.
PaleoJudaica is interested in them for the Manichean angle, but mostly because the discoveries included substantial fragments of Mani's version of the the Second Temple Jewish work, the Book of Giants. Fragments of the Aramaic original also survive among the Dead Sea Scrolls. These manuscripts constitute an epic jigsaw puzzle with lots of missing pieces, but all surviving translatable fragment of the book have now been translated into English in MOTP2. Follw the links in this paragraph for lots more on the Book of Giants.
PaleoJudaica posts on the Turfan discoveries are here and links (cf. here and links). For the Dunhuang cave discoveries, follow the links from here.
Cross-file under Manichean (Manichaean) Watch.
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