[I've copied an article from my alma mater, University of Cambridge, that links the past and present, as well as teaching and technology.]
A campaign to save ancient documents
chronicling 1,000 years of history has succeeded after £1.2m was raised by the
universities of Cambridge and Oxford in their first-ever joint appeal.
This can only bring benefits to
both institutions and provide an exemplar for other purchases and
collaborations in the future
Anne Jarvis
The ‘Lewis-Gibson Genizah Collection’ of Hebrew and
Arabic manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah dates from the 9th–19th century and is an
invaluable 1,000-year record of the religious, social, economic and cultural
life of the Mediterranean world.
Treasures include the earliest known example of a Jewish
engagement deed (dating from 1119), an eyewitness account of Crusader
atrocities, and autograph writings by leading Jewish thinkers such as Moses
Maimonides.
A genizah is a sacred storeroom, a room set aside inside
a synagogue for the interment of old religious writings, which, because they
contain names of God or use the sacred Hebrew alphabet, cannot be discarded.
For more than 1,000 years, the Jewish community of Fustat (now a suburb of
Cairo), deposited all manner of writings – not just sacred texts – into the
dusty storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue. Its contents were described by
historian Simon Schama as ‘the single most complete archive of a society
anywhere in the whole medieval world’.
The fragments purchased by Oxford and Cambridge were
brought back from Cairo by intrepid twin sisters Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret
Dunlop Gibson in 1896 and deposited at Westminster College where they remained
until August 1.
The appeal, launched earlier this year at The British
Academy, marked the first time the two universities have joined forces to
fundraise. A lead gift of £500,000 from the Polonsky Foundation was followed by
a donation of £350,000, arranged through a Director of the Littman Library of
Jewish Civilisation.
A further generous grant of £100,000 was pledged by the
Bonita Charitable Trust – both libraries are grateful to the many other
individuals and charitable trusts who made donations to the appeal from around
the world.
With the manuscripts secured, the collection, previously
owned by the United Reform Church’s Westminster College, will undergo careful
conservation at Cambridge University Library during the next two years before
being digitised and made freely available online.
The manuscripts will then be divided between the
University Library at Cambridge and the Bodleian Libraries at Oxford. A public
exhibition looking at the collection – and the extraordinary twin sisters who
played such a vital role in their discovery – will be held in 2016 at Cambridge
University Library.
Both libraries are already holders of substantial
Genizah collections in their own right. Cambridge is home to the largest
collection in the world with some 200,000 fragments out of the estimated
350,000 to be found in public collections worldwide. Meanwhile, the Bodleian
holds 25,000 world-class Genizah folios, the size and quality of which rank it
among the most important global collections.
Cambridge University Librarian Anne Jarvis said: “Over
the centuries the Bodleian and Cambridge University Library have been
celebrated rivals, particularly when it came to the acquisition of great
collections. Now that our two great libraries will share the ownership of the
Collection, this can only bring benefits to both institutions and provide an
exemplar for other purchases and collaborations in the future.”
Bodley’s Interim Librarian Richard Ovenden said: “The
Lewis-Gibson Collection has been a catalyst for bringing our two organisations
into closer cooperation than ever before. As we face ever harder challenges
brought about by complex factors: financial, technological, organizational, the
university libraries at Oxford and Cambridge can testify already to the power
of collaboration to enable us to face those challenges.”
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