Eye on History: Lost Languages Discovered in One of the World�s Oldest Continuously Run Libraries

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'Other hidden texts [found] were written in a defunct dialect known as Christian Palestinian Aramaic, a mix of Syriac and Greek, which was discontinued in the 13th century only to be rediscovered by scholars in the 18th century.'

Photo: Berthold Werner/Wikimedia Commons

Times of Ahmad | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: Smithsonian.com
By Brigit Katz | September 5, 2017

The centuries-old texts were erased, and then written over, by monks at Saint Catherine�s Monastery in Egypt

Saint Catherine�s Monastery, a sacred Christian site nestled in the shadow of Mount Sinai, is home to one of the world�s oldest continuously used libraries. Thousands of manuscripts and books are kept there�some of which contain hidden treasures.

Now, as Jeff Farrell reports for the Independent, a team of researchers is using new technology to uncover texts that were erased and written over by the monks who lived and worked at the monastery. Many of these original texts were written in languages well known to researchers�Latin, Greek, Arabic�but others were inscribed in long-lost languages that are rarely seen in the historical record.

Manuscripts with multiple layers of writing are known as palimpsests, and there are about 130 of them at St. Catherine�s Monastery, according to the website of the Early Manuscript Electronic Library, which has been leading the initiative to uncover the original texts. As Richard Gray explains in the Atlantic, with the rise of Islam in the 7th century, Christian sites in the Sinai Desert began to disappear, and Saint Catherine�s found itself in relative isolation. Monks turned to reusing older parchments when supplies at the monastery ran scarce.
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