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Document Details :

Title: Dated and Datable Coptic Documentary Hands before A.D. 700
Author(s): MACCOULL, L.S.B.
Journal: Le Muséon
Volume: 110    Issue: 3-4   Date: 1997   
Pages: 349-366
DOI: 10.2143/MUS.110.3.525791

Abstract :
What surveys of Coptic palaeography do exist are almost exclusively concerned with the hands of literary texts, the dating of which is a notoriously difficult affair. The earliest Coptic palaeography book, Henri Hyvernat's Album de paléographie copte (Paris, 1888), was produced as an accompaniment to the author's work on Coptic martyr acts and is literary-oriented as a matter of course. Nearly eighty years later Maria Cramer's Koptische Paläographie (Wiesbaden, 1964), undertaken in connection with the early-sixties Coptic art boom sparked by exhibits in Essen and Paris, remains both literary in scope and so error-filled that it is useless. Only Viktor Stegemann's Koptische Paläographie (Heidelberg, 1936) included some documents in its illustrations and alphabet charts. Recent work on Coptic palaeography, like so much of what was conceived of as “Coptic studies" in general, has revolved around the Nag Hammadi codices and their bookhands.

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