Wednesday, June 14, 2006

ARMY OF PHILOLOGISTS WATCH -- Another British university has received a major grant to digitize its Cairo Geniza fragments and make them available online:
Scientists to reassemble Maimonides' works

By SARAH BALL
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

LONDON -- Scientists at a British university hope to use digital technology in reassembling some 300,000 tiny fragments of an 800-year-old Jewish philosopher's oeuvre.

The University of Manchester's Center for Jewish Studies is reassembling the life works of Moses Maimonides, a scholar and writer whose findings were hugely influential on modern Judaic thought.

A British government grant of $670,000 will fund the center's use of digital imaging software, a crucial aid in piecing the hundreds of documents back together.

Maimonides worked as a physician, lawyer and scientist in the Middle Ages, project leader Philip Alexander said. His writings were obtained from a medieval document storeroom - called a "genizah" - discovered in a Cairo synagogue.

[...]
There's a nice photo of a manuscript too and the caption adds some important details:
In this photo released by the University of Manchester, England Tuesday June 13, 2006 is seen a fragment of a manuscript which scholars at the university hope to use digital technology on to help reassemble a 300,000-piece puzzle from tiny fragments of the works of the medieval Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides.The University of Manchester's Center for Jewish Studies is reassembling the life works of Moses Maimonides, a scholar and writer who died eight centures ago, and whose work was hugely influential on modern Judaic thought. A 361,000-pound grant (US $670,000, 530,000) from Britain's Arts and Humanities Research Council will fund the center's use of digital imaging software, a crucial aid in piecing the hundreds of documents back together. Maimonides was one of the greatest minds Judaism ever produced, and worked as a physician, lawyer and scientist in the Middle Ages, project leader Philip Alexander said.
Congratulations to the University of Manchester!

Cambridge University has also received an AHRC grant to digitize its Cairo Geniza collection.

UPDATE (25 June): Manuscript Boy points out that this number of fragments can't all be by Maimonides. More here. Curious.

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