Manuscript Imaging at

The National Centre of Manuscripts

Tbilisi, Georgia

 

Handling 1,000 Year Old Manuscripts, September 29 to October 11, 2007

What’s it like to handle 1,000 year-old manuscripts?  You have to obey the rules.  If I were to draw up the rules for handling medieval manuscripts, I would begin with these three. 

Rule #1: Take nothing for granted. 

This rule operates on two levels.  The first level is “spiritual” for lack of a better word, and involves a sense of history.  One of the manuscripts we digitized in Georgia had a rugged beauty.  It had no illuminations, no beautiful illustrations; there was nothing aesthetically delicate about it.  Its pages had an orange hue and the black ink of its letters was bold and thick.  I was in awe of the primitive beauty that it had retained through 1,000 years of wars, fires, human suffering, disaster and tragedy.  And yet here it was in my hands. 

On a more practical level, this rule means that every turn of a page in a medieval manuscript is a new experience.  The medieval scribe who created this manuscript assembled sheets of parchment from whatever unrelated stock was available in the scriptorium.  Some folios were supple, thin, and even semi-translucent.  These were high-quality parchment sheets, possibly the remainders from a previous project to prepare a presentation Bible for use in a church.  Other folios were thick, stiff, and cockled.  They reminded me of pieces of cardboard that had warped from exposure to moisture and then dried and hardened in potato-chip-like shapes.  The supple folios could be digitally photographed without effort.  The cockled, cardboard-like sheets required clever means of restraint so that they would remain motionless before the camera.  The interaction of these different sorts of folios contributed to the fragility and irregularity of the binding.  So anyone who proposes to digitally photograph this manuscript must be attentive the peculiar qualities of each folio. 

Rule #2: Get to know the manuscript on a first-name basis. 

Before we digitize a manuscript, we go through it folio by folio and take notes.  A record of places where the codex is damaged (broken binding or detached folio) guides the person who will digitize it and keeps him or her from damaging it more.  We also write down how it responds to handling.  For example: “This manuscript should be opened no more than 95 degrees.” 

When I work through the manuscript from its first folio to its last I gain a cumulative knowledge about it that cannot be succinctly expressed in notes and measurements.  You get to know its weight, how it responds to being opened, where it is stable and where it is weak.  You know how it will rest most naturally on EMEL’s manuscript cradle.  Achieving a certain intimacy with a manuscript is necessary to protect it during digitization. 

Rule #3: Leave no trace. 

Return the manuscript to the curator in exactly the condition in which you received it for digitization.  The only evidence that you handled the manuscript is a digital copy that will enable hundreds of people to study it also without leaving a trace. 

I will write about the contents of the manuscript we digitized in the inaugural issue of EMEL’s newsletter, scheduled for publication in January 2008. 

 

 

 

EMEL's digitization system installed at the National Centre of Manuscripts

David Cooper digitizes a 10th century Georgian manuscript

Georgian manuscript on cradle

Harrowing Journey to Armenia , September 27, 2007

The Way to Yerevan

David Cooper and I took a day to make the six-hour drive across the border into Armenia and on to its capital, Yerevan.  Our journey yielded surprising twists, both gratifying and very scary.  

We woke early in the morning to meet the taxi that would take us through mountain passes to Armenia.  The driver knew no English but communicated all that was necessary in a gracious, simple manner.  Long familiar with the road between Tbilisi, Georgia, and Yerevan, Armenia, he pointed out angles for taking pictures and treated us to an Armenian breakfast at a quaint roadside restaurant.  Veal grilled with onions.  (The idea of “breakfast foods” hasn’t penetrated this part of the world.) 

The way to Yerevan was via the Indianapolis 500.  Like almost all Georgian drivers, squealing the tires at every turn on a winding mountain road was just how things are done.  Georgian taxi drivers aren’t much in favor of seatbelts either.  When sitting in the passenger seat next to the taxi drivers in Tbilisi, I would unconsciously grab the seatbelt and start to pull it across my waist only to have the taxi driver knock it out of my hand.  One taxi driver even wagged his finger at me.  My interest in self-preservation was apparently an insult to his driving. 

As our taxi driver led us from the hills of southeastern Georgia through the Lesser Caucasus Mountains of northwestern Armenia, we not only traversed changes in topography--we also crossed one of the most ancient theological differences that separates Christian churches.  The Georgian Orthodox Church is affiliated with the Greek, Russian and other Eastern Orthodox churches in that it follows the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) that Jesus had two natures, being both fully God and fully human.  The Armenian Orthodox Church never bought that idea.  It holds that Jesus had one nature in which both God and human were united without alteration or confusion.  Of course, we may be confused by these issues today--but there are important philosophical issues here--and along with geographical boundaries, these distinctions demarcated the ancient Christian nations of Georgia and Armenia. 

Palimpsests: Ancient Erased Manuscripts

We arrive in Yerevan tired but excited.  It is a bustling city that is more prosperous than Tbilisi.  We even pass Thai restaurants.  David and I arrive at a downtown hotel where we are scheduled to meet Levon and Garegin Chookaszian.  Levon occupies the UNESCO Chair of Art History at Yerevan State University and is an international authority in medieval manuscript art.  His younger brother Garegin is an internationally recognized information technology entrepreneur.  They are our gracious hosts and facilitators for our visit. 

Levon and Garegin tell us that within an hour we will meet with Radik Martirossian, President of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, and after that with Hrachia Tamrazian, Director of the Matenadaran, Armenia’s national library of manuscripts.  We could not ask for a better scenario.  David and I will be honored to discuss EMEL’s new technological initiatives with leaders who are deciding how technology will be used to document Armenian manuscripts for this and future generations. 

The problem that both our Georgian and Armenian colleagues face is how to read the erased layer of palimpsests.  A palimpsest is a recycled manuscript.  A scribe would scrape the surface of an old parchment manuscript to remove most of the original layer of ink so that the parchment could be used to make a new manuscript.  The original, erased layer of ink is of great interest to scholars because it can be centuries older than the second layer. 

The scraping of old manuscripts to make new ones was practiced more routinely in the Christian East than in the West, and the national libraries of Georgia and Armenia have between them some 10,000 pages of palimpsests.  Some of these manuscripts are very early (5th and 6th centuries AD), and almost all of them have never been studied.  It’s as if 10,000 pages of ancient Christian manuscripts were discovered in a cave--it would be big news!  But these have been under our noses the whole time.  We just need the right technology to make them legible again. 

EMEL is cooperating with a team of U.S. scientists that has developed advanced methods of multi-spectral imaging to read the erased layer of text on palimpsests.  These scientists proved their techniques with the famous Archimedes Palimpsest (www.archimedespalimpsest.org).  The erased layer of the this palimpsest preserves the world’s only copies of several treatises by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes.  Using new multi-spectral imaging techniques these scientists restored these texts for the first time.  The use of multi-spectral imaging on the large group of palimpsests we will encounter in Georgia and Armenia is still experimental.  There are no guarantees.  But it behooves us to make every effort to let these ancient texts speak again. 

Collaboration with New Colleagues

When David and I arrive at the National Academy of Sciences we are ushered into a conference room where we are greeted by Prof. Martirossian and other members of the Presidium of the National Academy.  Prof. Martirossian is a physicist and so he peppers us with sophisticated questions about multi-spectral imaging.  Everyone in the room wants to make these erased texts live again, but it is Prof. Martirossian’s responsibility to probe his American and British visitors to see if collaborating with EMEL is in the best interests of Armenia and its ancient heritage.  He remains poker-faced through the entire discussion. 

At the conclusion of the meeting, Prof. Martirossian stands, shakes our hands, and invites his press secretary into the conference room: “Please interview these two gentlemen, because we will be collaborating with them to digitize palimpsests.” 

Levon and Garegin take us next to the Matenadaran, Armenia’s national library of manuscripts.  This meeting is very different from the first, but likewise ends with a positive conclusion.  We sit with Hrachia Tamrazian, a poet and the newly installed director of the Matenadaran, and members of his conservation department.  We talk at length about how best to handle fragile manuscripts during digitization and the potential of reading their palimpsests for the first time using multi-spectral imaging.  Mr. Tamrazian presents David and me with beautiful illustrated volumes of the illuminations in Armenian manuscripts and says that he looks forward to a collaborating. 

It’s time for us to leave the Matenadaran, and we have only a few minutes to enjoy the manuscripts that are on exhibition.  Armenian manuscripts are known for their rich, saturated colors.  It’s almost too much to take in--too much beauty, too much rich detail, too much to contemplate.  We cannot do it justice.  I look forward to returning. 

Our Almost Unsuccessful Return to Georgia

In darkness, our taxi speeds along a rural route on its way to the Armenian/Georgian border.  David and I are in back, heads bobbing as we try to sleep.  We awake to the sensation of our bodies flying forward, the screech of brakes, and a white mass hurling toward us in the front windshield.  That white mass is a car turning left in front of us into a gas station.  IMPACT. 

Sitting behind the driver, I bounce like a pinball against the back of his seat and back into my own.  David, with no one in the seat in front of him, flew forward.  I reach over and grab his shoulder, “David, are you OK?!”  “I’m OK, I’m OK!”  The driver scared us both.  His head had shattered the windshield.  He is covered in blood, but manages to stumble out of the car.  After removing the glass fragments from his hair and clothes, we identify a small cut in his forehead as the source of all the blood.  He needs a new shirt, but otherwise seems to be fine.  Good German engineering saved us. 

Armenians from the gas station surround us and try to help.  After a couple hours on the Armenian roadside, the Armenians forcibly but hospitably load David and me in a taxi back to Yerevan to sleep and try the journey again in the morning.  But I am thinking about our driver.  He is a simple man who lost his means to a livelihood that night.

 

 

Armenian Countryside

Woman sells vegetables on the roadside
including cabbages as big as basketballs

Roadside breakfast stop in Armenia

Remains of our taxi

Amazingly our second taxi from Yerevan to
Tbilisi was originally sold by a
dealership in La Habra California

Labor of Love, September 18, 2007

Today was a highpoint.  The National Center staff took us on a tour of their manuscript holdings. 

Off the main lobby of the Center, we pass through two heavy metal doors, and find ourselves on a landing overlooking what seems like a vast room of metal shelves.  I hold my arms across my chest for better insulation.  The air is kept cool to protect the treasures that fill the shelves. 

Many of the manuscripts are kept neatly in archival boxes.  Those that aren’t look like misshapen brown bundles on the shelves.  Medieval manuscripts are rarely pretty from the outside.  Generally dark brown, the sharp right angles of a rectangular book have soften and deformed over the centuries.  A few--damaged by water or humidity decades or centuries ago--are bloated, and stretch their bindings like people trying to fit into clothing from younger, slimmer years.  Others slouch on the shelves as if weighed down by the wars and human suffering that they have seen. 

Tsiala, the Curator of Georgian manuscripts, brings out some of the treasures.  She doesn’t speak English but she speaks to us in rapid and for us unintelligible Georgian, leaving little time for translation by Tamuna Natroshvili, Director of Public Relations.  She is fully engaged in describing the exquisite features of the manuscripts, as she manipulates them in her hands in a loving, gentle manner. 

She brings out a manuscript of the Gospels from the tenth century.  This one predates the great flowering of Georgian culture under “King David the Builder” who in the 12th century built monasteries as centers of learning and imported scholars from Byzantium to teach theology and philosophy.  It is a large book with severely cockled pages.  It has full-page images of the evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, executed in a rather primitive style.  But their simple style contributes to their elegance. 

The next is an 11th century Gospels manuscript.  We are now approaching the period when Georgia was the dominant nation of the region.  It has full-page images of the evangelists, executed in high style with burnished gold as backgrounds.  The gold shimmers as the pages are turned.  The fluorescent lights overhead rob us of the full experience of the decorated pages.  The manuscripts were copied and used in monasteries and churches lit by candles and oil lamps.  The shimmering gold would find its natural home among flickering candles. 

Next we go downstairs to an identical room, below the one we just visited.  This chilly room is home to the National Center’s collection of Oriental manuscripts--manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Syriac, and more.  The curator who gives her name as “Kate” has a more methodical demeanor than her colleague on the floor above, and handles the manuscripts with the same gentle care.  She has been informed of my interest in Hebrew manuscripts so she sets on the table before us a large, flat archival box.  Inside is a stack of pages, probably 18 inches long by 14 inches wide.  The binding is long gone, and there’s nothing particularly attractive about the darkened pages with frayed, tattered edges.  But together these pages constitute a 10th century copy of the Torah, the first five books of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, making it one of the world’s earliest copies of the Torah and a priceless manuscript. 

Next Kate brings out several copies of the Koran.  These are manuscripts on paper, and every page is finely decorated with intricate, filigree-like designs in gold.  One of them is quite small.  It could fit in the breast pocket of my shirt, but pains were taken to decorate every page in gold.  Tamuna Gegia, Deputy Director for Foreign Relations, speaks excellent English and has joined us to help translate.  She says that this is her favorite manuscript in the Oriental collection. 

Finally, Kate shows us a little manuscript in excellent condition.  I immediately recognize it as Ethiopic--a manuscript from one of the southern extremes of the spread of ancient Christianity.  It is a copy of the Gospels from the 10th century.  I admit some skepticism about the date.  Very few early Ethiopic manuscripts survive, and a 10th century date would make this among the earliest.  More important, Ethiopic manuscripts have an uncanny tendency to look much older than they really are, and this manuscript is in excellent condition.  If it is a 10th century manuscript, it is a priceless witness to the Christian church of Ethiopia. 

As we prepare to leave, Tamuna tells me, “Now you know why we work such long hours.”  I reply, “There is an English phrase for what you are doing.  You are performing a ‘Labor of Love.’”  She nods. 

 

 

 

Doors to cold storage of the

Georgian manuscript collection,

National Centre of Manuscripts, Tbilisi

Tsiala, Curator of Georgian Manuscripts, working in the collection

10th century manuscript
digitized by EMEL

A Call to the U.S. Embassy, September 17, 2007

It’s Monday morning, we have arrived at the National Centre of Manuscripts, and all I can do is wonder if our equipment has arrived in Tbilisi.  The U.S. Embassy is graciously acting as intermediary to receive and hold our equipment when it arrives in Georgia.  After much pacing and phone calls back and forth to the embassy, we receive good news.  The embassy has invited us to pick up all four cases--about 700 lbs.--of photographic equipment. 

Our Georgian friends organize a van to drive out to the embassy at the fringe of urban Tbilisi.  It is new facility--low slung, windowless from our vantage point, fortified, but not imposing.  The guards are courteous but keep to the rules.  After identification, our van is given clearance and navigates switchbacks through concrete barriers as it approaches the embassy.  Negative words have been written about U.S. embassies taking the form of fortresses in our post-9/11 world.  It’s a worthy concern, but I am grateful to the staff of this embassy.  They have supported our project at several points along the way, and the equipment has arrived safely under their care. 

When we arrive at the National Centre, eight able-bodied men carry our cases up the curling staircase to the second floor.  I am anxious to begin. 

 

Equipment in lobby of the National Centre, with David who helped

transport them from

the U.S. Embassy.

Carrying equipment to the second floor

Mike Phelps opening the case that

holds the photographic column

EMEL digitization system ready

for a manuscript.

September 14, 2007

Meeting the Staff of the National Centre of Manuscripts

Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, is re-making itself.  Its Soviet past, the turbulence of its first post-Soviet years, and new investment in infrastructure and business all give the city an uneven feel.  The terrain of its urban center exists in three categories: slouching Soviet-era buildings with obvious deferred maintenance; vast holes in the ground populated by cranes and shouting construction workers; and gleaming new offices and apartment buildings. 

This unevenness extends everywhere. What first impressed me about the staff of the National Centre of Manuscripts was the youthfulness of its leadership.  People of various ages move busily through the corridors, but the director and his deputies are among the youngest.  The transition from a Soviet Republic to a free society seems to have created a generation gap.  Younger Georgians who grew up with a different set of assumptions stand ready to take advantage of a new society with a different set of rules.  But every transition is painful.  I wonder about a generation of capable leaders that may have been lost. 

The transition has been hard on the National Centre of Manuscripts.  In the old Soviet order it could assume a certain level of funding.  In the new order, the executive staff bears a burden of fund raising and public relations. 

This leads to my second impression about the staff.  The director, Buba Kudava, and his deputy directors are filled with a sense of mission.  They have been entrusted with one of the world’s treasures, the written heritage of an ancient society--one that converted to Christianity in AD 335 and built libraries of ancient texts.  Georgia is also a bridge between Europe and Asia.  Whether a citizen of Georgian considers herself a European or Asian changes with the weather.  So the National Centre also preserves manuscripts left by travelers between the two continents representing the heritages of many nations.  The executive staff has internalized these realities.  Their salaries are inadequate, the challenge to grow their institution is great, and they have decided that the mission is worth the effort.  They work long hours into the evenings and on the weekends. 

There are many institutions in the world that hold comparable manuscript collections.  I am pleased that EMEL is in Georgia collaborating with an inspiring group of people. 

September 16, 2007

Tbilisi’s Most Ancient Church

It’s our first Sunday morning in Tbilisi.  We haven’t heard anything about our equipment yet, but it is scheduled to arrive at the American Embassy on Monday, so a trip to church seems appropriate.  Our guidebook lists the oldest church in Tbilisi as the Anchiskhati Church.  It dates from the 6th century. 

We arrive by cab at 9:30 am.  The service began at 9:00 but this is not a problem.  Orthodox services don’t have the clearly defined beginnings and endings that we are used to in Protestant and Catholic churches in the U.S.  No one sneaks into a back pew embarrassed if they are late.  In fact, no one sits in any pews at all. 

We disembark from the cab into the small parking lot behind the church.  It is a gray, damp morning and a light drizzle is cleaning the air.  It’s perfect weather for the sort of quiet, contemplative service that is the specialty of Orthodox Christians. 

The church is a simple structure.  The many layers of brick and stone give witness to many renovations over the 14 centuries since it was founded, but it retains an elegant simplicity. 

As we walk alongside the church toward its entrance at the far end, we meet several elderly women holding out their hands for loose change from churchgoers.  Elderly people asking for money can be found on many streets in Tbilisi.  The change from the Soviet system to a free market economy has produced winners and losers, and many senior citizens can be found with outstretched hands on the major city routes.  But here outside the church I can’t avoid the feeling that these persons--with very real needs--are the true beginning of the liturgy.  They remind us of the poor and of our poverty as we prepare to enter the sacred space within the ancient church. 

At the entrance women are adjusting scarves and men are inhaling a last cigarette.  Inside is a dark and crowded scene: men and women all standing, men on the right side of the church and women on the left, women wearing scarves on their heads.  The church is filled with standing people, and only a few scattered chairs along the inside walls provide the elderly a place to sit for a moment during the three-hour service.  Although the service began a half hour ago, the doors of the church are not closed or inactive.  Persons move in and out throughout the service.  Some new arrivals immediately seek a place among the standers, but others walk up the center aisle to kiss an icon at the front of the church before they turn back to find a place to stand. 

The interior also is not without its distractions.  An elderly man in a bright red liturgical robe is in constant movement through the crowd of people.  At one point he circulates to the candles that are scattered throughout to make sure they are well lit; later he beckons that a side door be opened to cool the air.  At one point he asks a woman worshipper to come forward to clean the glass cover on the icon from the smudges left by the lips of the faithful.  In the Episcopal parlance with which I am familiar he would probably be called the Verger.  There is not much call for Vergers in church services today, but it is a layperson charged with keeping order during worship.

The liturgy is beautiful.  The priest and the all-male choir chant the ancient words of the liturgy.  The choir will chant its part and hold its last note.  The priest begins to sing his part just as the voices of the choir are starting to fade.  Back and forth it goes like this for over an hour.  It’s hard for me to follow what’s happening, but I believe that a certain rhythmic passage of the liturgy joined in singing by the congregation had to be the Lord’s Prayer.  Later a person in liturgical dress held high a gold covered book, walked it into the midst of the congregation with the priest following, and the priest sung from the book in the midst of the people.  This must have been the Gospel reading.

Throughout the service the standing worshippers are active.  The Georgians who surround me know the service and its cues.  They cross themselves repeatedly as certain words are sung.  Some bow and cross themselves simultaneously.  A few reach to touch the floor as they bow, as if to represent the action of touching the ground and tossing dust unto their heads in humility.

After the priest raises the cup and bread of the Eucharist, people from the congregations walk forward to take communion from the priest.  There are no single file lines or orderly distribution of the elements of communion.  Instead, the congregants crowd around the priest.  Several parents bring forward infants and small children.  The celebrating priest and other clergy hold them, caress them and bless them along with their parents.

The events at the front of the church offer opportunity for other activities in the back.  A young priest--a dramatic figure: tall and gaunt with a long fizzy beard down to his belt--stands next to a squat stone pillar on the women’s side of the church.  Men and women come to him.  One by one, they fold their hands on the pillar and lower their heads.  The priest wraps part of his embroidered vestments around their heads, and leans over to talk closely with them.  He is intent on each person.  He gazes into their eyes, listens closely, and ignores everything and every else around him except for that one person.  His eyes are filled with interest and compassion.  A few persons emerge from his embroidered wrap with tear-filled eyes.  Is he taking their confession?  He is praying with them over their deepest concerns?  I’m guessing that it’s a combination of both.  As each person stands, I imagine that they have received an uncommon grace.  I surely did as I watched.

Back up front it seems that the distribution of the Eucharist has concluded.  I’m hoping that people will file out so that I can quietly take pictures of the interior of the church.  But as most of the standers file out, others gather around a small space in the back.  The Orthodox worship service--amorphous in American eyes--continues.  They are all parents with young children, and a young priest is speaking to them with conviction.  I surmise that this may be a special Sunday for blessing young families.  I join the other standers and file out.

It was a good Sunday morning.   

 

September 14, 2007

Landing in Tbilisi

First impressions are always crucial, and Georgia is taking pains to make a good one. 

The recently rebuilt Tbilisi International Airport was shiny new.  I half-expected that new car smell.  Our bags arrived on the conveyor belt instantly, and as we gathered them I scanned the area in anticipation of long lines behind customs officials with dark sunglasses, whose occupation is to make entering their country as painful as possible.  But there was no one--just people leaving the baggage claim area and heading for the line of taxis waiting outside. 

Disappointed by the gross lack of inconvenience, I sought out a customs official.  Although most of our equipment is being shipped separately, we are carrying several important items in our baggage.  So it seemed best to cooperate with officials in order to avoid any problems later.  In any case, if you’re visiting a country on the other side of the world, you need to accumulate stories of the obstacles you overcame, and difficulties with customs officials are a staple.  I showed the customs official our cases of equipment and offered him a letter from Buba Kudava, Director of the National Centre of Manuscripts, asking that my colleagues and I be afforded every courtesy as we bring our equipment into the country.  The customs official then proceeded to give us every courtesy and wished us a pleasant stay. 

The ease of our entry into Georgia was deflating. 

Tamuna Gegia, Foreign Relations Coordinator of the National Centre of Manuscripts, was waiting outside with Tamuna Natroshvili, who coordinates public relations for the Centre.  [Later we will meet a third Tamuna among the staff of the Centre.]  In two taxis, they guide first the equipment we are carrying to the lobby of the National Centre of Manuscripts, and then us to the apartments they have reserved for us in the city. 

 

September 12, 2007

Troubles with Shipping

Just a week before my departure, I received an email that began: “I have some horribly bad news for you.”  It wasn’t from my doctor.  That would have been even worse.  But considering its source, it was distressing.  It was from the agency coordinating the shipment of our equipment--700 lbs. of high-end digital photography equipment--from Los Angeles to Tbilisi, Georgia. 

Weeks before my departure, I had arranged the transportation of our equipment via Lufthansa Airlines.  It was quick (just three days transit to the other side of the world) and relatively inexpensive.  But a week before I board the plane, Lufthansa announces that it is no longer receiving cargo bound for Georgia. 

Plans foiled.  Back to square one. 

After much hand wringing, a new route for the equipment was found.  It will be carried airfreight to Baku, Azerbaijan and then trucked back to Tbilisi, Georgia.  It will take longer and cost more, but it is the only way to get the equipment there as close to our arrival as possible.  It’s probably just my American prejudices or maybe I’ve watched too many movies, but a truck carrying our equipment across the border between Azerbaijan and Georgia conjures all the wrong images (images that are surely out-of-date in a part of the world that is changing so quickly). 

My confidence was restored when I contacted the American Embassy in Georgia.  They have offered to receive the equipment and told me to label every case: “Diplomatic Cargo.” 

So it’s off to Georgia with fingers crossed that the equipment arrives in tact at approximately the same time that I do. 

 

September-October, 2007

EMEL is now in Tbilisi, Georgia collaborating with the country’s National Centre of Manuscripts to digitize manuscripts in its collection that were once part of the library of St. Catherine’s Monastery of the Sinai, as well as other selected manuscripts.  Most of these date from the first millennium AD, making them more than 1,000 years old. 

EMEL’s team includes:

Michael Phelps, EMEL’s Executive Director. 

David Cooper, formerly of Oxford University and a leading innovator in the digitization of fragile manuscripts. 

John T. Stokes, software designer for large-scale digitization projects at the U.S. Library of Congress and National Library of Medicine, and designer of the software that controls EMEL’s digitization system. 

The following project updates are intended for a wide audience and provide insight about the manuscripts EMEL is digitizing and the experiences of its team in Tbilisi, Georgia.