28 XI 2024: Agata Deptuła & Adam Łajtar: Severus of Antioch in Nubia. Tracing early Christian traditions in Qasr Ibrim’s Greek manuscripts

Qasr Ibrim, located on the right bank of the Nile midway between the first and second cataracts, stands as a significant medieval settlement, seat of the civilian authorities of the Christian Kingdom of Makuria and a bishopric see. Since the 1960s, the Egypt Exploration Society has conducted archaeological excavations, revealing a remarkable collection of textual sources in Greek, Coptic, Old Nubian, and Arabic. The project “Religious Literature in Christian Nubia: Greek Manuscripts from Qasr Ibrim,” conducted at the University of Warsaw, focuses on around 100 Greek objects discovered on the floor of Ibrim’s cathedral, a likely remnant of the cathedral library.

While some Greek manuscripts have been edited, the majority remain unpublished, with others necessitating a careful revision. These manuscripts include fragments of Biblical texts, hagiographic compositions, and liturgical materials, offering unique sources for reconstructing early Eastern Christian traditions. One of such cases are fragments of works attributed to Severus of Antioch, a focus of the present paper. The pieces we have identified within the framework of the project supplement the Severan corpus with fragments of homilies and more importantly witnesses of the original, Greek versions of his hymns, so far accessible only through their Syriac translations.