What It’s Like To See The Aleppo Codex

The NYT featured a neat account of the Aleppo Codex and the interesting, complicated and controversial history of the oldest, most complete text of the Hebrew Bible. And boy, it’s been through a lot.

As a small group of us stood in a circle inside the vault in which the codex now resides, Michael Maggen, the head of the museum’s paper-conservation lab, donned a pair of gloves and carefully lifted one of its unbound pages, covered with three columns of beautiful calligraphy, for us to see. The pages were made from animal hides that were stretched and bleached and cut to make parchment; the scribe’s ink was made of powdered tree galls mixed with iron sulfate and black soot. “Considering the difficult conditions that the manuscript suffered over a great many years,” James Snyder, the museum’s director, said, “it is in remarkably excellent condition.”

That is impressive indeed.

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1 Response to "What It’s Like To See The Aleppo Codex"

  1. Duke Yeah, Enriquez does seem like a very Spanish last name. The people from both coienruts are very beautiful; I’d imagine some mixing would be inevitable, verdad. September 27, 2013

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