Old manuscripts, new questionsWritten Treasures of Hamburg

6 June 2023

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

Starting in July, an exhibition on the ‘Written Treasures of Hamburg’ will show highlights from the holdings of the Hamburg State Library, demonstrating how research at CSMC employs individual objects to develop overarching approaches to understanding written artefacts of all eras and places.

A 4000-year-old receipt for flour, written in cuneiform in clay; a complete Qur’an, only a few centimetres in size; a hastily revised promptbook that that played a key role an infamous theatre scandal: written artefacts come to us in countless forms, and each has its own story. In order to fathom these stories, researchers at CSMC are investigating written artefacts from all cultures that have produced such artefacts.

The exhibition ‘Hamburgs Schriftschätze: Neue Fragen an alte Manuskripte’ (‘Written Treasures of Hamburg: New Questions to Old Manuscripts’) offers insights into the manifold world of written artefacts and the research that is being done at the Cluster. Employing 20 particularly noteworthy, significant, or surprising written artefacts from the holdings of the Hamburg State Library (SUB), the exhibition gives a sense of how research at the Cluster proceeds: starting from individual objects, we can uncover historical contexts and recognise astonishing connections between different cultures of writing. It also shows why collaborations between the humanities, the natural sciences, and the computer sciences are indispensable for a deeper understanding of our written heritage.

The exhibition will be on display every day from 5 July to 2 October from 9:00 am to 12:00 am (10:00 am – 12:00 am on Sundays). Entrance is free of charge. A festive opening of the exhibition with short talks by representatives of the Cluster and the SUB will take place on 4 July from 6:00 to 8:00 pm in the event room of the SUB.