The Written Treasures of Hamburg

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

‘Written Treasures of Hamburg: New Questions to Old Manuscripts’ was an exhibition realised jointly by the CSMC and the Hamburg State and University Library (SUB), employing 20 particularly noteworthy objects from the holdings of the SUB and highlighting how the Cluster does research on them.

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.