An Interdisciplinary History of Writing

Introduction: Studying Written Artefacts

Field: all/mix

In this introduction, participants will get an overview of the summer school’s programme and learn more about the research programme and interdisciplinary work of the institutions hosting the summer school: The Cluster of Excellence 'Understanding Written Artefacts' (UWA) and the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC). Students will also be informed about their assignment for the final presentations (group work).

Instructor: Professor Dr Konrad Hirschler

Konrad Hirschler is Director of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures and Professor of Middle Eastern History at Universität Hamburg. He was previously Professor of Middle Eastern History at SOAS (London) and Freie Universität Berlin. Over the last years he has primarily worked on the history of reading, the book and libraries with an emphasis on material culture. He is author of books such as Owning Books and Preserving Documents in Medieval Jerusalem, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture, Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands, Medieval Arabic Historiography, Muʾallafat Yūsuf b. Ḥasan Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, as well as co-editor of volumes such as The Damascus Fragments and Manuscript Notes as Documentary Sources.

(Re-)Use of Papyrus in Antiquity: Archives, Books, and Mummies

Field: Papyrology

This module will focus on material features of papyrus fragments that tell us the story of a particular material object in ancient times. The investigation of various physical aspects of a papyrus document – such as the layout, the parts missing, the interrelation of physical damages and the text – go hand in hand with the study of the text written on it. A special case of recycling papyri is the production of mummy decorations – cartonnages.

Instructior: Dr Elena Chepel

Elena Chepel currently holds a guest professorship ‘Women in the Manuscript Cultures’ at the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at Universität Hamburg. She is also a co-leader of an international research project ‘From the Nile to the Caucasus. G. Zereteli and his papyrus collection’ at the Department of Ancient History, Papyrology and Epigraphy at Universität Wien. After gaining her PhD in Classics in 2016 at the University of Reading, UK, she has worked on Greek papyrus fragments from Egypt in various collections, including Vienna, Tbilisi, Oxford, Leiden, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Berlin, and Leipzig, and has taken part in the archaeological excavations of the ancient necropolis Deir el-Banat in the Fayum, Egypt. She is author of a book Laughter for the Gods: Ritual in Old Comedy.

Making Writing Supports: Papyrus, Paper

Field: Archaeometry

This interactive module will introduce different writing supports which have been used for manuscripts. It will be complemented by hands-on experience with paper and papyrus.

Instructor: Dr Olivier Bonnerot

Olivier Bonnerot studied Chemistry at the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris (M.Sc. in Analytical Chemistry, and M.Eng. in Chemistry). He then did a PhD in Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Cyprus on the study of materials from wall mosaics. In June 2022, he became a Principle Investigator of a research project titled ‘From Carbon to Iron: Evolution of Greek inks from Hellenistic times to Late Antiquity at the Cluster UWA. 

The Origins of Writing in Ancient Mesopotamia

Field: Assyriology

Recent research suggests that writing was invented four times independently in human history: in ancient Mesopotamia (the area that is today Syria and Iraq), ancient Egypt, ancient China, and Mesoamerica. This module will focus on the origins of writing in ancient Mesopotamia,  which is called 'cuneiform script'. Cuneiform was most likely invented to represent the Sumerian language, a linguistic isolate. Later, the writing system was adapted to other languages, such as Akkadian (the oldest Semitic language), Elamite, Ugaritic, Hittite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian. We will, among others, discuss what constitutes writing (and what does not), how and why writing was developed (for the purpose of administration), what the most common text genres were, and how writing was adapted to different media.

Instructor: Nicole Brisch

Nicole Brisch is currently an Associate Professor of Assyriology at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests include ancient Mesopotamian literature, especially written in Sumerian, as well as religious and economic history. Her most recent book, co-edited with Fumi Karahashi (Japan), includes a range of articles by junior and senior scholars revolving around the topic of women and religion in the ancient Near East and Asia. She currently works on the religious rituals and their archival documentation.

Reading Closed Cuneiform Clay Tablets Using Physics & Engineering

Field: Physics

How can science help us read sealed cuneiform texts without breaking the envelope or altering the artefact? In this section, participants will look into this question along with one of the researchers of this interdisciplinary project of the Cluster UWA.

Instructor: Professor Dr Christian Schroer

Christian Schroer is a professor for X-ray nanoscience and X-ray optics at the Universität Hamburg and a leading scientist at DESY, one of the world’s leading accelerator centres. His main field of research is X-ray microscopy and X-ray optics that have a wide range of applications in physics, chemistry, the life sciences, material sciences, and geosciences, as well as in nanotechnology. He completed his doctoral studies in mathematical physics and finished his habilitation in 2004 before joining DESY as a staff scientist.

Global Book Technologies: An Introduction

Field: Global Medieval Studies

This module conveys the central ideas that multiple book formats and technologies have circulated and interacted globally at the same time, and that each format has its own history as complex as that of the codex. It teaches students to identify some of the most common overarching categories of book format, such as the pothi, roll/scroll, codex, concertina, tablet, or single leaf, with a basic sense of their technological affordances, geographic and historical/cultural locations and some significant examples. The purpose of this session is thus to enable students to begin to form a context for examples studied elsewhere in the summer school or encountered at museums or libraries, and to understand the complexity and basic assumptions involved in calling a written artefact a book.

Instructor: Dr Jessica Lockhart (University of Toronto)

Jessica Lockhart is Head of Research for the Old Books New Science lab at the University of Toronto, under the direction of Alexandra Gillespie. Her work involves both leading and coordinating primary research into the local and global history of the book, with a focus on scientific-humanistic collaborative approaches to manuscript study. Lockhart has authored or co-authored articles in Chaucer Review (2015), Digital Humanities Quarterly (2020), Digital Philology (2022), and the volume Cultural Translations in Medieval Romance (2022), and is co-editing with Michelle Brown a special issue of Ancient Narrative (2023), alongside other publications emerging from the Old Books New Science Lab’s research. Lockhart earned a PhD in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto in 2017.

Inks

Field: Archeometry 

This interactive module will introduce black inks, their recipes and making. It will be complemented with hands-on experience with different ink and writing tools.

Instructor: Dr Olivier Bonnerot

Olivier Bonnerot studied Chemistry at the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris (M.Sc. in Analytical Chemistry, and M.Eng. in Chemistry). He then did a PhD in Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Cyprus on the study of materials from wall mosaics. In June 2022, he became a Principle Investigator of a research project titled ‘From Carbon to Iron: Evolution of Greek inks from Hellenistic times to Late Antiquity at the Cluster UWA.

Colours and Colouring

Field: Asian Studies

This lecture will address the significance of the study of colours and colourants for a deeper understanding of hand-coloured maps, using examples from East Asia (China, Korea, and Japan). Colour is an important key to a more precise understanding of the map’s content, purposes, and uses. Moreover, colours are also an important aspect of a map’s materiality. The material scientific analysis of colourants makes it possible to find out more about maps’ material nature and their production as well as the social, geographical, and political context in which they were made. ‘Reading’ colours in this way gives a glimpse into the social lives of the makers as well as the users of maps and reveals the complexity of the historical and social context in which maps were produced and how the maps were actually made.

Instructor: Dr Diana Lange

Diana Lange is currently Visiting Professor in Central Asian Studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a Principal Investigator at the Cluster UWA. From 2018 and 2021, she studied the collection of East Asian maps at the Museum am Rothenbaum in Hamburg in the context of the joint BMBF research project ‘Coloured maps’. Her research is located in Area Studies (Tibet and the Himalayas and East Asia) with a focus on the history of knowledge and exploration, material and visual culture studies, historical cartography, and cultural interactions. In 2018, she completed her habilitation (HDR) on the British Library’s Wise Collection at the EPHE in Paris, published as An Atlas of the Himalayas by a 19th Century Tibetan Lama. A Journey of Discovery (Brill 2020).

What Can We Do with Written Artefacts and What Can They Do with Us?

Field: Arabic Studies / African Studies

The participants will learn how the materiality of written artefacts – and not just the text – affect how humans use them. The lectures will introduce the concepts of affordance, i.e. how the appearance of an object allows certain types of usage, and agency, i.e. how an object can be understood to affect its environment. Both theories can also be applied outside the study of manuscripts. Certain written artefacts, such as magical books, talismans and amulets, are perhaps the clearest examples of objects that were used for much more than reading what was written on them. This module will include a visit to one of Hamburg’s museums to look for and critically analyse extant written artefacts.

Instructor: Dr Cornelius Berthold

Cornelius Berthold is a scholar of Arabic and Islamic studies. He has mostly worked on manuscripts in Arabic script. He obtained his PhD from the University of Leipzig and subsequently published his work ‘Forms and Functions of Pendant Koran Manuscripts’ about pocket-sized miniature Korans. Currently, he conducts research in the working group Facing New Technologies on ‘The Last Decades of Arabic Manuscript Culture (1870–1930): Coexistence and Interaction with Printing’. Besides, he is interested in historical fencing.

Instructor: Jannis Kostelnik

Jannis Kostelnik is Research Associate and Doctoral Student at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’. His dissertation project focuses on medico-magical manuscripts from West Africa. Additionally, he has carried out research with a spiritual healer and creator of a recently created West African script from Burkina Faso in the framework of his MA Thesis in African Verbal & Visual Arts at the University of Bayreuth.

Bindings & Bookmaking 

Field: Codicology & Arabic Studies

The participants will receive an introduction to bookmaking with a focus on the Middle Eastern codex. The module starts with a lecture that guides through the steps necessary to create a codex from unbound paper quires. It will provide the common terminology, show examples of extant originals and demonstrate why this knowledge of bookmaking might be important to a researcher working with old manuscripts. The afternoon will be used for hands-on sessions in which the participants build their own mock-up codex, using material made in previous modules.

Instructor: Dr Cornelius Berthold

Cornelius Berthold is a scholar of Arabic and Islamic studies. He has mostly worked on manuscripts in Arabic script. He obtained his PhD from the University of Leipzig and subsequently published his work ‘Forms and Functions of Pendant Koran Manuscripts’ about pocket-sized miniature Korans. Currently, he conducts research in the working group Facing New Technologies on ‘The Last Decades of Arabic Manuscript Culture (1870–1930): Coexistence and Interaction with Printing’. Besides, he is interested in historical fencing. 

Visual Pattern Analyis for Written Artefacts

Field: Machine Learning

The research of written artefacts results in an ever-increasing amount of digital data in form of images. The manual analysis of this data is typically time consuming and can be subject to human error and bias. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly more important for the scholars to benefit from the rapid advancements in the different fields of artificial intelligence in order to facilitate a more efficient study of written artefacts and help answering their research questions.

 This unit will provide a brief introduction about computer vision and how it can contribute to the study of written artefacts. In addition, the methods developed at our center will be presented and discussed. As a practical illustration, the participants will have the chance to learn how to use our Pattern Analysis Software Tools (PAST) on images of written artefacts. Furthermore, they will learn about the basic image properties, and the needed data preparations for some of the main computer vision tasks.

Instructor: Dr Hussein Mohammed

Hussein Mohammed is a computer scientist with a special interest in pattern recognition, machine learning, and computer vision. He obtained his master's degree in informatics engineering from the University of the Algarve and continued his research on shape detection and recognition as a research associate at the computer vision lab of the same university. Since October 2015, he continues his research in computational document analysis in Hamburg. His doctoral degree in computer science was obtained from Universität Hamburg for his work on the computational analysis of handwriting styles. Since July 2019, he has been a Principal Investigator at the Cluster UWA with projects on pattern recognition and similarity measurements of visual patterns.

Extended Reality and Inscriptions

Field: Computer Science

This interactive session will introduce different extended reality (XR) technologies, such as virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) and present use cases and potentials for the humanities. Together, we will try out two virtual reality demos for exploring written artefacts. We developed these virtual inscribed spaces in our interdisciplinary projects in the research field 'Inscribing Spaces' at the Cluster. Participants will be able to explore the inscriptions in the ancient theatre of Miletus and the early modern European church in Lucklum in virtual reality.

Instructors: Professor Dr Frank Steinicke, Jenny Gabel

Frank Steinicke is professor for Human-Computer Interaction at the Department of Informatics at Universität Hamburg. His research is driven by understanding the human perceptual, cognitive, and motor abilities and limitations in order to reform the interaction as well as the experience in computer-mediated realities. He studied Mathematics with a minor in Computer Science at the University of Münster, where he received his PhD in 2006, and the Venia Legendi in 2010, both in Computer Science.

Jenny Gabel is a Research Associate and doctoral student at the Cluster UWA. She is a computer scientist specialised in Human-Computer Interaction and works on interdisciplinary projects in the Research Field 'Inscribing Spaces'. Her research focuses on immersive technologies and extended reality interaction patterns.

Travelling Through the Netherworld: How to Equip the Dead for Eternity

Field: Egyptology 

This session offers insights into the function of inscribed funerary objects throughout the history of the ancient Egyptian civilization and insights into the function of inscribed funerary objects throughout the history of the ancient Egyptian civilization. It will begin with a two- to three-hour lecture introducing the students to the Egyptian religious tradition and the phenomena of continuity and transformation in the organisation of funerary spaces and ritual deposition of inscribed objects between the Pharaonic and Late Antique periods. The session will continue with a visit to the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg. In the course of our tour, Dr Frank Hildebrandt, curator of the Ancient Art and Antiquities Collection and myself will guide the students through the collection of Egyptian Antiquities. The students will have the possibility to closely examine a variety of inscribed objects (i.e. reliefs, stelae, coffins, textiles, amulets) in order to familiarise with the materiality of these written artefacts and their function in the Egyptian funerary tradition.

Instructor: Dr Leah Mascia

Leah Mascia is a postdoctoral researcher in Egyptology and Coptology at the Cluster UWA. As an archaeologist and epigraphist, she is a member of the Mission of the University of Barcelona working at the archaeological site of Oxyrhynchus (Egypt) and of the Mission of the University of Urbino investigating the ancient Cyrene (Libya). She specialised in the study of written artefacts associated with religion, mortuary practices, and magic in Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt.

Lüneburg: Cosmos of Inscriptions

Field: Art History / Theology

On the excursion to the Hanseatic city of Lüneburg we will examine the inscriptions accessible there from the Middle Ages and the early modern period. The Hanseatic city of Lüneburg has still preserved its pre-modern appearance. The city's silhouette is characterised by impressive churches, a picturesque convent has been inhabited by nuns since the Middle Ages and the imposing town hall is still the centre of the city's administration. There are inscriptions on numerous buildings, and the churches, museums and municipal buildings contain objects that also bear extensive inscriptions. In this module, we will look at these Written Artefacts, reconstruct their reception or 'use', examine the way the texts were produced and analyse possible stylistic and compositional developments and processes that can be traced back to them.

Instructor: Dr Jochen Vennebusch

Jochen Vennebusch studied Art History, History, Catholic Theology, Philosophy, and Higher Education Didactics in Hamburg, Paderborn, and Münster and obtained his PhD in Art History from Universität Hamburg with a study on the Ottonian Gospel Books from Reichenau Abbey. Since 2020, he is the Principle Investigator of a project on ‘Epigraphies of the Corpus. Textual Negotiations of Sacred Power on Medieval Liturgical Artefacts’ at the Cluster UWA.

Ethics, Cataloguing and Final Exercise

Ethical Issues in Working with Written Artefacts: Provenance

This module will focus on ethical issues related to working with written artefacts, especially provenance: the ownership history of an object or, more broadly, an object’s biography contextualizing the historical, social, and economic circumstances in which it was created, collected, and used. It will introduce how international legal instruments, national laws, and ethical guidelines related to provenance impact one’s research of artefacts and publication of that research. A case study of provenance research and restitution will introduce the participants to the various kinds of provenance evidence found in written artefacts and demonstrate how ongoing forms of colonial thinking affect heritage justice.

Instructor: Davidson MacLaren, MA

Davidson MacLaren is the research associate for cultural heritage and coordinator of international cooperation at the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’ and Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures. He is a specialist in the care and management of cultural heritage, especially Islamic manuscripts, who has lived and worked in Turkey and Arab countries for more than 20 years. Previously, he was the executive director of The Islamic Manuscript Association and the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation and Dar al-Kutub Manuscript Conservation Project. He studied Islamic studies, art history, and book and paper conservation; and his research interests include cultural property protection and heritage ethics, book history, Arabic-script calligraphy, Ottoman treatises on artists’ materials and tools, Ottoman Sufism, and Islamicate olfactory cultures.

Introduction to Cataloguing

Catalogues that describe the objects of a given collection act as gateways to the artefacts. They are typically the first source of information a scholar can access and are thus crucial for deciding whether or not to arrange for an inspection in person. This session will introduce some of the most common ways of cataloguing manuscripts and other written artefacts, and show which information on the object should be given and which is optional. We will also point out recommendable examples of catalogues for various disciplines.

Instructors: Davidson MacLaren & Cornelius Berthold

Final Exercise: Describing an Artefact

As a follow-up to the introduction to cataloguing, in this final session the participants will form small groups, each of which will be given an artefact from the CSMC's collection. The participants will examine it and record their observations, from basic information typical of catalogues up to and including avenues of research that the particular object offers. Through this exercise they will have the opportunity to reflect on the programme of the entire summer school and apply what they have learned. Members of the teaching staff will provide support and are available for questions. At the end, each group will present their findings to the other course participants and a selection of the course instructors.

Instructors: All