Alexandrian Chronicle
The Alexandrian World Chronicle is an anonymous illustrated world chronicle in ancient Greek that was written in the 5th or 6th century AD. Only papyrus fragments from the original codex have survived and are in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow (signature inv. 310). It is also referred to as Chronicle Golenishchev or Papyrus Golenishchev after its text carrier or its first owner .
Discovery and Reconstruction
Around 1900 the Russian collector Vladimir Semjonowitsch Golenishchev acquired 72 papyrus fragments with remnants of Greek text and illustrations from the antique dealer “Sheikh Ali” in Giza . The philologist Victor Jernstedt and the art historian Jakow Iwanowitsch Smirnow , who first dealt with the fragments, put some of them together and thus reduced the number from 72 to 49. However, the detailed scientific investigation and edition did not take place in St. Petersburg , but in Vienna : Smirnow sent the collection of fragments to the art historian Josef Strzygowski , who, together with the ancient historian Adolf Bauer, reconstructed the original papyrus codex as closely as possible.
In painstaking detail, Bauer and Strzygowski arranged and compared the fragments, some of which could be joined together, so that the number of fragments was reduced from 49 to 29. Bauer and Strygowski assigned these 29 fragments to eight sheets, the original size of which they estimated to be around 30 × 24 cm. Bauer and Strygowski had the reconstructed sheets (front and back) reproduced in color in Max Jaffé's photographic studio .
After completing the work, Strzygowski sent the fragments back to Golenishchev, who sold them to the Pushkin Museum in 1909 . Due to inadequate storage, the papyrus fragments are in a worse condition today than they were when they were reproduced.
A single fragment with the image of a woman's head appeared in Vienna in the early 1990s.
Description and content
The surviving pages of the codex are written in black-brown ink and provided with illustrations, the contours of which were drawn in black ink and which are decorated with different colors. Various suggestions (5th to 6th centuries) have been made regarding the time of origin. For example, Guglielmo Cavallo came for paleographical reasons (he classified the script as "Alexandrian majuscules ") for the second half of the 6th century.
Sheet 1 contains personalized representations of the months in the form of stereotypical female figures with certain attributes on the front. Only the images from July , September and October have been preserved . The back provides an overview of the month names in different languages ( Hebrew , Greek: Attic calendar and Egyptian ).
Sheet 2 shows a map and remnants of different country and island names on the front. On the back are symbolic representations of provinces in the form of fortified cities.
Sheet 3 has a catalog of biblical prophets on both sides with individually designed full-body portraits and corresponding (Greek) quotations. Quotes on Obadja ( Obd 13 EU ), Jona ( Lk 11.30 EU ), Joel ( Joel 2.30 EU ) and Nahum ( Nah 2.2 EU ) have been preserved. Most of the portraits of Obadja (Abdias) and Nahum (Naum) have been preserved and can be identified by means of picture inscriptions.
Pages 4 and 5 contain illustrated lists of the Roman (front 4), Spartan (back 4), Macedonian (front 5) and Lydian kings (back 5).
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Sheet 6 contains a chronicle of the years 383–392 AD, which names the number of the Diocletian era , the eponymous consuls and the incumbent Praefectus augustalis for each year . According to this scheme, imperial or locally significant events are listed briefly and stereotypically, often with daily dates according to the Roman ( Julian ) and Egyptian calendars , whereby the Egyptian dates are incorrectly calculated. The images on the outer edge illustrate these events: the death of the Emperor Gratian (383), the office of Bishop Theophilus of Alexandria (387), the entry of the Emperor Theodosius in Rome (389), who falsely here with the imperial collection of his son Honorius connected becomes (actually 393). The last event that can be definitely assigned is the murder of the usurper Eugenius (incorrectly dated January 6, 392, instead of September 6, 394). The illustrations suggest that shortly thereafter the destruction of the Serapis sanctuary of Alexandria was discussed, but the text is no longer safe to produce.
Sheet 7 contains images of New Testament characters on the front and back, along with quotations from the Bible.
Sheet 8 contains several tiny fragments from which no text can be reconstructed. They were probably astronomical and calendar notes.
Sheet 1, front side: Personified representation of September
Sheet 3, back: portrait of Nahum
Sheet 4, back: Kings of Sparta
Sheet 5, front side: Kings of Macedonia
Sheet 6, front side: corpse of Bishop Timotheus and his successor Theophilos
Sheet 7, front side: angel
Sheet 7, front side: Anna , Maria's mother
Sheet 7, front side: Prophet Zacharias
literature
- Adolf Bauer , Josef Strzygowski : An Alexandrinische Weltchronik. Text and miniatures from a Greek papyrus from the W. Goleniščev collection . In: Memoranda of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna, philosophical-historical class . No. 51 , 1905, urn : nbn: de: bvb: 12-bsb00002947-6 .
- Richard W. Burgess, Jitse HF Dijkstra: The 'Alexandrian World Chronicle', its Consularia and the Date of the Destruction of the Serapeum (with an Appendix on the List of Praefecti Augustales) . In: Millennium. Yearbook on Culture and History of the First Millennium AD Volume 10 , no. 1 , 2013, p. 39–113 , doi : 10.1515 / mjb.2013.10.1.39 .
- Maria Becker, Bruno Bleckmann , Mehran A. Nickbakht, Jonathan Groß: Consularia Constantinopolitana and related sources. Consularia Constantinopolitana, Sokrates' fasting source, Berlin Chronicle, Alexandrian World Chronicle . In: Small and fragmentary historians of late antiquity . G 4, 2016, p. 285-332 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Austrian National Library, Papyrus Museum, signature K 11630 Pap.
- ^ Otto Kurz : The Date of the Alexandrian World Chronicle . In: Artur Rosenauer , Gerold Weber (ed.): Art historical research. Otto Pächt on his 70th birthday . Salzburg 1972, pp. 17-22
- ^ Guglielmo Cavallo: Per la data from P.Golenischev della “Cronaca universale alessandrina” . In: The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists . Volume 49 (2012), pp. 237-240.
- ↑ The woman's head published in 1992 in the Papyrus Museum of the Austrian National Library is assigned to this picture.