Faddan More Psalter

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Faddan More Psalter.

The Faddan More Psalter (also Faddan Mor Psalter or trivial Irish bog psalter ) is a Christian psalter (prayer book) that bended on July 20, 2006 in Faddan More , a moor near Faddan More ( Irish An Feadán Mór ), in northern Irish County Tipperary was found. The National Museum of Ireland estimates that the Psalter was hidden in the bog for between 1,000 and 1,200 years and has ranked it as one of the most important archaeological finds in Ireland in recent decades. According to Bernard Meehan, an expert on medieval manuscripts called in by Trinity College (Dublin) , this is the first finding of an early medieval Irish manuscript in two centuries. The Faddan More Psalter has been on display in the Treasury of the National Museum of Ireland since summer 2011.

Faddan More turned

The area around Faddan More has a rich medieval history and in the immediate vicinity there are early monasteries such as Lorrha and Terryglass in County Tipperary or Birr and Seirkieran in County Offaly . As early as 1999 , a pouch made of fine leather was found in Faddan More bog , only about 100 meters away, which could be dated to the 7th to 9th centuries by means of 14 C dating . The trapezoidal bag measured 40 centimeters at the mouth, 60 centimeters at the foot and 40 centimeters in height, it was sewn with fine stitches and had several reinforcements sewn on. Whether the pouch is related to the Psalter cannot be confirmed with certainty. In 2002 a barrel-shaped container with two openwork side handles, which was carved from one piece of wood, was found that was no longer complete. The container was 46.5 centimeters high. A cut edge indicates that it was originally a removable cover. Also in 2002 several wooden planks charred at the ends were found, the largest of which was 150 centimeters long, 31 centimeters wide and 4.4 centimeters thick. Although all finds were in the same layer of bog as the Psalter found in 2006, a connection between these finds and the Psalter is rather unlikely. Location: 53 ° 3 ′ 13.1 ″  N , 7 ° 59 ′ 57.3 ″  W Coordinates: 53 ° 3 ′ 13.1 ″  N , 7 ° 59 ′ 57.3 ″  W

Finding circumstances

The Faddan More Psalter was discovered on July 20, 2006 by Eddie Fogarty while mining the peat, when the book fell from the shovel of his excavator into an adjacent two meter deep pit and lay open on the cover. He immediately notified the moor's owners, brothers Kevin and Patrick Leonard, who rushed over, picked up bits of books that were lying around, and covered them with wet peat and foil before notifying the National Museum of Ireland. The director of the National Museum Dr. Patrick Wallace praised the finders who protected the find from drying out and oxygen supply by immediately covering it with moist peat, since otherwise the book would have dried and crumbled in no time. The next morning, a team of five archaeologists , restorers from the National Museum of Ireland, traveled to recover the find. The find, including the peat layer, was wrapped in plastic film and given a protective cover made of plaster of paris for transport. The site itself was examined in the following days by two archaeologists who were able to recover small fragments of the Psalter and an accompanying leather pouch or case. A botanist recovered peat and pollen samples from the site for further botanical and pollen analysis studies. In the Irish National Museum, the book was only briefly documented superficially. After weighing up all the usual options for storing such a find, it was decided to store the book moist in a refrigerator at +4 ° C. The book was bedded on a layer of bog from the place where it was found, covered with a silicone layer and protected against mechanical loads with a stable plastic cover. In addition, the book is kept moist with moor liquid from the found layer. This is an attempt to maintain the previous conditions that have preserved the book for several centuries. The aim was to avoid contamination of the find with preservatives or other substances. The book should remain stored under these conditions until possibilities have been developed to be able to freely prepare, examine and conserve it as gently as possible without destroying it unnecessarily.

description

Initial investigations showed that the book block was bound in a leather cover similar to that of a copert . The cover has a longer flap with several incisions and rounded corners, which could be wrapped around the book and closed by means of a ribbon on three buttons on the flap. Adhering papyrus fibers were discovered on the cover , which came from a largely past cover stiffening. The buttons, presumably made of parchment or horn , about 26 millimeters in diameter have a hole in the middle through which they were fixed on the book cover. Parts of the hatch were damaged by the excavator shovel. The book was the discovery between the third to the fourth location opened. Layers one, three, four and five each consist of ten, the second layer of eight and the sixth layer of possibly six sheets folded in the middle . A total of 52 to 54 sheets are assumed, which corresponds to a number of about 208 or 216 book pages. The pages have an average format of around 324 by 220 millimeters. The front layers of the book were better preserved, the slider of the excavator shovel damaged the fourth layer more severely and bent the pages behind it like a dog-ear . In the corners of the set levels are large and for the insular Illumination characteristic of the Middle Ages, illuminated initials . The visible sides are decorated with yellow frames and red ornaments. Typologically , the initials could be dated to the 7th to 8th centuries . The most conspicuous decorative colors were yellow and red lead , which, however, is heavily oxidized in places. Other colors such as copper green have probably passed through the moor acids . The text pages are each described with a maximum of 30 lines with an average of about 10 words each. The text is written in Latin script in meticulous capital letters on vellum , a fine parchment , of which large fragments have survived. The first identifiable words were in ualle lacrimarum (translated roughly: in the valley of tears ), consequently the open page bore parts of the 83rd Psalm, more precisely Psalm 83.7 verses 4 - 9. The text is based on that of the so-called Galician Psalter, a version of the Latin psalter translated from ancient Greek by Saint Jerome in 392 . The text is closely based on the Latin version of the oldest Irish book, the Cathach Psalter , which is kept in the Royal Irish Academy . Future more detailed investigations of the text will be able to provide information about the originals from which the Faddan More Psalter was copied.

Numerous leather remains of a possible bag or sheath were found near the book and at the original storage location, the largest fragment of which is approximately 17.5 centimeters long and 4 centimeters wide. Part of the bag was cut through by the excavator shovel and fragments of the leather stuck to the book, while the rest was still stuck in the layer of bog at the site. Some of the fine leather was only an amorphous mass. In addition, two broken leather straps measuring 7 centimeters and 14.2 centimeters in length were found, the longer of which had a pointed end and which were presumably used to carry or close the bag or sheath.

Preservation

The fact that the parchment of the book has survived at all is unique. Parchment consists of untanned raw hide , which is heavily limed during production and therefore very basic . Under normal circumstances, the parchment would have decomposed in a short time once it got damp. Various factors such as tannins, lack of oxygen and antibiotic substances from the peat moss hinder the growth of microorganisms, slow down biological degradation and promote the preservation of organic material . Tannins from the moor slowly penetrate the parchment layers and tan it into leather. However, it was important for the preservation of the book that these tannins penetrated and acted on the entire book as quickly as possible, otherwise only the outer parchment layers would have been preserved. The excavators reported that the book package resembled a lasagna and that the parts where the tannins had not penetrated quickly enough looked like alphabet soup to the viewer. There the parchment dissolved except for the areas covered by the ink and the dissolved letter fragments floated around freely in the liquid. In other places, the letters removed from the previous parchment lay loosely in layers. In principle, the individual pages are better preserved towards the edges than their middle. The final preservation of the find is difficult for the scientists of the Irish National Museum, as there is no experience due to a lack of comparable finds. Interdisciplinary inquiries were made to well-known scientists and institutes, some of which provided contradicting advice. The preservation of the color of the illuminations and the ink of the writing requires a different treatment than the parchment. Uncontrolled drying of the book package would shrink it by up to 70%, which would completely destroy the find. If it dries in the package, it would stick together in a solid lump, so it must be freely prepared and preserved leaf by leaf. Oxygen supply and exposure to light would change the colors that are still preserved. In order to determine the best possible ways to ensure permanent and stable conservation of the find, numerous experiments were carried out with parchment patterns from the 18th century and free fragments from the Faddan More Psalter that could no longer be assigned.

interpretation

It is believed that it was made by monks from a nearby Irish monastery . Moors were used early on by residents to store a wide variety of objects there, for example in order to preserve them for a longer period of time, as in the case of peat butter , or simply to protect valuables from looting. According to the location of the traces at the site of the find itself, the book was probably wrapped in a leather bag or a leather case and placed in a bog pit. It is no longer possible to determine whether it was lost there or whether it was deliberately stored with the intention of retrieving it later.

The Psalter shows numerous technical similarities with Coptic books such as the Nag Hammadi writings from Egypt, and the remains of papyrus found on the inside of the leather binding suggest that the cover of the Faddan More Psalter was lined with papyrus cardboard, as in the early Coptic ones Codices common. These details, and the fact that the papyrus material could only have been imported from Africa, indicate that there were close contacts between the early Christian Church in Ireland and the Coptic Church in North Africa.

meaning

From a book-historical point of view, the Faddan More Psalter is particularly interesting because it is one of the extremely rare books preserved from the early Middle Ages that still have their original cover . Almost all other early medieval books, on the other hand, were later reintegrated according to the current state of the art, which makes it very difficult to make statements about their original binding technique. Manuscripts of the quality of the Faddan More Psalter were only made in the scriptoria of larger and more important monasteries, in whose libraries they were subsequently kept. The scientists hope to be able to clarify through a detailed examination of the find whether a more reliable dating is possible through a more precise classification of the illuminations. It should be clarified which paintings are in the individual chapters, whether the manuscript contains other texts in addition to the psalms, a date or the names of the scribes, the monastery or the client. It should also be clarified whether the Psalter was made by just one or more scribes and which pigments and inks were used. Finally, the question remains to be clarified whether the leather pouch or case was firmly or loosely connected to the book and whether it was decorated.

Misinterpreted prophecy

The pages exposed at the time of discovery bore Psalm 83 in the Septuagint verse numbering , which coincides with Psalm 84 in the Masoretic verse numbering of most of the Old English Bible translations. Because of the confusion about the different counting, the news spread that the open pages of the Psalter showed the Masoretic Psalm 83 . This psalm contains texts like "Come, we want to destroy them, that they are no longer a people, that the name of Israel will no longer be remembered." This prophecy of the destruction of Israel led parts of the public to establish a connection with the 2006 Lebanon War, which was taking place at the same time . The director of the National Museum cleared up this misinterpretation by referring to the different counting of verses in the Septuagint and Masoretes and made it clear that the open page does not describe a call for the destruction of Israel.

literature

  • Eamonn P. Kelly, Maeve Sikora: Reading the Faddan More Psalter . An Introduction. National Museum of Ireland, Dublin 2011 (English, museum.ie [PDF; 885 kB ; accessed December 8, 2011]).
  • Kelly; Meehan; O Floinn; Wheel; Wallace: The Faddan More Psalter: a medieval manuscript discovered in county Tipperary, Ireland, 20 july 2006 . In: Tom Condit (Ed.): Archeology Ireland . No. 77 , 2006, ISBN 0-9534426-4-0 (English).
  • John Gillis; Anthony Read: The Faddan More Psalter, A progress update . (English, museum.ie [PDF; 528 kB ]).
  • Eamonn Kelly, Maeve Sikora: The manuscript discovered . In: Archeology Ireland . Issue 3, No. 20 , 2006, ISSN  0790-892X , p. 4-7 (English).
  • Eamonn Kelly: Other finds from Faddan More bog . In: Archeology Ireland . Issue 1, No. 20 , 2006, ISSN  0790-892X , p. 14 (English).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Maureen Gaule: The Faddan More Psalter - Ancient Book of Psalms. National Museum of Ireland , June 5, 2008, accessed December 8, 2011 (press release).
  2. ↑ a b Ancient manuscript discovered in the Midlands. Raidió Teilifís Éireann , July 25, 2006, accessed December 8, 2011 .
  3. ↑ Bernard Meehan quoted in: Psalms emerge from Irish bog. In: The Sydney Morning Herald. July 27, 2006, accessed December 8, 2011 .
  4. ^ The Treasury. National Museum of Ireland , accessed December 8, 2011 .
  5. ↑ excavations.ie  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / excavations.ie  
  6. ↑ a b Alan Gilseman: Treasure from the Bog - Uncovering the mysteries of the Faddan More Psalter . RTÉ One, National Museum of Ireland (DVD 52 min. English)
  7. ↑ Daniel Engber: Bless This Boggy Book. How do bogs keep things fresh? In: Slate . July 28, 2006, accessed December 8, 2011 .
  8. ^ Ancient Psalms Found Preserved in Irish Bog. National Public Radio , July 26, 2006, accessed December 8, 2011 (interview with Pat Wallace).
  9. ^ János A. Szirmai: The archeology of medieval bookbinding . Aldershot, Ashgate 2007, ISBN 0-85967-904-7 , pp. 7-44 (English).
  10. ↑ July 26, 2006 Psalm 83 (Museum plays diplomatic role on psalm's' warning to Israel). In: Irish Times . July 7, 2006, accessed on December 8, 2011 (English, no longer completely freely accessible).

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