430 ANTsTJAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



existence. This document dates very probably from the early tenth 

 century of our era. 



The problem now is to fill in the gaps between the two extremes of 

 dates as far as possible with known dated materials, or materials 

 that can be dated on other grounds, until a general pattern of the 

 development of writing can be established. The collection of papyri 

 in the Bodleian is here again an asset, for there are found the Edf u 

 papyri, whose contents give a pretty clear dating from the third 

 century B. C. They illustrate certain types of basic changes in the 

 letter forms in the direction of the tenth century A. D. manuscripts. 



To narrow down the limits at the other end is more difficult for 

 several reasons, the main one being that the greater amount of literary 

 activity among the Jews in medieval times led to a much more complex 

 pattern of writing for different purposes. Principles, therefore, 

 which apply to the paleographic developments observable in early 

 Aramaic-Hebrew scripts may not necessarily apply to medieval and 

 later Hebrew manuscripts, and vice versa. 



For this study the University of Cambridge Library is particularly 

 valuable, since here is housed the tremendous collection of medieval 

 manuscripts known as the Cairo Genizah. This large collection of 

 documents was found in an abandoned storage room adjacent to an 

 old synagogue in Old Cairo and much of it taken to Cambridge by 

 Dr. Solomon Schechter in 1896." 



Almost 2,000 of the more important documents from this collection 

 have been mounted in glass and are stored in a large case where they 

 are easily accessible for study. The writer examined most of these 

 to see whether any of them might be from an early date or might 

 show similarities to the Dead Sea Scrolls. None of them show any 

 paleographic evidence that would indicate a date as early as the newly 

 discovered manuscripts. 



In the basement of the library thousands of manuscripts from the 

 same source have been organized in cardboard containers and merely 

 cataloged according to subject matter. Altogether more than 27,000 

 Hebrew manuscripts and fragments in this collection have been cata- 

 loged. A perusal of these fragments is important to illustrate the 

 problems involved in studying medieval paleography, for many differ- 

 ent types of script are found among these manuscripts, but apparently 

 were used for different purposes. In one marriage contract there is 

 a literary quotation at the top, written in a formal type of script, 

 while the rest of the document is written in a more cursive style, 

 common to such documents. This would suggest, therefore, that in 



1* Kalile, Paul B., The Cairo Geniza. Schwelch Lectures of the British Academy for 

 1941. Published for the Academy by the Oxford Univ. Press, 1947. 



