The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures is an academic hub for inter-disciplinary activities related to the study of pre-modern manuscript and epigraphic traditions from different cultures. The Centre has been established by The Queen’s College, Oxford, but is proactively engaged in collaborative activities involving scholars from other institutions around the world.
Provenance Unknown: Michaelmas Term 2024 Lecture The Centre hosts the following lecture (Wednesday 20th November 2024, 5.15pm in the Memorial Room at Queen’s): Christopher Whittick,‘“I found it in a…
Michaelmas Term Lecture 2024 The Centre hosts the following lecture (Wednesday 30th October 2024 at 5.15pm in the Memorial Room, Queen’ s): Dr Annick Payne (Università Ca’ Foscari…
We are pleased to announce that our colleagues of the Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group are organising a new seminar series aiming to foster a community at Oxford, and beyond,…
The Centre is pleased to announce the release of the second issue of the second volume of the journal Manuscript and Text Cultures (‘Writing orality’). The issue can be…
The Centre is pleased to announce that our journal Manuscript and Text Cultures has just been accepted for inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). DOAJ is…
Provenance Unknown – a lecture series hosted by the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures, The Queen’s College, Oxford The ethics of publishing unprovenanced manuscripts is a hotly contested…
The Centre will host the Crafting Documents Project Launch event on the 2nd of February at 3pm in the Memorial Room of The Queen’s College. The speakers will be…
The Centre will host the international conference ‘Articulation of Silence from a Gendered Perspective’ on the 26th, 27th, and 28th of September. The main objective of this conference is…
Due to the high volume of readers of our first two issues, we gladly announce that the Journal for Manuscript and Text Cultures (MTC) is now moving from one to two…
The CMTC is proud to announce a new lecture series: ‘Provenance: Unknown’. The new lecture series on unprovenanced manuscripts/inscriptions seeks to gather a wide range of voices from academics…
The Centre hosts the following lecture: Christopher Whittick,‘“I found it in a skip” – provenance and priorities in British archives’ In a career in county archives spanning 44 years, Christopher…
The Centre hosts the following lecture: Dr Annick Payne (Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia), ‘Anatolian Hieroglyphs: Drawing a Picture of the Ancient Mind’ The Anatolian Hieroglyphic script, a mixed logo-phonetic…
CMTC Music in Manuscript Cultures (08.09.2022) Nicholas Ball (ERC BENEDICAMUS, Oslo)
Parchment and Paper s01e03 Conor O’Brien (History)
CMTC lunchtime colloquium (02.11.2021) Sarah Bridge (Mediaeval and Modern Languages, Oxford)
s01e03 Matthew Shaw (The Queen's College Library, Oxford)
s01e02 Máire Ní Mhaonaigh (ASNC, Cambridge)
S01E03 MATTHEW SHAW (THE QUEEN'S COLLEGE LIBRARY, OXFORD)
The second issue of Manuscript and Text Cultures brings together several case studies of the different approaches to the structuring and layout of the text, presenting them accessibly using a custom interactive interface. The authors explore the phenomenon of complex textual layout in a broad range of pre-modern cultures, from ancient China to the 20-century Ethiopia, and from Egyptian papyri to Maya birch-bark divinatory handbooks.
Introduction: navigating complex texts from pre-modern cultures in the digital age
Navigating early Chinese daybook divination manuals
Structuring astral science: a Demotic astrological manual from Graeco-Roman Egypt (Berlin, Egyptian Museum, P. Berlin 8345)
A Trilingual sales contract on papyrus from Roman Arabia (P.Yadin I 22)
The Page Architecture of a Deluxe Arabic Dictionary from Islamic Spain
Legally binding: the textual layout of a copper-plate grant from South Asia
The Karlevi runestone
Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.5.4, folio 135v: the Psalms, with commentary by Peter Lombard
Reading Ancient Maya hieroglyphic books
MS Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Parm. 3852: a meeting point for a medieval Ethiopian king-usurper with modern pro-Italian actors