The Syriac Galen Palimpsest volume (British Academy Proceedings) now available to order
I am delighted to announce that The Syriac Galen Palimpsest, published in the Proceedings of the British Academy by Liverpool University Press, is now available to order. Centred on Galen’s treatise On Simple Drugs, the volume features contributions from scholars working across different disciplines, including four chapters by our team at the University of Manchester, produced as part of the UKRI-funded Syriac Galen Palimpsest project (SGP, 2015–2020).
Establishing the Syriac Text of Galen’s Simple Drugs: Editorial Technique and Practical Principles (P. E. Pormann, N. Afif, S. Bhayro, W. Sellers, & N. Smelova) presents the method and guidelines used for our digital edition published on Figshare along with the processed images of the manuscript. The paper X-ray Fluorescence Imaging of the Syriac Galen Palimpsest (U. Bergmann et al.) is the result of our collaboration with SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford to recover more of the text from unreadable folios. Our article The Enigma of Who Translated Galen’s Simple Drugs, Book 9, into Syriac (N. Afif, P. E. Pormann, & N. Smelova) investigates the authorship of the Syriac translation of the section on stones of On Simple Drugs using stylometry. Finally, The Alexandrian Tradition: New Discoveries of Gesius’ Galenic Commentaries in Syriac (N. Afif, P. E. Pormann, & N. Smelova) presents our pilot study that laid the groundwork for the recently founded ERC Advanced Grant project Gesius, led by P. E. Pormann at the University of Manchester.
The volume is available to order directly from Liverpool University Press. ISBN: 9781805966692
Article: « Jésus est-il mort volontairement selon le Coran? Une lecture historico-critique de Q 4:156-159 »
My latest article has been published in the new issue of BABELAO – Electronic Journal for Ancient and Oriental Studies. It is now available through UCLouvain’s open-access journal platform:
In this publication, I discuss new findings related to the Quranic passage on the crucifixion by using a method combining paleography, philology, intertextuality and corpus linguistics (quantitative analysis). As a result, I provide alternative readings that support a new hypothesis about the voluntary death of Jesus in the Quran.
Galen: On Simple Drugs in Syriac Translation. Processed images and digital-born critical edition
The digital outputs of the AHRC-funded project The Syriac Galen Palimpsest based at the University of Manchester from 2015 to 2020 are now available. Our multidisciplinary team used cutting-edge imaging techniques to recover the erased text from a unique manuscript and restore a valuable witness to the scientific heritage of the Syriac Christian world.
The dataset, which is accessible in Open Access, includes a critical edition of Books 6–9 of Galen’s On Simple Drugs, presented in PDF, RTF, and Mellel formats, along with processed images of the manuscript. Further information on our editorial approach will be published in the forthcoming volume The Syriac Galen Palimpsest: A New Paradigm for Cross-Disciplinary Research (Proceedings of the British Academy), stemming from the project’s international British Academy Conference held in 2019. Consult the files on Figshare.
Open Access Publication : New Light on Old Manuscripts: Recent Advances in Palimpsest Studies
New publication: Naima Afif, Peter E. Pormann, William I. Sellers, Natalia Smelova, Siam Bhayro, “GalenQt. A New Software Tool for Recovering Lost Text and its Use for the Reconstruction of the Lacuna in Galen’s Simple Drugs, Book 8”, in C. Rapp, J. Gruskova, G. Kessel, G. Rossetto (eds), New Light on Old Manuscripts: Recent Advances in Palimpsest Studies, Veröffentlichungen zur Byzanzforschung, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna, 2023, p. 441–463.
The Online Corpus of the GREgORI Project – New Interface
As part of my collaboration with the GREgORI Project (which provides scholars with lemmatized corpora in many languages!), I have worked with Bastien Kindt on the lemmatisation and morphological analysis of: Books 1 (ch. 1-10), 6, 7, 8 of the Greek text of Galen’s On Simple Drugs and Discourse 13 (S2 version) of Gregory of Nazianzus in Syriac (+than 1000 pages of outputs).
This large amount of data is now accessible through an online, open-access interface that integrates a concordancer, text browser, and editions viewer.
You can now explore how to use this digital tool here and make use of it.
Online Congress ‘Humanizing Digitalization. Digitalizing Humanities’
The Congress ‘Humanizing Digitalization. Digitalizing Humanities’ organised by El Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Madrid took place online on the 20 and 21th October 2021. In the first session devoted to text analysis, I explained how to create a multilingual corpus (in Latin, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic) by using the textual analysis software Sketch Engine and how to use this corpus to construct a glossary with Lexonomy an open-source, web-based dictionary writing and publishing system.
Publication : Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences
New publication: Naima Afif, Peter E. Pormann, William I. Sellers, Natalia Smelova, Siam Bhayro, « The Syriac Text of Book Nine of On Simple Drugs. New Evidence from the Syriac Galen Palimpsest » in Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences (Galen’s Treatise On Simple Drugs: Interpretation and Transmission), 70/184-185, 2020, pp. 130-149. Access through the publisher’s website.
British Academy Conference ‘Exploring the Syriac Galen Palimpsest’
The Syriac Galen Palimpsest is an exceptional manuscript containing the Syriac translation of a pharmacological treatise by Galen. Our team at the University of Manchester is organising a two-day conference under the auspices of the British Academy. This conference will gather scientists and humanities scholars who will discuss the methods employed to decipher the palimpsest and the contribution of Eastern Christians in the history of medicine.
More details: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/events/exploring-syriac-galen-palimpsest-ancient-drugs-synchrotron-radiation/
Publication in Le Muséon
Our latest paper in now published:
A. Afif, S. Bhayro, P. E. Pormann, W. I. Sellers, N. Smelova, « On Digamma and the Armenian Earth », in Le Muséon, 131 (2018), p. 391-414.
Abstract:
The treatise On the Mixture and Power of Simple Drugs (Περὶ κράσεως καὶ δυνάμεως τῶν ἁπλῶν φαρμάκων) by Galen of Pergamum (129-216) is transmitted in a number of Greek manuscripts, and was translated into Syriac and Arabic. One Greek manuscript, Vatican Urbinas gr. 67, contains a passage from book IX about digamma and ‘Armenian earth’, not transmitted in the majority of Greek manuscripts and not included in the standard Greek edition by Kühn (1826). Galen called ‘Armenian earth’ a mineral that probably was orpiment, although the exact identification remains problematic. We now present a critical edition of the Syriac translation of part of this passage on the basis of the Syriac Galen Palimpsest; discuss the historic use of digamma; and explore the importance of Galen’s attestation of Armenian words.
Collaboration with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Our team at the University of Manchester had the great opportunity to collaborate with the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory . The aim was to perform rapid-scan X-ray fluorescence (XRF) imaging of several folios from the Syriac Galen Palimpsest which were so far unreadable. The initiative has received press coverage in the US like here in Newsweek. Read more about the X-ray imaging of the palimpsest on the SLAC website.
Concordance gréco-syriaque du Discours 13 de Grégoire de Nazianze en ligne
J’ai eu l’occasion d’utiliser les outils du Gregori-Project (UCL) développés pour la lemmatisation du syriaque en travaillant sur le Discours 13 de Grégoire de Nazianze.
La concordance bilingue grec-syriaque du texte est disponible gratuitement sur la page https://uclouvain.be/fr/instituts-recherche/incal/ciol/the-concordances-of-the-gregori-project.html
Concordance en ligne des livres I (Chap. 1-10), VI-VIII du De Simplicium de Galien en grec
Je suis ravie d’avoir contribué à la lemmatisation d’une partie du traité de Galien Sur les médicaments simples en grec avec Bastien Kindt.
La version PDF de la concordance des livres I (Chap. 1-10), VI, VII et VIII est désormais disponible en ligne et en libre accès sur la page https://uclouvain.be/fr/instituts-recherche/incal/ciol/the-concordances-of-the-gregori-project.html
Ce travail a été réalisé dans le cadre d’une collaboration entre le Syriac Galen Palimpsest Project de l’Université de Manchester et le projet GREgORI de l’Université catholique de Louvain.
#Présentation Keynote : Rome 2017
Le support de mon intervention à Rome concernant le neuvième livre du traité Sur les médicaments simples dans le palimpseste syriaque de Galien (SGP) est accessible via Slideshare.
Trois points principaux sont abordés:
- l’étendue du livre neuf dans le palimpseste;
- la structure et la mise en page du texte ;
- le contenu conservé dans le palimpseste qui n’est pas présent dans le texte grec transmis par l’édition de Kühn.
Journée d’étude sur la pharmacologie ancienne
L’université de Warwick organise un workshop international sur la pharmacologie ancienne, la transmission et la réception du traité de Galien Sur les médicaments simples à la British School de Rome ce vendredi 27 septembre 2017.
Lors de cette journée, je présenterai les derniers résultats du SGP Project sur le livre IX en syriaque.
Pour toute information complémentaire, visitez le site de l’université.