Cairo – Ashraf AboArafe
Celebrating 1500 years of successful achievements, Levantine Foundation announced that it will hold a symposium in Cairo on Deir al-Serian’s manuscripts.
“Levantine” highlighted a collection of rare ancient texts, kept in a mesmerizing Coptic monastery in the Egyptian desert preserved for posterity with support of the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund to celebrate the achievements of successful fieldwork to date and conserve manuscripts up to 1,500 years old.
The Foundation is privileged to hold a symposium on 3rd December 2019 in the residence of the British Ambassador in Cairo.
The symposium will highlight the exceptional importance of this priceless collection and share best preservation practice with the participation of distinguished international scholars, Egyptian academics and leading
museum representatives.
The 6th Century beautiful Deir al- Surian, the Monastery of the Syrian, houses one of the oldest and most important collections of the surviving ancient Christian manuscripts in the world.
It consists of more than 1000 texts on parchment, paper and papyrus in Syriac,
Coptic, Christian Arabic and Ethiopic.
These manuscripts include the Gospels, biblical texts, theological and philosophical writings, homilies and historiographies of the desert fathers.
* About!
The Levantine Foundation is a charity registered in England and The Arab Republic of Egypt.
It has been working on preserving this collection since 2002 in partnership with the monastery, international scholars and conservation experts. During 30 ongoing conservation field campaigns, the collection has been surveyed and over one hundred codices and three
hundred fragments and singular manuscripts conserved.
In 2013, a new state of the art library was developed with the financial support of the foundation to make this literary treasure accessible to the outside world.
Raising awareness, sharing knowledge on the preservation of cultural heritage and building capacity for its long term care are the main objectives of the Levantine Foundation.
The British Council grant has provided an invaluable and timely opportunity for a team of 7 conservators to spend the month of May and November this year at the Deir al-Surian to conserve a further 17 of these unique manuscripts as well as to provide educational and outreach programs for monks from monastic libraries, local communities anduniversity
students. The large number of manuscripts and fragments in Deir Al Surian represents an inheritance of inestimable cultural and scholarly value and form an essential part of the
cultural heritage for the world.
The 3rd December symposium will give the monastery and the Foundation an opportunity to review the work undertaken in the library so far, to bring to light its significance, to share its achievements with invited guests and to formally thank the British Council (in partnership with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport) and others partners and collaborators for their part in safeguarding this astonishing historical collection.
