BIBLE HISTORY DAILY

Scholars Piece Together Cairo Genizah

Bible and archaeology news

Scholars at Tel Aviv University are using digital technologies to piece together more than 350,000 fragments of the famous Cairo Geniza, a collection of ancient and medieval Jewish writings discovered in Cairo in the late 19th century. After their discovery, the fragmentary texts, which include early Jewish religious texts but also important commercial documents and personal letters from the ninth to 19th centuries, were scattered among libraries and collections across the world, from Cambridge to New York.^* Now, researchers are using the latest digital imaging technology to “stitch” images of the fragments together in hopes of fully or partially reconstructing the genizah’s valuable documents. Within a few months, they have already made 1,000 confirmed joins, almost as many as were made in more than 100 years of work on the genizah fragments.

Scholars at Tel Aviv University are using digital technologies to piece together more than 350,000 fragments of the famous Cairo Geniza, a collection of ancient and medieval Jewish writings discovered in Cairo in the late 19th century.