The Early Illustrated Apollonius of Tyre: Studies of a Sinai Palimpsest

This volume presents the extraordinary discovery at St Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai of a fragment of an early illustrated codex of the Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre, one the most enduring works of literature of the past fifteen centuries. On parchment first reused for an Athanasian Creed and, since the ninth century, bound into one of the earliest Arabic Gospels (Sinai, Arabic New Finds 8 and 28), the fragment preserves three layers of textual history. Here, essays by experts in codicology, palaeography, literature, art history, textual editing, and cultural heritage imaging illuminate this Sinai palimpsest, offering new perspectives on the ancient novel and on late antique and early medieval Mediterranean networks of language, religion, patronage, and trade. The essays are accompanied by high-quality images, edited transcriptions, and an appendix that describes all the fragments in the manuscript.

Michelle P. Brown, FSA, is Professor Emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London and is a Visiting Professor at University College London.

Jessica J. Lockhart is a medieval literary historian and Head of Research of the Old Books New Science Lab, University of Toronto.

Contributors: Anna Boreczky, Georgios Boudalis, Michelle P. Brown, Arianna D’Ottone, David Ganz, Juan Pedro Monferrer-Sala, András Németh, Michael Phelps, William Robins, Giulia Rossetto.