PRELIMINARY NOTIONS
Erkat‘agir is the name used to designate the so-called Armenian ‘uncial script’. This is a grand and majestic script, which reminds of the uncial script of the earliest Latin codices (this latter being primarily produced between the third and the ninth centuries).
NOMENCLATURE
The meaning and origin of the word erkat‘agir is somewhat unclear. Erkat‘agir is technically a compound noun formed by the combination of the Armenian words erkat‘ (երկաթ), which means ‘iron’, and gir (գիր), which can be rendered as ‘writing’ or ‘letters’.
Although among the specialists of Armenian palaeography there is no agreement on the exact meaning of ‘iron-script’, one plausible explanation is that the word ‘iron’ may actually refer to a writing tool originally made of iron that was employed by scribes while tracing the Armenian letters on the writing support.
CHRONOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION
Although nearly all extant Armenian manuscripts date from after the turn of the first millennium, scholars assume that the erkat‘agir script was used from the very beginning of Armenian literacy (early 5th-c.).
According to the available evidence, it seems that up to the mid-twelth century the erkat‘agir script was the only type of writing employed for all parchment manuscript books that transmit Scriptural texts (that is, Gospels and/or any other Biblical text).
USAGE AND FUNCTIONS
The erkat‘agir script is found in all early Gospel books and in most Armenian epigraphs (lapidary inscriptions) through the tenth century.
Later on, the erkat‘agir script continues to be in use functioning either as a “capital script” as opposed the minuscule type, or as the script par excellence to use in titles.
MORPHOLOGY
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OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS. Arm d. 11
Short description: 11th century, parchment, cm 29 x 22, ff. 211, 2 columns, 26 lines.
Text: Armenian translation of John Chrysostom’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians [CPG 4431: In epistulam ad Ephesios argumentum et homiliae 1–24].
Palaeography: small ‘slanted’ erkat‘agir, c. 3 mm high, neatly executed and with great uniformity. The doxologies of each homily are written with a smaller character and by the same hand. The writigs shows the so-called scriptio continua, that is words are not separated by a space.
Codicology: the parchment of this manuscript is thin and crumpled. Originally the book contained 29 quires. Each quire is numbered with the letter of the Armenian alphabet, with the given letter written in the middle of the bottom margin of the first and last page of every quire. At present, quires 1 and 29 are missing. According to Conybeare, the reason of this loss is due to the fact that a previous owner must have allowed the manuscript to lie without binding for an indefinite amount of time, a fact which ultumately caused the loss of the first and last quire. This kind of losses are common for medieval manuscripts: when a manuscript lacks the beginning it is called ‘acephalous’; when the end is missing, the manuscript is said to be ‘mutilated’. The current binding of the manuscript is recent.
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Significance: The care and neatness of the writing and the codicological feauture of this manuscripts (for instance, the ample margins between the two columns) show that it was intended as a luxury product rather than a scholarly book. This book is by far one of the more prestigious of the Armenian manuscripts preserved in the Bodleian. Although it does not exhibit luxury illuminations as some other manuscripts, this item is of importance for its antiquity and as a spendid witness of the uncial type of script. Apart from fragments and separate manuscript folios, this manuscript represents the oldest Armenian codex in the Bodleian Library.
Since the last quire of the manuscript is missing, we also miss its main colophon. All we know is that in 1891 the book was preserved in Tbilisi and was brought back to Oxford from F. Conybeare. According to this latter, MS. Arm d. 11 originated from Ałt‘amar (today’s lake Van, South-East Turkey), that is in the medieval Armenian Arcruni kingdom of Vaspurakan.
BIbliography: full description in Baronian, Sukias, and Conybeare, Frederick C., Catalogue of the Armenian Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1918), Nr. 68, 154–157.
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Folio 2r
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The recto of the f. shown above illustrates one of the many damages suffered by this manuscript. Folios 1–6 have been perforated by hot iron, as one can see in the left column (see detail below).
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Folio 9v
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This folio is exemplary in showing various textual, codicological, and palaeographical features of the manuscript under examination. At a textual level, the left column transmits the end of hom. 2 of John Chrysostom’s Commentary. Hom. 3 begins right at the top of the right column. The exact point where the text begins is indicated by a marginal decoration, which in this case is inserted between the two columns (see detail below).
The number of the homily (n. 3) is indicated with the third letter of the Armenian alphabet: գ. As it happens also for many other ancient alphabets (for instance, the Greek one), Armenian letters indicate also numerical value (see detail below).
At a palaeographical level, the last two lines of the left column show a change in size between the common erkat‘agir script used throughout the text and a smaller type. With this change the srcibe intends to signal the passage from the main text of the Commentary to the doxology, which begins with the word փառք (‘glory’) located in the third-last line of the text (see detail below).
As far as decoration and codicology are concerned, another interesting feature of this manuscrit is the way the scribe signals the reader a Biblical quotation. On this folio, the Biblical text is highlighted by means of markings penned on the left-hand side of the citation (see detail from the right column below).
The beginning of the Chrysostomian Commentary, on the contrary, is highlighted by a larger initial letter (see below).
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Folio 18r
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The recto of the f. shown above is an exemplary illustration of the way the scribe of this manuscript dealt with corrections. Having realized that in the right column a portion of text is missing, the scribe indicates this lacuna (‘gap’) by adding a special marking at the end of line 15 and repeating it at the beginning of line 16. The text to insert between these two markings is then copied, in smaller characters, along the right column, preceded and followed by the same special markings found in the main text. This system signals the viewer that the text in the margin ought to be read and inserted within the main text (see detail in the photo below, which has been rotated). This kind of texts are technically called marginalia, i.e. ‘written in the margins’.
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Folio 23v
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Folio 30r
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Folio 46r
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Folio 81r
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SUGGESTED READINGS
KOUYMJIAN, Dickran, ‘History of Armenian Paleography’, in Michael Stone, Dickran Kouymjian and Henning Lehmann, Album of Armenian Paleography (Aarhus, 2002), 5–75. [See especially pages 66–67 for a discussion concerning the term erkat’agir]
KOUYMJIAN, Dickran, ‘Notes on Armenian Codicology. Part 1: Statistics Based on Surveys of Armenian Manuscripts’, Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies Newsletter 4 (2012), 18–23. [It shows that erkat‘agir script was virtually the only script employed for the parchment codex until the mid-twelfth century, at least as far as books transmitting Gospels and Biblical texts are concerned]
MOURAVIEV, Serge N., ERKATAGUIR Երկաթագիր ou Comment naquit l’alphabet arménien. Avec, en supplément: une Paléographie arménienne des Ve-VIe/VIIe siècles et un choix de sources historiques, Les trois secrets de Mesrob Machtots ou la genèse des alphabets paléochrétiens du Caucase 1 (Sankt Augustin, 2010). [Interesting and though-provoking study offering a plausible explanation of way the earliest stage of the Armenian alphabet was constructed]