The Places of Coptic Literary Manuscripts: Real and Imaginary Landscapes. Theoretical Reflections in Guise of Introduction

Coptic literary manuscripts – and therefore also the works contained in them – have been created, manufactured, exchanged, stored, and discovered in physical places. The majority of these places are a re-occupation of older ones. Cells, churches, basilicas, monasteries, and even villages were very often built inside the temples or their temene, re-using and taking advantage of their walls and internal subdivisions, and only in some cases involved partial or complete destruction. The well-known monk Frange, who was involved in several activities related to book production, chose as dwelling a pharaonic tomb, and lived in surroundings that were much more crowded than one might have imagined for a ‘hermit’, as the cells of other monks located only a very short distance from his dwelling. This state of affairs tells much about the modes of book production and circulation of culture in Christian Egypt. This article – that also represents an introduction to the volume – aims to demonstrate that, when one wants to reconstruct the manuscript tradition of Christian Egypt, an investigation of the archaeological context is essential. In fact, in extreme cases, when manuscripts and texts have not survived, it is precisely the careful analysis of the geo-archaeological contexts that enables the reconstruction of a cultural landscape, a landscape where books were certainly produced but that fate did not preserve.