A Copyist and Restorer in Seventeenth-Century Coptic Egypt. Solomon of Rhinokolura (Arish)

The copyist and restorer Solomon, whose lineage originated from the city of Arish—the ancient Rhinokolura—hailing from the suburb of Muḥnān (now known as Umm Khenan, in the outskirts of Gizah) and ultimately residing in Old Cairo, served the monastic communities of the Wādī al-Naṭrūn for at least a decade, in the first half of seventeenth century. In 1616, he copied the Coptic-Arabic missal, currently preserved in the Vatican Library under the shelfmark Vat. copt. 26, and in 1626, on behalf of the Coptic Patriarch John xv, he restored a magnificent Pentaglot Psalter, a codex belonging to the library of the monastery of St. Macarius and nowadays known as Ms Barb. or. 2.