Patriarch Ilia II of Georgia has expressed joy over the return of a unique manuscript, the Sinai Codex, to Georgia. The sacred texts, transcribed in 979 by the renowned hymnographer John-Zosima, who worked on Mount Sinai, hold exceptional value for the history of Georgian church literature. This was stated in an announcement by the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, published on the Patriarchate's website.

Last week, the manuscript was auctioned at Christie's and sold for £1 million. It was purchased by Bidzina Ivanishvili, the billionaire founder of the ruling party "Georgian Dream - Democratic Georgia." Patriarch Ilia thanked Ivanishvili for his contribution to Georgian cultural heritage.

The press service of the "Georgian Dream" party reported that the manuscript will be transferred to the National Museum of Georgia. The document in question is the so-called Sinai Rescriptus, written in Aramaic and Georgian. The manuscript is composed of 70 parchment leaves. The text is preserved in a 10th-century binding from the Monastery of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai, the earliest known binding of its kind.

According to the auction's website, the lower layer of the text dates back to the 5th-7th centuries, while the upper layer is from the 10th century. The palimpsest was overwritten with Georgian text by the monk and calligrapher John-Zosima. The historical document contains Aramaic in the western Aramaic dialect, which was used by the Christian community in Palestine and Transjordan from the 5th to the 13th centuries and has survived in only a few manuscripts. These are the earliest textual witnesses of the Gospels in the Aramaic dialect, most closely resembling the language spoken by Jesus.

The palimpsest was auctioned as part of the "Masterpieces from the Schøyen Collection" – a collection amassed by Norwegian traveler and historian Martin Schøyen in the last century. His collection is considered the largest private assembly of ancient manuscripts in the world, containing over 13,000 items, with the oldest dating back around 5,000 years.

Photo: christies.com