"A work that compellingly draws back the curtain on the activity of finding, authenticating, purchasing, and selling to collectors some of the most significant historical documents and artifacts of the past"--

A history of manuscripts, including discussions of early writing materials, preparation of scrolls and manuscripts, examples of surviving ancient literature, and the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Shulamit, a biblical scholar from England, returns to her grandparents' home in Jerusalem for a visit after an absence of many years. Almost immediately she becomes embroiled in a family feud over possession of the so-called Shepher Codex, a mysterious and valuable manuscript which has been discovered in the attic. In tracing the origins of the Codex she uncovers the history of the Shepher family itself: of her great-grandfather, who traveled to Babylon in search of the ten lost tribes; of her grandfather, a dreamer whose Zionist ideals brought him into conflict with his religion; of her parents, and their tormented love affair; and of her own orphaned and unhappy past. At the same time, she struggles to find answers to pressing questions: what is the significance of the Codex and where does it come from? Who is the stranger, Gideon, who is desperate to enlist her help? Above all, whom does the Codex belong to and what part must Shula play in its destiny? Set against the backdrop of a changing Jerusalem over a hundred and thirty years, The Genizah at the House of Shepher is a large-canvas novel of exile and belonging, displacement, and the quest for both love and a true promised land.

"In this enthralling book, Merav Mack and Benjamin Balint explore Jerusalem's libraries to tell the story of this city as a place where some of the world's most enduring ideas were put into words. The writers of Jerusalem, although renowned the world over, are not usually thought of as a distinct school; their story as Jerusalemites has never before been woven into a single narrative. Nor have the stories of the custodians, past and present, who safeguard Jerusalem's literary legacies. By showing how Jerusalem has been imagined by its writers and shelved by its librarians, Mack and Balint tell the untold history of how the peoples of the book have populated the city with texts. In their hands, Jerusalem itself-perched between East and West, antiquity and modernity, violence and piety-comes alive as a kind of labyrinthine library"--Jacket flap.

Most research on writing has been from the standpoint either of the system (alphabet, language etc) or the reader. Very little has examined the history of writing from the viewpoint of the producer of the handwritten script. .. This book examines Homo sapiens as a writer, without separating different kinds of scripts and documents in a particular era, and focuses on the physical aspects of scripts. There are five dimensions to this wide-ranging study: writing schools, where the art is acquired; the design of manuscripts; the different kinds of scripts used by writers; the postures assumed during writing and the movements it involves; and the personal characteristics of handwriting...