Some Greek hymnographic fragments from Damascus: Script types and texts

This paper is devoted to a small but significant handful of fragments of Greek manuscripts from the Qubbat al-khazna in Damascus that contain Christian hymns, and in particular to their palaeographical features and textual content. In fact, these fragmentary manuscripts, which are known only thanks to early twentieth-century photographic reproductions now kept in Berlin, seem to be particularly valuable from the point of view of both the history of Greek writing and the history of Byzantine liturgical books. More specifically Damascus fragments: a) contribute to the number of manuscript exhibiting old writings (e.g. the «scrittura mista»); b) disclose a large and old repertory of unedited hymnographic texts, still largely unknown; c) inform on archaic liturgical commemorations no longer survived; d) contribute to enriching the knowledge of earliest liturgical and hymnographic books, their structure and content. I frammenti innografici greci provenienti dalla Qubbat al-ḫazna di Damasco sono estremamente preziosi. Il contributo mette in evidenza l’interesse di questi frammenti dal punto di vista paleografico e testuale in quanto: a) arricchiscono il dossier delle scritture più antiche (vedi ad es. la “scrittura mista”); b) svelano un vasto e antico repertorio di inediti innografici; c) ci fanno conoscere commemorazioni liturgiche arcaiche; d) contribuiscono ad arricchire la nostra conoscenza della struttura dei primi libri liturgico-innografici.