volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Visit to Tall Kif. 73
The scribe took a sheet of the paper and ruled dry Unes
on it with a metal stilus to mark the margins and the
number of lines in the column of text to be written upon
it, and having rubbed it with his bottle he sat down
and wrote whilst we looked on. He wrote a few lines
in the usual way from right to left, and then he turned
his sheet of paper half round so that the lines already
written became perpendicular instead of horizontal, and
then proceeded to write his text perpendicularly with
the greatest ease. He had much to say about the
selection of reeds for pens, and he explained how to cut
them, and how he made his thick inks, both red and
black.
When I returned with the priest to his house we
renewed our talk about manuscripts, and I mentioned
the names of several works that I wanted to acquire,
e.g., the Book of Governors by Thomas of Marga, 'Anantsho's
recension of the " Paradise " of Palladius, the
" Cream of Wisdom " by Bar Hebraeus, and the
" HudhrS. " or service-book for the whole year. None
of these works was in the British Museum. He told
me that friends of his possessed manuscripts of all these
works, but that it would be impossible to buy them.
With the bishop's help, however, he thought good copies
of them might be obtained. He said that if I was
prepared to commission a scribe to make copies he
would superintend the work, and would for a small
payment collate the copies with the old manuscripts.
Now, I had no authority to buy modem copies of Syriac
or Arabic manuscripts for the British Museum, for the
Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts was of opinion that if
the owners of ancient manuscripts found purchasers for
modern copies they would never offer the originals for
sale. But my experience was the exact opposite of this,
for I found that many natives were quite satisfied to
possess clear and easily legible copies of their ancient
manuscripts and to sell the originals at good prices.
My instructions, however, were quite definite and I
could not go beyond them. As I had no means of
communicating quickly with London, and was obliged