Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Pentaglot Psalter
Not on view
This book is from Dayr al-Suryan, a multicultural and multilinguistic monastic community in Egypt. The book contains a psalter written in five languages, several canticles, or hymns of praise, of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. From left to right are the following languages: Ethiopic, Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, and then, Syriac again. One purpose of such polyglot texts would have been to facilitate comparative study of the Bible, but they also would have facilitated common readings in the liturgy.
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