Back in the summer, I mentioned that I would be starting a new research project this autumn, The Early History of the Codex: A New Methodology and Ethics for Manuscript Studies (EthiCodex). For the last few weeks, I’ve been in the process of getting the project up and running.

So, my writing about topics related to codicology will mostly take place on the project website. In the last couple days, I’ve posted there about the publication of an important new work (or perhaps I should say an important old work that is now finally available) on early bookbinding, Theodore Petersen’s Coptic Bookbindings.

Another post deals the question of “When is a Codex Not a Codex?” I take a look at an example of what we might call “ambiguous cases,” when a manuscript is classified as a codex even when there are characteristics of the manuscript that seem to resist that classification. Being aware of these ambiguities is important when we talk about numbers of surviving codices, especially in the very earliest period of the development of the technology of the codex.

For those interested in early codices, I encourage you to follow the EthiCodex blog or subscribe via the WordPress or email options at the bottom of those posts.