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A Unique and Early Use
of Micrographic Carpet Page
Format in JTS MS ENA 2630.1

Jay Rovner1

Introduction

Micrography is a form of writing in extremely small letters, used especially
for texts formatted in decorative shapes — originally simple geometric or
botanical shapes, and later artifacts, zoological and human figures, or fantastical
ones;2 it is known, in Colette Sirat’s phrase, as les d essins m icro g rap h icq u es

1 An early version of this article was delivered jointly with a related paper by Vivian Mann
at the 42d Annual Association of Jewish Studies Conference, Boston, Dec. 19-20, 2010.
I am grateful to Gert Wildensee, of the Institute for Jewish Studies at the Martin Luther
University of Halle-Wittenberg, and Amy Armstrong, Senior Conservator of the library
of the Jewish Theological Seminary, with whom I discussed this material, and whose
comments influenced the direction and conclusions of this article, for which I accept full
responsibility. I also benefited from electronic consultation with Eva R. Hoffman, Ruth
Langer, Myron B. Lerner, Ray Scheindlein and Michael Swartz. Amy Armstrong carried out
visual examination and photographic documentation ofthe manuscript. Yevgeniya Dizenko
of the JTS library manipulated a digital image to reduce the appearance of inked areas that
were likely not contemporary with the carpet page in an effort to simulate its approximate
original appearance.

2 “In the first Oriental Bibles, the masorah is already written in the form of a drawing. Such
drawings, in micrography, are common in Bibles and they are remarkable: their beauty
and their humour are a never-ending source of amazement.... In the East and in Spain...we
find only geometric and floral motifs. In Europe, we find animals, naturalistic or fantastic...
and also human figures.” C. Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, ed. and tr.
N. de Lange (Cambridge 2002), p. 152. This is a revised edition of idem, Du scribe au
livre les manuscrits hebreux au MoyenAge (Paris 1994), which itself is a revision of her
Min ha-ketav el ha-sefer (Jerusalem 1992) [Hebrew]. It should be noted that micrographic
drawing inthis period was done with single lines oftext, as opposed to calligrams or ghubar
texts, on which see n. 19 below.

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