Page 240 - גנזי קדם ז

10* Jay Rovner

(“micrographic designs”).3 A carpet page is a decoratively designed page
containing mainly geometrical ornamentation, which may include botanical
or other forms, which is typically placed at the beginning or end of amanuscript.
A micrographic carpet page is one in which the inside patterned shapes, and
sometimes the framing design as well, are executed in micrographic lettering.

Micrography is first documented in Near Eastern Masoretic Bibles produced
in the 1 0 th century. It was used in notating masoretic data in the margins of the
biblical text and recording different types of information in elaborate carpet
pages following the text: cumulative masoretic lists, images of the Temple and
its furnishings, colophon inscriptions and invocations of poetic blessings on
the owner. Micrography was also used in occasional items written on a single
sheet, such as in the borders of marriage contracts (ketubbot) in the Levantine
period (the tenth through the twelfth centuries). European scribes in Spain and
Germany used it in biblical codices in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and
applied micrographic decoration in other genres, such as liturgical manuscripts,
as well.

It is somewhat surprising to see an adaptation of micrographic carpet page
design for liturgical use within the earliest period in which such techniques
are attested. A micrographic carpet page found in the Cairo Genizah, which
has been dated to the tenth or eleventh century, therefore constitues an
early and noteworthy phenomenon in Hebrew manuscript design. The page’s
biblical background and associations are manifest in its contents: it consists
entirely of biblical quotations. However, these quotations do not serve a
masoretic function. Rather, this collection of verses, taken almost entirely
from Psalms, seems intended for devotional purposes. Set within a frame of
“beatitudes,” verses beginning with the word ashre (“fortunate is one who...”),
the micrographic design on this page features passages requesting divine
guidance in life’s activities. While one cannot be absolutely certain that this
page was not cut out of a codex, it is most likely that it was created as a

3 Rendered “micrographic drawings” in N. de Lange’s English translation of Sirat, Hebrew
Manuscripts (n. 2 above), p. 153.