[Scroll of Esther].

Stangenwald, Hugo, former owner · 1475

Scroll of Esther, in Hebrew, constructed from three sheets of parchment stitched together. Blessings that are said before reading the scroll in the synagogue have been added in the first column, as is typical of Italian scrolls. Written in columns approximately 7cm wide, 24 lines to a column. Rolled onto a modern cylinder and housed in a conservation box. Title devised by cataloger. Date and place of origin from analysis by paleographers Shlomo Zucker and Malachi Beit-Arié, 2020. Numerous corrections in the text, where the scribe omitted one or more words and then had to add them later, are present in columns 6 through 8. In column 8, the scribe's eye jumped from one word to the same later word, and skipped all the words in between; he then had to erase what he wrote, and fit the additional omitted text into that same space, which is why the script in column 8, lines 7 through 9 is so cramped. [Scroll of Esther]. Chapin Library, Williams College. Gift of William M. Kincaid (Williams 1871), 1903. From the collection of Dr. Hugo Stangenwald, who acquired it while traveling in Syria. After Stagenwald's death in 1899, it was given by Stagenwald's wife to William M. Kincaid. In a 1903 letter, Kincaid reports that Stangenwald received the manuscript as a gift while traveling in Syria, in thanks for providing medical treatment to a local woman. Kincaid further reports: "It was found in the hand of a mummy in a cave.". Stabilized and rehoused by Williamstown Art Conservation Center, 2018.