A fragmentary folio in the British Library reveals the earliest known Syriac witness to a widely circulated medieval prognostic text.

By Abigail Pearson

During a recent survey of Syriac manuscripts relating to the calendar, I encountered a brief but intriguing reference in Wright’s catalogue to the sixth-century British Library manuscript Add. 17149. Although the codex is primarily devoted to theological writings, Wright noted the presence of an additional text—written in a later hand—on the recto of the first folio, which he described as: “a calendar or almanack, containing prognostications […] drawn from the day of the week on which falls the new moon of the latter Kānūn.”¹

Weekday-based predictions for the year were also popular in England, where they circulated in printed almanacs throughout the early modern period, such as this example from 1695.

Based on this description, Sacha Stern proposed the text might be a Syriac recension of the Revelation of Ezra, one of the most widely transmitted prognostic compositions of the Middle Ages. Attested in Latin, Greek, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, and numerous European vernaculars, the Revelation of Ezra offers yearly predictions relating to agriculture, the weather, and societal affairs, based on the weekday on which January 1st falls. For example, a typical text begins: “If the first day of January comes on the Lord’s Day, it makes a warm winter […] (But) young men will die […] (and) something new will be heard about kings and rulers.”² The name Revelation of Ezra comes from its frequent attribution to the biblical Ezra, although the text is sometimes attributed to other figures or left anonymous.

Despite its wide circulation, no Syriac version of the Revelation of Ezra had previously been identified. The possibility that Add. 17149 might preserve such a recension therefore warranted closer examination, and I visited the British Library to examine the manuscript in person.

Identification and Description of the Text

The first folio of Add. 17149 is unfortunately water-damaged and, as a result, some of the text is difficult to read, particularly along the outer edge. Enough was immediately legible, however, to confirm its identification as a Syriac recension of the Revelation of Ezra. The text is incomplete, beginning mid-way through a sentence, but it clearly follows the usual structure of the work, with predictions for each weekday introduced by the phrase: “if the first of January will be on X day of the week, there will be…”³

Some of the predictions in this Syriac witness appear to be unique, while others are shared with versions in other languages. For example, warnings that those who travel by sea will be shipwrecked (ܐܝܠܝܢ ܕܝܢ ܕܪܕܝܢ ܒ‍ܝܡܐ ܡܬܢܘ̈ܓܝܢ) during years that begin on Tuesday, and that infants will die (ܐܒ‍ܕܢܐ ܕܝܠܘ̈ܕܐ) in years that begin on Friday, can also be found in Latin and Greek versions.⁴

The hand on Add. 17149 f.1r is estimated to date to the tenth century, placing it in the same century as a Jewish Palestinian Aramaic version from the Cairo Genizah, recently identified by Gideon Bohak⁵, as well as a Georgian version.⁶ This is approximately a century after the earliest known witness (a Latin version preserved in Vossianus Lat. Q. 69)⁷, and a century before the earliest attested version in a European vernacular (an Old English translation in Cotton Tiberius A. iii).⁸ This newly identified Syriac witness thus belongs to a period in which the Revelation of Ezra was circulating widely and has the potential to improve our understanding of how the text was transmitted across linguistic and cultural boundaries.

Additional Syriac Witnesses and Future Work

Following the identification of Add. 17149, I continued my search and found two additional copies of the Syriac Revelation of Ezra in later manuscripts: John Rylands Library Syr. 44 (16-18^th century)⁹ and Harvard Library Syr. 161 (19^th century).¹⁰ Though neither preserves the complete text, they are sufficiently close to Add. 17149 to assist in the reconstruction of some of its damaged and missing sections. I also encountered several similar Syriac prognostic texts that derive predictions for the year from the day of the week on which Christmas falls, rather than the first of January, in manuscripts dating from the twelfth to the nineteenth century.

During this research, I contacted Anna Cherkashina, a researcher at Tel Aviv University who is working on the same material as part of the project The Jewish Library in Late Antiquity. She had independently identified additional Syriac prognostic texts—based on both the beginning of the year and Christmas Day—in several early modern and modern manuscripts. These discoveries substantially expand the Syriac evidence for the tradition, and we are now collaborating on an edition of the Syriac Revelation of Ezra, along with a study of the related Christmas Day prognostics. By comparing the Syriac witnesses with those in other languages, we aim to situate the recension more precisely within the complex transmission history of the Revelation of Ezra and to clarify the historical and cultural contexts that allowed such prognostic material to circulate widely in the Middle Ages.

The edition is planned for publication later this year, but with 1 January only recently behind us, I know that some readers will be keen to hear what the Syriac Revelation of Ezra predicts for 2026—a year which began on a Thursday. Due to the water-damage, some mystery will remain; nonetheless, according to Add. 17149, we can expect a scarcity of cattle (ܡܙܠܗܙܘܬܐ ܕܩܢܝܢܐ), an abundance of fruit (ܡܫܪܬܚܘܬܐ ܕܦܐܪܐ), and a temperate autumn (ܬܫܪ̈ܝܬܐ ܢܗܘ̇ܝܢ ܡܡܙܓܢ). On balance, I’d say the outlook sounds favourable.

Happy New Year!

Notes 

1. William Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum, vol. 2 (London: 1871), 669.
2. Lat. 1449; English translation by D. A. Fiensy, “Revelation of Ezra,” in James H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 1: Apocalyptic Literature and Testaments (New York: 1983), 601–604.
3. The Syriac reads ܢܘܡܢܝܐ ܕܟܢܘܢ ܐܚܪܝ, which Wright rendered as “the new moon of the latter Kānūn,” because ܢܘܡܢܝܐ is a loan from Greek noumenia. In Greek, however, noumenia commonly denotes the first day of the month, not necessarily the astronomical new moon.
4. See Palat. Lat. 1449, English translation by Fiensy (1983), 604; and Vat. Gr. 1823, edited by R. Wünsch, “Zu Lydus De ostentis,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 5.3 (1896), 410–421.
5. Sacha Stern, “An Easter Cycle in Hebrew from c. 725 CE,” Journal of Jewish Studies1 (2025), 49–77.
6. Michael Tarchnišvili, Geschichte der kirchlichen georgischen Literatur, ed. in collaboration with J. Assfalg (Vatican City, 1955), 355.
7. Vossianus Lat. Q. 69 is dated by Bremmer Jr. to “just after 800”. See Rolf. H. Bremmer Jr, “Leiden, Vossianus Lat. Q. 69 (Part 2): Schoolbook or Proto-Encyclopaedic Miscellany?”, in R. H. Bremmer Jr and K. Dekker (eds), Practice of Learning: The Transmission of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the Early Middle Ages (Leuven: 2010), 19–53 at 22.
8. Ann Matter, “The Revelatio Esdrae in Latin and English Tradition,” Revue Bénédictine 92.3-4 (1982), 376–392 at 384.
9. F. Coakley, “A Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 75.2 (1993), 105-207 at 168.
10. H. Goshen-Gottstein, Syriac manuscripts in the Harvard College library: a catalogue (Leiden: 1979), 104.

By Stephanie Pambakian

Nadia Vidro presents to an engaged audience.

It is a great pleasure to open our blog with an account of our first international workshop! 

On Monday the 27th of October we held our first NEAstr workshop at UCL:  ‘Cosmic architectures in the late antique and early medieval Near East’.

Prof Sacha Stern, our project’s Principal Investigator, opened the day by welcoming our guests and extending his thanks to the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS). After providing an introduction to the NEAstr project, (funded by UKRI, selected by the ERC), Prof Stern chaired the morning session. 

Our first speaker was Prof Mathieu Ossendrijver (FU Berlin), the PI of the ERC Project ZODIAC, whose presentation ‘Mesopotamian conceptions of the universe – traditions and developments’ provided a thorough overview of the types of textual and visual material dating to the Late Babylonian period. The paper focused in particular on “Goal Year” texts, which are characterised by direct observation of astral phenomena and the development of their prediction. Alongside a detailed account of the development of predictive texts and tables, Prof Ossendrijver dove into descriptions of the universe emerging from Late Babylonian sources, and the prominence of circles over spherical representations, highlighting the use of architectural vocabulary such as “doors” and “houses” in the context of astronomy.  

The second speaker of the morning session was Dr Emilie Villey (CNRS Paris) who presented on ‘Celestial matter and cosmic architecture according to Syriac authors’. Dr Villey presented the cosmological accounts found in Syriac authors through Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, identifying two main groups: the Syriac Orthodox Church tradition (for example Jacob of Edessa and Moses bar Kepha), which shows traces of Greek influence, such as the sphericity of the earth and heavens, and the East Syriac Church tradition (for example the Commentary on Genesis in Diyabarkir 22, Theodore bar Koni, and Išo‘dad of Merv), in which the sky’s shape is described as a vault rather than spherical. As well as highlighting the architectures of the universe described in this body of literature, Dr Villey also stressed the differences in the doctrines of the elements found in these texts. She also presented new research carried out in partnership with Dr Abigail Pearson (NEAstr, UCL) during her visit to the NEAstr Project at UCL.

The afternoon session, chaired by Dr Abigail Pearson, opened with a talk entitled ‘Architectures of the universe in the seventh-century cosmology attributed to Anania Širakac’i’, given by the author of this post. My presentation offered a brief introduction to the scientific networks between late-antique Armenia and Byzantium, and of the context for Anania Širakac’i’s activity. I then read a selection of passages from the Cosmology attributed to this 7th-century author with a particular focus on architectural terminology.  

Prof Sacha Stern and Reseach Fellow Dr Nadia Vidro (NEAstr, UCL) then took the floor for the second presentation of the afternoon entitled: ‘Cosmic architecture in the Hebrew Baraita de-Shemuel’. Prof Stern opened the talk with an introduction to the Baraita de-Shemuel, stressing its lack of apparent connections to the rabbinic literary tradition. Dr Vidro then provided a detailed analysis of a selection of passages, stressing the use of architectural terms such as qubba or ohel for “tent”, kippa for “dome” and mishkan for “tabernacle”, although translating such description into images is not always straightforward.   

After a tea break, I had the honour of chairing the final session. Prof Karen ní Mheallaigh (Johns Hopkins) presented a paper titled ‘Intercultural cosmology: the Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos’. This paper dealt with a cosmological description known via indirect, late-antique textual tradition, which Philo of Byblos claims to derive from a very ancient Phoenician author referred to as Sanchouniathon. This text presents a rich and unusual cosmogony, which Prof ní Mheallaigh analysed in detail, stressing the vocabulary found in the Greek text, and posing questions about the direction in which cosmogonic traditions travelled.   

The final presentation was from Dr Olivier Defaux (CNRS Paris) who spoke on ‘The Scientific Correspondence of Severus Sebokht: Unedited Letters’. His talk presented his current project, Alexandrian Scientific Tradition in Eastern Rome, Europe and Syria (ASTERES), which shall include editions of a selection of Syriac letters from the corpus of Severus Sebokht (7th century). Dr Defaux gave an overview of the rich material transmitted in this epistolary collection, including letters pertaining to calendars and Easter computations and cycles. 

Prof Stern made final remarks and announced that more workshops of this kind will be held during the course of our project. (Watch this space!)