I Samuel 5:9-6:5 (Fragment)

(BIBLE).

(Germany,

12th -14th centuries)

Single sheet. Double columns; 26 lines per column. Brown ink on vellum. Hebrew. Masorah between columns; nikud (vowel points) provided.

See D.S. Berkowitz, In Remembrance of Creation (Waltham, 1968), Fig. 15C-D (with remarkably similar script). Berkowitz describes at length a Bible in a remarkably similar hand from the Rhine Valley dated 1294: “The care which the scribe exercised in this work makes it clear that he conceived of it as a master work of Hebrew calligraphy. The letters are formed with precision and slanted slightly to the left, creating, as it were, the elegance of the italic style in Hebrew characters” (p. 13).