Abstract
A revision of A.’s doctoral dissertation (Groningen, 2022), this volume engages the reader in the question of what opisthographs (text-bearing artefacts with writing on each side) might reveal about ancient scribal collecting practices. In part 1, A. provides an overview of all such manuscripts known from Qumran (covering everything from tefillin manuscripts to double-sided compositions, i.e. 4Q504). He then describes in further detail the five examples which have two different literary texts on each side. In the second part, A. discusses documents 4Q509, 496 and 506; texts of a diverse character which appear on a single reconstructed papyrus. A. highlights this manuscript’s nature as a deliberate ancient collection of texts which exist elsewhere in the DSS corpus, thus shedding light on how these texts were understood by their ancient producers. In part 3, A. discusses the nature of the collection at Qumran in dialogue with ancient textual assemblies, and further, with the practices of collecting individual texts together. The comparanda here is the collection from the ‘Villa of the Papyri’ at Herculaneum, in particular a specific opisthograph, understood to be the creation of a new text from excerpts of previous material. There are many insights for those interested in the study of DSS manuscripts, and more general, these materials can offer a window onto ancient scribal compositional processes, as an example redaction of different sources into a single manuscript. The study neatly contributes towards greater dialogue between DSS studies and other material collections of writing from antiquity.