Natalie Tchernetska
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Natalie Tchernetska consacre son travail à l'étude des manuscrits grecs. Elle a fait ses études à l'université de Lettonie et fini sa thèse de doctorat à l'Université de Cambridge, sur les palimpsestes grecs.
Le palimpseste désigne un manuscrit écrit sur un parchemin préalablement utilisé, et dont on a fait disparaître l'écriture pour permettre d'y écrire de nouveau. Depuis 1999, elle participe au projet du «Palimpseste d'Archimède». Le parchemin manuscrit renferme, sous un texte religieux du XIIIe siècle, une copie datant du Xe siècle de sept théorèmes d'Archimède. C'est en étudiant le palimpseste, que Natalie Tchernetska a découvert, en 2002, deux discours perdus d'Hypéride, célèbre orateur grec du IVe siècle avant J.-C. Pour approfondir ses recherches sur les écritures grecques apparaissant dans les manuscrits hébreux, elle était invitée à Paris par la FMSH, dans le cadre du programme Mellon du 1er novembre 2007 au 31 janvier 2008.
Natalie Tchernetska travaille aussi sur la collection des manuscrits grecs apportés en Europe par Constantin Tischendorf.
My main research interests are in the area of Greek palimpsests and Greek manuscripts of Oriental origin.
Both are important witnesses for the evolution of Greek script, for manuscript production and circulation, but have been often neglected. There are two parts of my research project for IEA. First, I will continue my work on the so-called Archimedes Palimpsest. This 13th century manuscripts preserves in its lower layer three groups of unique Classical texts: seven treatises of Archimedes, two speeches of Hyperides, and a commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias to the Categories of Aristotle. I will work on the latter jointly with M.Rashed, with the view of deciphering and preparing this important philosophical text, which had been considered lost, for publication. I will also investigate events of the most mysterious part of the Archimedes Palimpsest history, the Parisian period (from the 1930s to 1998), during which the Palimpsest was badly damaged and embellished with false miniatures.
Second, I will continue my research on Greek manuscripts of Oriental origin, especially those brought from Sinai in the 19th century and now kept in various libraries across Europe. I have been working on the collection of C. Tischendorf, dispersed between five libraries, for several years.
While in IEA, I will extend my investigation to the collection of his contemporaries and competitors P. Ouspensky and A. Papadopoulos-Kerameus. This investigation would contribute to the understanding of the Greek written culture in the Greek-speaking Near East, which played a key role in the transmission of the Greek texts in the 6th-8th centuries.
