Sacred Hands

This leather sheet contains three hymns in Greek that may have been employed in liturgies of baptism. The three hymns, separated by distinctive crosses (+) in the text, are all elaborations on the following hymnic type, "Holy is God, Holy and mighty, Holy and immortal, have mercy on us," (based on Isaiah 6:3), which is known as trisagion ("thrice-holy").

The first hymn is acrostic with each line starting with a new letter of the Greek alphabet, but this form is not repeated in the other two hymns. There are several other examples of Christian Greek hymns from Egypt, showing that the composing of hymns was popular in liturgical practice, especially in the East. None of these other hymns, however, was written on a piece of leather, especially not gazelle leather, if we are to believe the original catalog entry of this item. The text is written rapidly in an uncial script with some
cursive influence that resembles other literary hands from the sixth and seventh centuries C.E. At the top, the nomen sacrum IC XC for Jesus Christ is easily recognizable, separated from the main text by a line of dashes over the full width. Purchased in 1926/1927.