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  1. Discover
  2. Paper: Thinking inside the box
  3. Unit: Enter the Exhibition

Carried into exile

External links

Digital Bodleian images
‘The box binding of the Kennicott Bible’, in The Kennicott Bible: An introduction by Bezalel Narkiss and Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, London: Facsimile Editions, 1985, Vol. 2, pp. 84-89.

Commentary

Carried into exile
Accession number: 
MSS. Kennicott 1, 1* 
Collection: 
Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

This manuscript survives in its original box binding, of wood covered in goatskin, blind-tooled with interlacing geometric designs on all six sides. The precious book within is a Hebrew Bible, written in Corunna in northern Spain in 1476 by the scribe Moses Ibn Zabarah for his patron Isaac of Braga. Isaac took his Bible with him when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. It was protected by a lockable wooden carrying case, decorated in moulded and incised leather and bearing his name.

Dimensions
Satchel: 354 x 294 x 150 mm

Weight
Satchel and manuscript: 9.4 kg
Satchel: 2.7 kg

Purchased by the Radcliffe Library at the suggestion of the Radcliffe Librarian, Benjamin Kennicott, 1771; transferred to the Bodleian, 1872