Costume and Identity: The miniature of Ms Or. Quart. 1020 (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek)

The manuscript inventoried today as Ms. Or. Quart. 1020 in the collections of the Staatsblibliothek zu Berlin was first published by Griffith in 1913; the miniature was briefly described as a representation of Christ, and illustrated in Pl. II by a black and white photograph. Years later, during the meeting of the ISNS at Cambridge in 1978, Bożena Rostkowska pointed out that the costume worn by the figure depicted in the miniature was that of a Nubian dignitary and thus she proposed to relate the miniature to the colophon, where the title of songoj – that is “eparch” – appeared. At last, G.M. Browne published in 1983 a revision of “Griffith’s Stauros Text”, where the identity of the manuscript’s sponsor was revealed as “Doukas, Choiak-ikshi, Songoj and Neshsh of Atwa”. In the light of recent studies of the title of Choiak-ikshi by Adam Łajtar and Giovanni Ruffini, the present paper proposes to investigate the matter more closely in studying the implications of the latter identification for the miniature itself and, on a broader scale for Nubian iconography.