Eléonore Cellard is a French scholar who specializes in Arabic

palaeography Palaeography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, UK) or paleography (American and British English spelling differences#ae and oe, US) (ultimately from , , 'old', and , , 'to write') is the study and academic disciplin ...

and

codicology Codicology (; from French ''codicologie;'' from Latin , genitive , "notebook, book" and Greek , ''-logia'') is the study of codices or manuscript books. It is often referred to as "the archaeology of the book," a term coined by François Masai. ...

, particularly

Quran The Quran, also Romanization, romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a Waḥy, revelation directly from God in Islam, God (''Allah, Allāh''). It is organized in 114 chapters (, ) which ...

ic manuscripts. She started her research on the Quran in 2008. To do so, she learned the

Arabic language Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

and studied

Arabic literature Arabic literature ( / ALA-LC: ''al-Adab al-‘Arabī'') is the writing, both as prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is ''Adab (Islam), Adab'', which comes from a meaning of etiquett ...

. She is a post-doctoral fellow at the

Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...

. She discovered evidence of Coptic "lower text" (erased text) on a

palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off in preparation for reuse in the form of another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid ski ...

page whose upper text was a page of an 8th century Quranic manuscript in Arabic. The Coptic writing was determined to be a portion of the biblical

Book of Deuteronomy Deuteronomy (; ) is the fifth book of the Torah (in Judaism), where it is called () which makes it the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament. Chapters 1–30 of the book consist of three sermons or speeches delivered to ...

References

French religion academics Living people Date of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) École Normale Supérieure alumni Catholic University of Paris alumni {{Islamic-scholar-stub