De Magia (Ms. Laud Or. 282, Bodleian Library): graphemic representation and transcription

Abstract

Analysis of the writing in the codex De magia (Ms. Laud Oriental 282, Bodleian Library), an astrological guide written in the Portuguese language as aljamia, with Hebrew characters, and dated to the 15th Century. As well as a classification of the writing, this study analyses the manuscript’s graphemic representation – simple graphemes, in nexus, digraphs and trigraphs, diacritics, number values, punctuation, corrections and cancellation marks – and proposes a coherent and detailed transcription system of Hebrew into Latin graphemes.