Welcome to our project

Dear visitor, welcome to the web page of the Ragheb Muftah Collection Digitizing Project! Aimed at preserving part of the world's cultural heritage, in summer 2009 an Egyptian-German research team digitally recorded the Ragheb Muftah Collection, an assembly of nearly 600 magnetic tapes containing Coptic-orthodox traditional music, at the Department of Hymns and Studies, which is part of the Institute of Coptic Studies in Cairo.

Coptic musicologist Dr. Ragheb Muftah (+ 2001) had made recording large parts of Coptic hymns and chants his life-task. While early recordings went directly onto vinyl records, the vast majority of sound recordings were stored on magnetic tapes. When Dr. Michael Ghattas inherited the post of Head of Department of Music and Hymns in 2002, Dr. Muftahs Legacy surmounted to a collection of almost 600 tape reels. Each tape contained between 30 and 60 minutes of Coptic chants, the majority of which had been recorded at various locations, over the course of almost half a century, Having been exposed to the hot Egyptian climate for several decades, most tapes were likely to be in fragile condition. It could only be guessed, how many times the average tape might be played without seriously damaging or obliterating its structure, and thus permanently annihilating its unique contents. Confronted with these problems, Dr. Ghattas decided to preserve Dr. Muftah's heritage in a manner better protected against decay and corrosion than magnetic tapes. Together with his college friend Pastor Markus Lesinski from Germany he persuaded Ethnomusicologist Prof. Dr. Raimund Vogels of University of Music and Drama Hanover to combine their efforts in order to establish a digital copy of the entire Muftah Collection. Thus, an agreement between the Institute of Coptic studies in Cairo and the University of Music and Drama of Hanover and the University of Hildesheim was arranged.

Owing to the generous financial sponsoring and overall support of the German Federal Foreign Office and the Foundation of Lower-Saxony, among many allocations a setup of high quality recording devices including computers and other equipment could be afforded. Also, the project was helped through the work of the German Embassy to Egypt in Cairo and of course the Coptic Orthodox Church in Cairo. In order to strengthen bonds between Egypt and Germany, a total of eight teammates, four Egyptian students from the Department of Hymns and Music, and four students from Germany were recruited and tasked with carrying out the recording process. After having received technical instructions from technician Thomas Lösch of University of Music and Drama Hanover and Ethnomusicologist Albrecht Wiedmann of Ethnological Museum Berlin the bi-national team conducted the digitization of over 600 tapes during August and September of 2009. The work was carried out at the Institute of Coptic Studies, which is located on the site of the Holy See of the Coptic-Orthodox Patriarchate in Cairo.

Instead of compiling direct-to-CD copies, the team managers and technicians had opted for a hard disk based storage solution, since even high quality blank CD's will erode after a few decades. Fortunately, as the digitization process advanced, the vast majority of tapes proved to be in reasonable shape, which allowed for a relatively smooth work flow and resulted in excellent overall audio quality.
Nevertheless, a notable amount of tapes turned out nearly irreparably damaged,
thus confirming the necessity of preserving Ragheb Muftah's legacy.

On October 6th, 2009, a digital storage system containing the entire Ragheb Muftah Collection was presented to Coptic-Orthodox Patriarch His Holiness Pope Shenouda III.. During the ceremony, the Egyptian and German representatives and cooperation partners, among them then German ambassador to Egypt, Bernd Erbel, expressed their mutual contentment regarding the successfully concluded project. Dr. Anton, Dean of Institute of Coptic Studies, stated his delight over the numerous positive events experienced by all team members throughout the entire project. As part of the world's cultural heritage, the digital storage system will be kept and processed at the Department of Music and Hymns in Cairo. Interested researches can also find a digital copy at the German Common Library Network GBV.