Imagine a child picking up a pen more than a thousand years ago and learning to write. His letters are still uneven, his movements are uncertain, and next to him are primitive drawings that speak the language of the times. This is not a fantasy, but a reality recorded in the documents of the Cairo Geniza, a unique archive of medieval Jewry that spans more than a millennium of history.
Among the documents found are sheets on which a child practised writing in Hebrew, accompanying his attempts with drawings. They were discovered in the synagogue of Fustat (now part of Cairo). This archive used to be a hiding place for texts that, according to religious tradition, could not be simply destroyed, so commercial contracts, personal letters, religious treatises, and even these – quite ordinary and yet priceless evidence of human life – have been preserved here.
But this is not the only important document preserved in the Cairo Geniza. Another sheet, written around 930, is of particular importance for the history of Ukraine. This is the so-called Kyivan Letter, the earliest written mention of the name of the city of Kyiv and probably one of the earliest Jewish documents associated with Eastern Europe.
The letter was written in Hebrew and found in the Cairo Geniza in the twentieth century, after which it was deposited in the Cambridge University Library. It refers to the Jewish community of Kyiv, and the name of the city is written as follows: קי יוב (kee yow).
These finds remind us that history is not just about great battles and rulers. It is also about the lives of ordinary people: a child learning to write, a merchant who sent a letter with the word “Kyiv” a thousand years ago. History lives in things that we often don’t even notice, but which can bridge the gap between eras.
