English: The first page of the
Catherine Manuscript (R
екатерининский список /jekat'er'in'insk'ij sp'isok/) of the twefth-century
Old Russian epic poem
Song of Igor (R
Слово о полку игореве /slovo o polku igor'ev'e/).
The manuscript dates from the 1790's, and is apparently a copy made for w:Catherine the Great from the fifteenth or sixteenth century manuscript discovered by w:Musin-Pushkin in w:Yaroslavl, Russia.
The first edition of the poem was in 1800. In 1812, the original mediaeval manuscript burned in the fires that followed w:Napoleon's entry into Moscow. This copy was discovered in the middle of the nineteenth century, and is now the oldest known recension of the poem.
The language is Old Russian. However, it has been normalized to an eighteenth-century w:Church Slavonic spelling, with the strong yers (ъ) given their full voicing (so о пълку > о полку). In the edition of 1800, the ancient spelling is retained more faithfully, although with conjectured errors.
See also