An Illustrated Esther Scroll Belonging to Flora Sassoon

This Esther scroll, once owned by the illustrious Flora Sassoon, is charmingly decorated with twelve pen-and-ink drawings depicting narrative scenes from the Purim story:

1. King Ahasuerus seated on his throne with his advisors;

2. Mordechai and Esther;

3. Mordechai sitting outside the palace gate overhearing Bigthan and Teresh plotting to kill the king;

4. Haman standing before King Ahasuerus and presenting his plan to kill the Jewish people;

5. Mordechai in mourning outside the palace gate;

6. Esther inviting the king to her banquet;

7. A sleepless King Ahasuerus reading his Book of Chronicles;

8. Haman leading Mordechai on horseback through the streets of Shushan;

9. The hanging of Haman;

10. Mordechai standing before King Ahasuerus;

11. Jews feasting in celebration of their salvation;

12. Esther writing a letter instructing the Jews to observe the holiday of Purim.

While similar scenes appear in other decorated Esther scrolls from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the specific imagery used in the illustrations of this megillah is unique and not copied from other contemporary scrolls.

The scroll also features a scribal practice meant to embellish the text: in four verses, the scribe has enlarged specific letters in successive words that spell out God’s Four-Letter Name. This custom was initiated to express the idea that God’s hand in history can be discerned even when His name does not appear explicitly in the text.

Exhibited

Whitechapel Art Gallery Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities, November 7-December 16, 1906, no. 170.

Physical Description

Scroll (11 3/4 x approx. 62 7/8 in.; 298 x approx. 1595 mm) on parchment; text written in elegant (early) eighteenth-century Ashkenazic square script in black ink; arranged in 9 columns with 34 (membrane 2) or 35 (membrane 1) lines to a column on 2 membranes stitched together. Enlarged incipit decorated with gold flourishing; twelve small pen-and-ink illustrations inset within text (usually about the height of four lines of text). Very slight scattered staining; remnants of ties on fore-edge; some soiling to fore-edge; minor abrasion of text in column 1. Mounted within a slightly worn wooden case; paper ticket at base of turned wooden roller inscribed “Mrs Solomon D. Sassoon 70,” the number corresponding to an internal Sassoon family accounting system; modern replacement wooden pullbar matching case.

Literature

Not assigned a shelf mark or catalogued in Ohel Dawid