Cleopatra Glossaries

The Cleopatra Glossaries are three Latin-Old English glossaries all found in the manuscript Cotton Cleopatra A.iii (once held in the Cotton library, now held in the British Library).

The glossaries constitute important evidence for Old English vocabulary, as well as for learning and scholarship in early medieval England generally.

The manuscript was probably written at St Augustine's, Canterbury, and has generally been dated to the mid-tenth century,[1] though recent work suggests the 930s specifically.

[4] This glossary or one like it was influential, influencing Byrhtferth of Ramsey and at least one Anglo-Saxon medical text.

[5] Kittlick's linguistic investigation showed that some, at least, of the glosses in the Third Cleopatra Glossary are in the Anglian dialect of Old English, with later overlays from West Saxon and Kentish (probably in that order).