Day 6 – Deacon Khairy Foumia recently visited the Chaldean Museum, the world’s first and only Chaldean museum. He’s an author of seven books, the most recent one called Catalogue Manuscripts of the Church in Telkeppe, which is 540 pages and written in Aramaic and Arabic. In it, he describes the 240 manuscripts he found in the library of the church of Telkeppe, the birthplace of my parents and grandparents. He started this project over 30 years ago, in 1989.
Born in Telkeppe, Foumia lived in Baghdad in his later years. Because his parents and other relatives still lived in Telkeppe, he and his family would visit there during the holidays and in the summertime. During these trips, he went to Sacred Heart Church library which housed ancient manuscripts. It was not open to the public, but Foumia was given access to the library because of his strong relationship with the priests, having himself been a seminarian for seven years. The church had a separate library with thousands of books where people were able to borrow books.
“I wanted to catalogue everything,” he said. “These books are on their way to extinction so at least by preserving them, their image remains in peoples’ minds and researchers will have a lot of useful information.”
To visit the Chaldean Museum, call and make a reservation (248) 681-5050 or email info@ChaldeanCulturalCenter.org www.ChaldeanCulturalCenter.org
You can read more about Mr. Foumia in this article that I wrote for the Chaldean News https://www.chaldeannews.com/features-1/2018/5/27/catalogue-manuscripts-of-the-church-in-telkeppe
