The Novgorod Psalter is not only further evidence of the city's medieval stature, it is nothing less than the world's oldest-known Slavic text. It was fitting that the priceless text should be found in Novgorod. A city of crumbling frescoes an overnight train ride northwest from Moscow, it has always stood apart from the rest of Russia and often in conflict with it. In the Middle Ages, it was the center of a cultural and mercantile flowering. The discovery of the psalter only enhances Novgorod's aura.
Russian archaeologists call such a book a tsera, from the Latin cera for wax.
Novgorod means new city, and the locals like to think of it as the cradle of Russian democracy. Russia's first 4-star hostelry outside Moscow and St. Petersburg which helped attract foreign business. In the Yeltsin years of industrial decline, Novgorod was one of the few regions outside Moscow to lure investors and boast economic growth. A Danish firm opened a chewing-gum factory and Britain's Cadbury's set up a plant to turn out chocolate for the Russian market. This year, DaimlerChrysler opened a plant to assemble refrigerator trucks.