A short cataloging thread, if you want to follow along a short rabbit trail I went down to identify a text:

I came across a title of a Syriac hagiography called "The story of a prostitute who was a student of Serapion."

It's in at least two manuscripts: ZFRN 380 and CFMM 258.

The prostitute in this text is unnamed, but the story sounds vaguely familiar, especially if you've read the Sayings of the Desert Fathers and some secondary lit like Benedicta Ward's Harlots of the Dessert (which, by the way, is one of the best titles ever).

So I went searching, and sure enough, this story sounds an awful lot like the story of Thaïs, who gets an entire chapter in Ward's book.

But, having briefly skimmed the Syriac text, I can tell that it's not a translation of the full Vita Thaïs that is published in Patrologia Latina 73:

So, digging a little further in Ward, I find an excerpt from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Serapion 1) that sounds like a much closer version. So I go check Ward's full translation of the Sayings, and sure enough, this is more or less the same text.

Then, using the incipit of the text, I was able to find the text ( http://syriaca.org/work/509 ) and a person page for an unnamed "penitent courtesan" in the @srophe database: http://syriaca.org/person/1658 

Which led me to...

As it turns out, the Syriac text of this work has already been translated in to English in Budge's edition of The Book of Paradise (i.e. the sayings of the desert fathers).

So, what is the end-result of this rabbit trail? We can now definitively associate this Syriac hagiographic title "The story of the prostitute who was a student of Serapion" with the "Life of Saint Thaïs" and, more specifically, the first saying of Serapion in the SDF.

It's possible that someone else who has worked on the Sayings in Syriac has already made this identification, but this was my little wormhole for the day, and I thought others might enjoy the ride.

I also learned some other fun stuff about Thaïs. For example, her Vita circulated in Middle English, and she even appeared in some Middle English sermons:
https://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/whatley-saints-lives-in-middle-english-collections-life-of-saint-thais-introduction

And Thaïs also appears as a character in Hrotsvitha's play "Paphnutius."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paphnutius_(play)