Amherst papyri

Hieroglyphic papyrus from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (664–525 BC), containing the Book of the Dead, now Amherst Egyptian Papyrus 22.4

The Amherst papyri are a collection of ancient papyri now mostly kept in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.[1] They were acquired by John Pierpont Morgan in 1912.[2] They are named for Lord Amherst of Hackney, who began assembling the collection in the 1860s through purchases from R. T. Lieder and John Lee.[3] He kept them at Didlington Hall in Norfolk.[1]

The collection includes or included 42 papyri in Egyptian written in hieroglyphic or hieratic script;[2] 84 in Coptic, of which only 37 were ever catalogued, the rest being described as "very decayed, powdery and worthless";[2] and 237 mainly in Demotic Egyptian and Greek, but including a few in Coptic, Arabic and Latin.[4]

  1. ^ a b Jellicoe 1993, p. 225.
  2. ^ a b c Steiner 2017, p. 17.
  3. ^ Steiner 2017, p. 3.
  4. ^ They were described as "Demotic and Greek" in a letter from Herbert Eustis Winlock to Morgan. In fact, the 36 of these catalogued by Newberry 1899, pp. 54–56, included Demotic, Greek, Coptic and Arabic. Likewise, Grenfell & Hunt 1901, pp. ix–xii, catalogued 192 that included Greek, Latin, Coptic and Arabic. See Steiner 2017, p. 17.