The John Rylands University Library of Manchester, incorporating the library founded in the late 19^th century by Mrs. Enriqueta Rylands in memory of her husband, houses a large collection of papyri¹. While these have been acquired in several phases, the nucleus of the collection was formed by the purchase by Mrs. Rylands in 1901 of the entire collection of manuscripts in the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, that is, the library of the Earls of Crawford and Balcarres, presided over at that time by the 26^th Earl of Crawford, James Ludovic Lindsay, an avid bibliophile as had been his father². Among the Rylands papyri (as well as in other collections) are a number of archives, in particular those of Apa Johannes and Theophanes, which form the subject of previous and ongoing work by the present author³. By way both of confirming some details about their acquisition, and in further adding to our knowledge of the history of this important papyrus collection, I report here on what can be learnt of this on the basis of an examination of the correspondence and other papers of the Earls of Crawford, now in the National Library of Scotland⁴.

With regard to the archive of Apa Johannes, the Crawford Muniments confirm the reconstruction of the acquisition of the various pieces advanced most recently by Nikolaos Gonis, refining suggestions by Peter van Minnen, Constantine Zuckerman, and myself⁵. In providing further detail on the acquisition of the Rylands papyrus collection, they confirm several points which were hitherto well-informed speculation and correct several errors in earlier reports of the acquisitions.

It was the 25^th Earl of Crawford, Alexander William Crawford Lindsay (whom I will call here Lindsay), who began the acquisition of manuscripts from Egypt for the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, by his purchase of a number of Henry Tattam’s Coptic manuscripts on their sale in 1868⁶; to produce a catalogue of them, he engaged the Reverend J.M. Rodwell, who – the well-known bookseller Quaritch advised – was the only qualified scholar then in England who could undertake the task⁷. Rodwell himself felt there were qualified men in the British Museum⁸; but while Quaritch admitted to Lindsay that Samuel Birch and Stanley Lane-Poole knew Coptic, he avowed that they were more Hieroglyphic experts; he had «a low notion of their palaeographical knowledge of the Coptic language»⁹.

This purchase formed the basis of the older collection of Coptic manuscripts in the Bibliotheca Lindesiana, called «part (A)» in the Catalogue of the Rylands Coptic collection¹⁰. Of the highest interest among these are the Sahidic parchment fragments later discovered to have come from the White Monastery Library, which were contained in Lot 401 of the Tattam sale; these were already recognized by contemporaries such as Quaritch himself, and Robert Curzon, as having great value¹¹. In the ensuing decades these Biblical and other Sahidic parchments were to become known and used within the nascent coptological community by scholars such as George Horner, and a young Walter Ewing Crum¹².

While the Bibliotheca Lindesiana was among the greatest private libraries in Britain, in the 1890s, the 26^th Earl (to whom I shall refer here as Crawford), and his librarian John Edmond began to sense a lack, as the new field of papyrology emerged. That Edmond could tell Crawford in late 1898 that «[i]f you could get some good examples of Papyri I should be very glad» indicates that there were at that time few or none in the Bibliotheca Lindesiana¹³. It is not quite true that the Crawford collection contained no papyri at that stage, as a small slip amongst papers compiled by the 25^th Earl in Italy near the end of his life lists two papyri¹⁴; one «resembles those of the XXI and XXII Dynasties», the other is «of Ptolemaic Period… in a neat Hieratic hand»¹⁵. Yet according to the emerging consensus on what papyrology was, that is the study of texts from Graeco-Roman Egypt, the collection still had none, and Crawford traveled to Egypt in the winter of 1898/1899 with the express intention of filling this hole.

Here I must correct the statement in my communication to the Helsinki congress that the Bibliotheca Lindesiana already contained Greek papyri before this time, which was based on my misunderstanding of Barker’s masterful account of the library¹⁶. It also means that the statement by Roberts and Turner in the introduction to the Archive of Theophanes in P.Ryl. IV, that «[t]he papyri comprising this archive were purchased c. 1896 by A.S. Hunt on behalf of Lord Crawford together with other texts published in this volume», is in fact incorrect: it was already doubted by Gonis, and is disproved by letters to and from Crawford, which show not only that Hunt did not purchase papyri on his behalf until late 1899, but that Crawford himself did not purchase any until early in that year¹⁷.

Crawford had left England bound for the Mediterranean and Egypt in late 1898¹⁸. By December 6^th he was able to report from Cairo on the purchase of a fragment of a Kufic Quran, and was preparing to joumey up the Nile the next day¹⁹. It was early February 1899 before he wrote again, from Luxor, with news of a disappointing expedition: a sixteen-mile donkey ride to a monastery in the vicinity of Luxor had proved fruitless, and back in the town the only papyri he was offered did not meet his expectations: «I want an unopened, & sealed one»²⁰. By the 21^st of the month, Crawford had returned to Cairo, from where he reported to Edmond on a more successful expedition to the bazaar, which took place on February 19^th. This had netted, amongst other things, fourteen Greek papyri, and two «curious» parchments said to be from the Fayum²¹.

On the 23^rd, Crawford wrote again, having had more spectacular success that day²². Via the intervention of the antiquities dealer Paul Phillip, he had made the acquaintance of the notorious dealer Farag Ali in Giza, and had bought all he had in the way of papyrus. The «other man» referred to in the letter is Phillip himself, as the receipt he wrote for Crawford shows²³. On it one can recognize items such as the carbonised papyri from Thmouis in the Rylands collection²⁴.

From still another dealer, the Greek antiquarian Kyticha – of whom Budge held a low opinion which he shared with Crawford around this time – Crawford purchased a Hieratic papyus roll said to come from Akhmim, and fancied that he had thus exhausted Cairo of papyri, rejoicing in particular at the « early Greek fragments », having been «mortified» that the «Austrian Archduke Albrecht» had a near monopoly on them²⁵.

He was, however, far from exhausting Cairo of papyri: two days later he had further success, going on a «long trip» with a man named Abdullah to see his aged relation Ali, no doubt the Giza papyrus dealer Ali el-Arabi known from many other accounts, and leaving with another large haul of papyri²⁶. Crawford now felt «that the Egyptian Department is as well represented as any other private library»: the Coptic and Arabic papyri were useful enhancements to his already impressive collection of manuscripts in those languages, and he hoped the Greek lot would also turn out well. He also noted presciently that many fragments were separated, from one another between the various paper sheets, «so one has to get the lot in self preservation»²⁷. The entire purchase was catalogued for transport, and handed over to be sent back to England that day²⁸. This, then, is the purchase described by Crum in the Introduction to P.Ryl. Copt, bought not in 1898, as stated there, but early the next year²⁹. By the «two well known Gizeh dealers», Crum might mean Farag and Ali, or Phillip, or Kyticha; I assume he refers to the first two, as from them derived most of the papyri (and almost certainly the ones in which Crum was interested).

Back in Wigan, Edmond had been reading Kenyon’s Palaeography of Greek Papyri, and wondering if any of the rolls Crawford had acquired would turn out to be literary papyri³⁰. In this he was destined for disappointment; just as he was wrong in his guess that none of the Coptic papyri Crawford had purchased would be as old as the «magnificent Sahidic fragments» already in the collection: some were in fact much older. Crum, who had already agreed to catalogue the Coptic texts in the library, and whom Edmond knew to be «very eager to see Coptic papyri», was soon apprised of the new Coptic acquisitions³¹.

Crum visited Haigh Hall – the Wigan estate that formed both the seat of the Earls of Crawford in England and the home of the Bibliotheca Lindesiana – soon after the papyri arrived in England, to separate the Coptic from Greek papyri³². He was indeed «immensely pleased» with the new acquisitions, in both philological and historical terms³³. Crawford’s youngest son Lionel was also at home at the time, and was surprised: he had «expected some sage old goggled pedagogue and met instead the very opposite… young & dapper»³⁴. Lionel also passed on Crum’s pleasure with the collection and its size, as well as the suggestion that the Arabic papyri be sent to «the man in the Vienna museum» with «some unpronounceable name», which subsequent correspondence shows to have been Josef von Karabacek.

Kenyon had already worked on the Greek manuscripts in the Bibliotheca Lindesiana³⁵; Edmond now sent a telegram to him asking if he might do the same for the papyri. Kenyon’s reply from Rome pleaded the pressure of other tasks: if Crawford wished the job done soon, Kenyon could «confidently recommend Mr. A.S. Hunt, of Queen’s College, Oxford.»³⁶ Edmond imagined Crawford would «wait for Kenyon», to do the Greek papyri, but Crawford thought «it w(oul)d be wise to get Mr. Hunt on it.»³⁷ Edmond thus wrote to Hunt asking if he could do the work, admitting that «[t]hey are, I fear, all non-literary, and mostly from the Fayyum. Some are fairly complete, but many are very fragmentary.»³⁸

The reason for this was made clear in Hunt’s reply two days later³⁹. Presently engaged as both he and Grenfell were with the Oxyrhynchus and Amherst papyri, they were far too busy to take up the Crawford collection any time soon. But Hunt was already apprised of the collection, having preceded Crawford to the Cairene antiquariats in the previous winter, thereby accounting in particular for the «absence. of literary fragments, which had been previously sifted out by» Grenfell and himself. In the next sentence, he disparaged the potential of the collection as it stood to interest « European scholars », before going on to kindly offer his services to make it of some value: « an expenditure of £50 to £100 during two or three seasons would probably be quite sufficient. »

Edmond was clearly far from impressed with the tone of Hunt’s reply: he first suggested to Crawford that they try someone else, reckoning that he could find someone suitable «among the young Greek scholars of the day»⁴⁰. When Crawford insisted on waiting for Grenfell and Hunt, he disparaged their work, which was to his eyes «not much to look at»⁴¹. It was September 1899 before the «Oxford papyrology twins» made it to Wigan to examine the papyri they had already seen in Egypt. They copied many texts, and made a note of those they felt worth publishing, which they planned to have sent to them at some stage⁴².

While there is no detailed report of the contents of Bibliotheca Lindesiana’s papyrus collection as it stood before Hunt and Grenfell began acquiring papyri for Crawford in late 1900, there do exist letters from both to Crawford written after their first examination of the texts⁴³. In these they note that the collection was particularly strong in Byzantine papyri, and included «some enactments or judicial decisions of praefects of Egypt», «a petition to the Roman Emperors», and « a long Latin one ». The latter might be one of the Latin documents in P.Ryl. IV and the petition is probably P.Ryl. IV 617; the « judicial decisions » may be P.Ryl. IV 653. The « Byzantine papyri » in which Grenfell noted the collection was strong are likely to have included the less impressive (to the eye) pieces of the Theophanes archive, such as the accounts (P.Ryl. IV 628-639)⁴⁴. The collection as it stood also contained several « large sheets » of Greek papyri which Crawford had taken to Balcarres for photographing, and which he sent down to Haigh Hall so that Grenfell and Hunt might examine them⁴⁵. Among these is probably not the 91 cm long P.Ryl. IV 653, as Hunt reports that the « enactments or judicial decisions of praefects of Egypt » was still unrolled; some of the accounts of Theophanes measuring 71 cm (P.Ryl. IV 631) and 70 cm (P.Ryl. IV 627) in length might be possible candidates. As Edmond specifies these were Greek, they are not likely to have been the much longer Egyptian texts Crawford had purchased.

In the two following winters, armed with £250 from Crawford, Grenfell and Hunt purchased papyri for him on their trips to Cairo, various reports on which are among the Crawford Muniments. The haul included in 1900 such prizes as the parchment Odyssey P.Ryl. I 53 and «a quire of [a] small papyrus book»⁴⁶. In 1901, Hunt reported they had purchased, among other items, a text of Demosthenes’ De corona of Byzantine date (P.Ryl. I 58), a Decian libellus (P.Ryl. I 12, as Hunt’s description shows), and petitions to prefects of Egypt, probably P.Ryl. II 124-152⁴⁷. Some of the latter also found their way to the British Museum, where their connection with the «group of petitions of which the rest were bought by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt and… now in the John Rylands Library at Manchester» was noted in P.Lond. III (p. viii).

If we return to the archive of Apa Johannes, we may confirm aspects of the generally agreed reconstruction of its purchase. Nothing here speaks for or against the proposal that these are the papers of John of Lycopolis, except perhaps the clear impression that these papyri came from a dealer’s lot which was largely comprised of papyri from Ashmunein⁴⁸. Leaving that aside, we may reconstruct as follows. The papyri in the «two tin boxes» in the (then) Ashmolean Library which were published by Rees and later Gonis had been purchased by Grenfell and Hunt, probably in early December 1899⁴⁹. They formed part of a larger purchase, part of which was acquired for Lord Amherst, from whom they had a commission to buy papyri⁵⁰. This larger purchase included a number of Greek letters from the Archive of Apa Johannes, only one of which, P.Amh. II 145, went to the Amherst collection. The Coptic sections of the archive remained in Egypt to be purchased there by Lord Crawford in February 1899. The selection of the Greek texts from the papyri being sold by Farag, Ali, and others, was made by Grenfell and Hunt, who studiously sifted Greek and especially literary texts from what was available⁵¹.

I now find myself suspicious of there being much of the archive left on the market after the winter of 1898/1899, as Crawford’s deep pockets had virtually denuded the major Cairene dealers of what papyri were left after Grenfell and Hunt (and of course the many other buyers who prowled the antiquariats and dealers) had been through them. This suggests that, if papyri purchased after this date, such as the three British Museum papyri which were acquired in 1901, came from the archive, then they were either purchased several years before they were accessioned in the British Museum in 1901, or had already been separated in Cairo or elsewhere in Egypt⁵². This is not to say that items such as these – not to mention items whose purchase is further removed in time – are not connected with the archive, but they cannot be as securely associated with it as can the items in P.Herm, P.Misc., P.Ryl. Copt. and P.Amh.⁵³

One further point remains troubling: in the introduction to P.Ryl. I 17, Hunt says that this papyrus «was bought together with several cursive documents from Eshmunen, some of which are dated in the year a.d. 397.» These are generally agreed to be P.Herm. 52 and 53⁵⁴; yet what does Hunt mean by «were bought together»? It is perfectly possible that P.Ryl. I 17 belongs to those papyri purchased in the winters of 1899/1900 and 1900/1901 for Crawford; indeed, it would seem unlikely to be from Crawford’s 1899 purchase on the grounds of its nature. Hunt, in his letter to Edmond in September 1899, notes that he and Grenfell saw among the collection as it then stood only «one Greek literary fragment (prose)», which seems unlikely to be a reference to the hexameter Epithalamium that is P.Ryl. I 17⁵⁵. It is possible, of course, that they missed this piece – but then how was Hunt so well-informed about it ? If, however, it was purchased by Hunt in 1899/1900 or 1900/1901, then this is at the least a full year after he and Grenfell purchased the papyri in the « tin boxes » of Hermopolite papyri which were to remain in Oxford and be partly published as P.Herm.

If Hunt indeed means to refer to P.Herm. 52 and 53 (and other unpublished texts of the same date from the same collection noted by Gonis), then he can only mean either that they were «bought together» in a looser sense, that is, in the same winter by different people; alternatively, he is not, in fact, referring to P.Herm. 52 and 53⁵⁶. That the Oxford « Hermopolis » collection was purchased later than December 1898 is not likely, as then there is no reason why Crawford should not have also purchased the Greek Apa Johannes and Theophanes letters in early 1899. Could P.Herm. 52-53 have been bought later than the «mother-collection» of P.Herm. and included in the tin boxes at some stage before they were conserved, some time after 1908⁵⁷ ? Further publication of this material, which Nick Gonis has forecast, may shed further light on this. Other possibilities would seem to require Hunt to have been simultaneously amnesiac and highly mindful of the provenance of papyri, and do not bear raising here.

There remain, then, outstanding questions; but this seems a plausible reconstruction, and about as far as one can go on the current museum-archaeological evidence: the Egypt Exploration Society archives from this period contain no further correspondence from Grenfell and Hunt concerning this matter, but there may be other sources.