DUKE PAPYRUS ARCHIVE BANNER

The Duke papyrus collection consists of about 1,400 discrete papyri, most of which are rather fragmentary. They were collected over a period of more than fifty years, from the first handful of texts bought in 1942 until the most recent gift from the private collection of emeritus Professor W.H. Willis, who has been instrumental in building up the bulk of the collection. Major purchases of papyri occurred from the late 60's (e.g. the largely unpublished Ammon archive from Panopolis)[2] through the 80's (e.g. the papyrus collection of the University of Mississippi).[3]

The Duke papyri were acquired from various sources, usually from antiquities and rare book dealers, but also from donors who are honored here. A chronological list of acquisitions, which also indicates which inventory numbers were acquired together can be found on this page. This information will be helpful for those who try to join fragments of papyri that have not yet been matched especially for those papyri that were recovered from mummy cartonnage. This is recycled papyrus glued together like papier maché and was used to cover human mummies or stuff mummies of sacred animals.

The majority of the papyri in the collection are documentary, but there are some notable literary texts (e.g. the so-called "Comoedia Dukiana" acquired in 1984).[4] Not surprisingly, literary texts comprise less than 10% of the collection. Greek texts predominate but there are also a number of Coptic texts. These comprise about 20% of the collection and there are some notable texts among them (e.g. the unpublished martyrdom of Stephanos of Lenaeis). Then there are small pockets of Hieratic, Demotic, Latin and Arabic texts. Many Greek and Demotic papyri were extracted from mummy cartonnage. Less than 5% of the papyri in the collection have been published so far,[5].

The fragments of the papyri were sorted according to their script and joins were made between fragments where appropriate. Data was collected on various physical aspects of the papyri, such as size, margins, state of preservation, etc.  Some papyri needed to be cleaned or flattened and many fragmentary papyri had to be physically joined before the papyri could be put in a frame of two panes of glass. As a rule the guidelines in M. Fackelmann, Restaurierung von Papyrus und anderen Schriftträgern aus Ägypten (Zutphen 1985) were followed.

For conservation purposes two different solutions of Klucel (hydroxypropyl celluloid) and two different types of acid-free paper tape were used. The two solutions of Klucel are for wetting and for gluing respectively. The acid-free tapes are for joining adjacent fragments and for binding the glass frames. Air holes in the paper tape that binds the frames help prevent the build-up of residue left on the glass by micro-organisms in the papyrus.

The glass is of an ordinary type and about 2mm thick. Occasionally frames consist of somewhat thinner or thicker glass and are bound in plastic tape. For the smallest fragments slide glass has been used, which is only 1mm thick and of the highest quality as far as transparency is concerned.

The papyri are stored in flat acid-free boxes in three layers. These boxes will eventually be stored in a climate-controlled area in Perkins Library, where temperature and humidity are kept at a constant temperature.

Originally author by Peter van Minnen on 12/12/95
Revised on 06/2004