From Egypt to
Ann Arbor: The
Building of the Papyrus Collection
It was quite evident that under prevailing conditions the supply of papyri would rapidly be exhausted, and Professor Kelsey therefore determined to see to it that as many as possible were purchased by institutions, such as The University of Michigan, where they would receive proper physical care and be made available for scholarly interpretation. The papyri obtained during the winter and spring of 1920, apart from the Freer manuscript and the Coptic items acquired expressly for the Morgan Library, were sent to Oxford, where Grenfell generously had promised to identify and evaluate them, and to divide them in proportion to their respective contributions between the Universities of Wisconsin and Michigan. Since Grenfell, in the meantime, had been stricken by the illness from which he never recovered, his colleague, Professor A. S. Hunt, made the division. And in October of the same year, Professor Kelsey brought back to Michigan the first group of papyri- six hundred seventeen numbered items.
In December, 1920, Professor Kelsey proposed to Mr. H. I. (now Sir Idris) Bell, curator of manuscripts at the British Museum, that his institution and the John Rylands Library in Manchester should join with the Universities of Michigan and Cornell in sending a representative to purchase papyri; meanwhile he urged Nahman and Askren to keep buying whatever they could, and promised to take all good material off their hands at a fair price. This proposal was carried out. With Michigan and the British Museum as a permanent nucleus, and with other institutions associated on a more temporary basis, a consortium was organized which practically cornered the papyrus market in Egypt for a number of years. Further, it obviated competitive bidding among its members and exercised a moderating influence up the price of the papyri currently offered for sale. The British Museum acted as the center for the evaluation of the annual purchases made by the consortium and for their pro rata distribution among its participants. This service was greatly appreciated here, for a large proportion of the papyri came to light in very bad shape &endash; wrinkled, twisted, tightly folded, and extremely brittle, this requiring careful smoothing and cleansing before they could be identified and appraised. At that time, neither Michigan nor the other American participants had on their staffs technicians available to do this work rapidly nor papyrologists sufficiently familiar with documentary papyri to evaluate them properly. It was only fair that, in return for such help, the Museum should have the privilege of selecting as its share of the annual acquisitions the papyri which best supplemented its existing collection.
From 1921 through 1926, the consortium bought heavily from Nahman and others in Egypt, much of the time having its own representative there to pass upon the material offered for sale and either bring or ship it to London. Sir E. A. Wallace Budge acted in this capacity in 1921, Professor Kelsey in May, 1924, the writer during the winter of 1924-25, Professor Kelsey again in 1925, and H. I. Bell in 1926. By the close of 1926, the stream of papyri coming from illicit sources had virtually dried up, and in 1928 the consortium ceased to operate.
The University, however, continued to buy select lots of papyri when they became available and funds were forthcoming. Moreover, from 1924 to 1933 it found a new source of papyri in its excavations at Karanis and Dime in the Fayum. This archaeological venture was also owing to the initiative of Professor Kelsey, who saw the importance of studying in a methodical manner all the material evidence that could be brought to light from the age which produced the papyri themselves. As was stated above, the papyri recovered in the course of these excavations were entrusted to the University by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities for study and publication and are subject to return when the work on them is completed.
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