Coptic Psalter, manuscript on parchment [Egypt (probably White Monastery), 1st half of 5th century]

‡ Psalter, in Sahidic dialect of Coptic, in Coptic Uncials, manuscript on parchment[Upper Egypt (probably the White Monastery, Sohag), first half of fifth century] Single leaf with a stub from its sister leaf on the other half of the bifolium, with remains of a single column of 27 lines of elegant Coptic Uncials set on unusually long lines, text partly indented 'per cola et commata', losses to upper and outermost edges (with damage to a few lines of text at head), stains in places, set in modern conservation paper, 200 by 160mm. Provenance: 1. Most probably produced for use in the White Monastery (or the Monastery of St. Shenouda), Deir el-Abiad, near Sohag, Egypt, a Coptic Orthodox monastery near the Upper Egyptian city of Sohag. It was founded by St. Pigol in 442, and grew substantially in importance after his nephew St. Shenouda the Archimandrite (d. 466) took over in 385. He was a gifted administrator and during his abbacy the monastery grew in size from 30 monks to 2200 monks and 1800 nuns. He was also a prolific writer, and launched a literacy campaign within the monastery, producing a large library and establishing the house as perhaps the most important in the Coptic Church. When the first European visitors reached the monastery, the library was housed in a room to the north of the central apse called the 'Secret Chamber', which could be entered only through a hidden passage. It seems likely that the first such visitor allowed into the library was J. Maspero, who arrived in 1883 and who documented his visit (as well as his acquisitions there) in 1897 ('Fragments de manuscrits Coptes-Thébains', Mémoires publiés par les membres de la mission archéologiques française, 6). Others followed, and so many leaves flooded out of the monastery that when Canon Oldfield visited in 1903 the 'Secret Chamber' was completely empty (W.E. Crum, 'Inscriptions from Shenoute's Monastery', Journal of Theological Studies, 5, 1904). Some were no doubt legitimately bought from the monks, and the British Museum acquired a large collection through their agent Wallace Budge, and the BnF. obtained a vast hoard of 4000 leaves through Maspero and an antiquities dealer named Freney. However, records exist of more nefarious acquisition methods, including that of Charles Wilbour who came to the region in 1890 on a buying trip for the Brooklyn Museum, and reports that "Mr. Frenay told us Abbé Amélineau tried to burgle the White Monastery ... after drugging the monks" (Travels in Egypt, 1936, p. 561). The modern scholars Tito Orlandi and Alin Suciu have further suggested that some of the monastery's codices were more systematically dispersed as part of the suppression of Christianity in the region.2. Maurice Nahman (1868-1948), French collector-dealer, and Head Cashier at the Crédit Foncier d'Egypte in Cairo, who used this position to establish himself as the foremost antiquity dealer of Cairo in the 1920s and 1930s in his exquisite Arab-style home there. He was visited there by egyptologists and institutional collectors such as Howard Carter and Lord Carnavon (presumably during their excavation of the tomb of Tutankhamun), as well as Hollywood actresses such as Ruth Selwyn and celebrities such as Henry E. Ringling of circus fame. A sale of part of his collection was held by Christie's, London, on 2 March 1937. After his death his son kept the business going until 1953, and then the remaining stock was offered in Hotel Drouot, Paris, in 26-27 February and 5 June 1953, with the remainder apparently passing to Erik von Scherling. 3. Re-emerging in Sotheby's, 5 December 1995, lot 28.4. Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, their MS 114/25, acquired in Sotheby's. Text and script:From an early Coptic Psalter, and containing Psalms 77:25-34 in the Sahidic dialect of Upper Egypt, translated in the third or even late second century (see E.A. Wallis Budge, The Earliest Known Coptic Psalter, 1898, and P. Nagel, 'Der sahidische Psalter', Der Septuaginta-Psalter, ed. Aejmelaeus and Quast, 2000, pp.82-96).The script here is a fine Coptic Uncial, derived from Greek Uncial, and showing its ultimate debt to Ancient epigraphic letterforms in its monumental and rounded majuscules and absence of spacing between words. Published:Online as TM/LDAB 828617