Rylands Papyri
![[Funerary text: detail from a papyrus scroll (Hieroglyphic Papyrus 1[6]). detail from the Rylands Papyri Image Number JRL022683tr]](/searchresources/imagecollections/university/papyrus/imagemax20kb,120563,en.jpg)
The University of Manchester Library holds one of the richest and most wide-ranging papyrus collections in Britain, including religious, devotional, literary and administrative texts.
The images show some of the highlights of the collection. Newly digitised material will be added to Rylands Papyri as it becomes available.
The Library collection includes:- 7 Hieroglyphic and 19 Hieratic papyri, which are funerary documents dating between the 14th century BC and the 2nd century AD.
- A further 166 Demotic papyri, mainly from the Ptolemaic period, including the celebrated Petition of Peteêsi from the reign of Darius I.
- Approximately 500 Coptic papyri.
- 800 Arabic papyri consisting of private letters, tradesmen's and household accounts.
- Greek papyri, numbering approximately 2,000 items, include the famous fragments of St John's Gospel and Deuteronomy, the earliest surviving pieces of the New Testament and the Greek Old Testament respectively.
Several of the collections contain fragments on paper and parchment, as well as papyrus.
- Rylands Genizah, which will contain images and descriptions of the Library collection of 11,000 fragments, mostly in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic, from the Genizah of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, is a separate collection within Insight.
