Classics and Ancient History Collections

The Rylands holds an extensive Cuneiform collection that includes over 1,100 items written in Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform scripts, dating from the 25th to the 4th centuries BCE. Primarily originating from the temples of Drehem and Umma, the majority of the tablets are dated to the Ur III dynasty (22nd–21st centuries BCE). The collection also features fragments from the First Babylonian Dynasty (20th–17th centuries BCE) and later Babylonian and Assyrian periods. 

This collection comprises a variety of genre, two bricks of Nebuchadnezzar II commemorating the rebuilding of the temple of Shamash at Sippar (Cuneiform 1092 and 1093), a nail of Enlil-bani celebrating the stronghold of Isin (Cuneiform 1094), and two cylinders of Nebuchadnezzar II documenting the rebuilding of temples at Sippar and Maras, including royal inscriptions, letters, and economic, administrative, and agricultural documents, along with literary texts. Highlights include a rare plan of a Sumerian temple (Cuneiform 930), a tablet about Gilgamesh's conquest of Kish (Cuneiform 931)d (Cuneiform 1095 and 1096). 

The entire collection has been digitised and is available to search via the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI).

The Rylands holds an internationally significant collection of Egyptian papyri, comprising some 2,000 fragments ranging in date from the 3rd century BCE to the 9th century CE, and written in Hieratic, Demotic, Greek, Hebrew, Coptic, Latin, and Arabic. This collection includes a number of important Hieratic and Demotic works, including Demotic 9, the Petition of Peteêsi; classical texts of Greek and Latin literary works, including plays, poems, and philosophical writings; biblical, liturgical texts, and other important religious works that offer insights into early Christian and Jewish practices, including the famous Gospel of John fragment (i.e. P52); medical texts detailing ancient medical knowledge and practices; documentary papyri such as business papers, public records, local government files, taxation documents, and financial memoranda, including the noted Theophanes Archive; and finally, the Ronald Reed Archive contains dozens of Dead Sea scrolls fragments that were instrumental in early research on the dating of the scrolls.  

In addition to the 800 published papyrus works, there are approximately 1,200 unpublished pieces, offering further research potential. 

The Rylands features one of the world’s most important collections of early printed editions of classical literature. We hold first editions of fifty leading Greek and Latin authors, including a copy of the first ancient text printed in Greek, Aesop’s Fables, printed in Milan by Bonus Accursius around 1478. The Homeric epics are represented by the first printing of Nicolaus de Valle’s Latin translation (Rome, 1474); the first edition in the original Greek (Florence, 1488); and an illuminated vellum copy of the Aldine edition of 1504. 

Few people made a greater contribution to the revival of classical scholarship than Aldus Manutius, whose Venetian press issued almost thirty editiones principes in the original Greek. The Library holds the vast majority of these, including Aristotle (1495–8), Theocritus (1496), Aristophanes (1498), Thucydides (1502), Sophocles (1502), Herodotus (1502), Demosthenes (1504), Plato (1513), Aeschylus (1518), and Hippocrates (1526). 

Of Roman authors, Cicero is represented by 75 editions before 1501; there are no less than 22 editions of Virgil printed before 1480; and we hold 800 editions, translations and commentaries of Horace, beginning with the Venetian edition of 1471/2. 

The Library also holds extensive collections of works published in the Loeb and Teubner series of classical texts.