collID: 192

London, British Library

Name: London, British Library
Location: London
Country: United Kingdom
Address: British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB
UK - England
Homepage: http://www.bl.uk/
Contact: Dr. Scott McKendrick curator of Classical Byzantine and Biblical Manuscripts
E-mail: mss@bl.uk
Conservation: Most papyri are kept between glass frames; some of the small fragments are apparently still in folders (see next item).
Inventarisation: Most texts are inventoried, but there are hundreds of small scraps still waiting for final inventarisation; cf. T.S. Pattie, A little-known collection of papyri in the British Library, Proceedings of the 18th Intern. Congress of Papyrology, Athens 1988, pp.147-150.
Through the Manuscripts Online Catalogue (http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/manuscripts/INDX0095.ASP?Type=D) one can search most of the previously published catalogues, including the Catalogues of Additions, which included brief descriptions and index entries for all papyri collected and incorporated up to 1955.
A microfilm of the Greek papyri 1 - 1200 is available from the British Library.
Publications: P.Lond. I-VII; a list of Greek papyri from the British Library published outside this series, see N. Kruit - K.A. Worp, JJP 25 (1995), pp.49-66.
Work:
Highlights: - Athenaion Politeia, written on the back of a documentary roll ( LDAB 391 )

- P.Edgerton 2 (fragment of an unknown apocryphal gospel, partly in the British Library, partly in Köln - LDAB 4376 ): see http://purl.org:WILLKER/Egerton/Egerton-home.html and http://alf.zfn.uni-bremen.de/~wie/Egerton/egerton-intro.html
History: The first important purchase of the (then) British Museum was that of Aristoteles' Athenaion Politeia, Herondas' Mimes and the Victory Odes by Bacchylides in 1889/1890.
The excavations of Grenfell and Hunt in the Fayum, Oxyrhynchus and El-Hibeh were organised by the Egypt Exploration Fund; through subscription, the British Museum acquired a large group of papyri between 1895 and 1923.
In the 1920's the Museum purchased part of the Zenon archive, published by T.C.Skeat.
Later acquisitions have not been so spectacular, but they continue steadily.
As a result of the British Library Act 1972, Coptic papyri in the British Museum became the property of The British Library Board, whereas Coptic (ans some Greek) ostraca are still kept in the Ancient Egypt and Sudan Department of the British Museum.