The Rylands Papyri are a collection of thousands of

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to ...

fragments and documents from

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

and

Greece Greece,, or , romanized: ', officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the southern tip of the Balkans, and is located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Greece shares land borders wi ...

housed at the

John Rylands University Library The University of Manchester Library is the library system and information service of the University of Manchester. The main library is on the Oxford Road campus of the university, with its entrance on Burlington Street. There are also ten other ...

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The ...

, UK. The collection includes the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the "St John's fragment", a fragment from a

codex The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...

, generally accepted as the earliest extant record of a

Canonical gospel Gospel originally meant the Christian message ("the gospel"), but in the 2nd century it came to be used also for the books in which the message was set out. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words an ...

The collection

The Rylands Papyri collection held by the John Rylands University Library, is one of the most extensive and wide-ranging

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand – or, once practical typewriters became available, typewritten – as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced i ...

collections in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...

. It includes religious, devotional, literary and administrative texts. The collection includes 7

hieroglyph A hieroglyph ( Greek for "sacred carvings") was a character of the ancient Egyptian writing system. Logographic scripts that are pictographic in form in a way reminiscent of ancient Egyptian are also sometimes called "hieroglyphs". In Neoplatoni ...

ic and 19

hieratic Hieratic (; grc, ἱερατικά, hieratiká, priestly) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BC until the ris ...

papyri which are funerary documents dating from the 14th century

BCE Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the or ...

to the 2nd century CE. It also holds 166

demotic Demotic may refer to: * Demotic Greek, the modern vernacular form of the Greek language * Demotic (Egyptian), an ancient Egyptian script and version of the language * Chữ Nôm, the demotic script for writing Vietnamese See also * * Demos (disa ...

papyri, mostly dating from the Ptolemaic period, including the famous '' Petition of Petiese'' (pRylands 9) from the reign of

Darius I of Persia Darius I ( peo, 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁 ; grc-gre, Δαρεῖος ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was a List of monarchs of Persia, Persian ruler who served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigni ...

.The Rylands Papyri
on the

website The collection also houses about 500 Coptic papyri, and around 800

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

papyri consisting of private letters, together with tradesmen's and household accounts. Among the roughly 2,000

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

papyri are the famous fragments of the ''

Gospel of John The Gospel of John ( grc, Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην, translit=Euangélion katà Iōánnēn) is the fourth of the four canonical gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven "sig ...

'' and ''

Deuteronomy Deuteronomy ( grc, Δευτερονόμιον, Deuteronómion, second law) is the fifth and last book of the Torah (in Judaism), where it is called (Hebrew: hbo, , Dəḇārīm, hewords Moses.html"_;"title="f_Moses">f_Moseslabel=none)_and_th ...

,'' the earliest surviving fragments of the

New Testament The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...

and the

Septuagint The Greek Old Testament, or Septuagint (, ; from the la, septuaginta, lit=seventy; often abbreviated ''70''; in Roman numerals, LXX), is the earliest extant Greek translation of books from the Hebrew Bible. It includes several books beyond t ...

(Papyrus 957, the Rylands Papyrus iii.458) respectively;

Papyrus 31 Papyrus 31 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), designated by 𝔓31, is an early copy of the New Testament in Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Epistle to the Romans, it contains only Romans 12:3-8. The manuscript paleographically has been ...

, a fragment of a papyrus manuscript of the ''

Epistle to the Romans The Epistle to the Romans is the sixth book in the New Testament, and the longest of the thirteen Pauline epistles. Biblical scholars agree that it was composed by Paul the Apostle to explain that salvation is offered through the gospel of Jes ...

''; and

Papyrus 32 Papyrus 32 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), designated by , is an early copy of the New Testament in Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript of the Epistle to Titus, it contains only Titus 1:11-15; 2:3-8. On the basis of paleography, the manuscript h ...

, a fragment of the ''

Epistle to Titus The Epistle to Titus is one of the three pastoral epistles (along with 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy) in the New Testament, historically attributed to Paul the Apostle. It is addressed to Saint Titus and describes the requirements and duties of elders ...

.'' Also held in the collection is

Papyrus Rylands 463 Papyrus Rylands 463 is a copy of the apocryphal Gospel of Mary in Greek. It is a papyrus manuscript in roll form. The manuscript has been assigned palaeographically to the 3rd century. It is one of the three manuscripts and one of the two Greek m ...

, a copy of the apocryphal ''

Gospel of Mary The Gospel of Mary is a non-canonical text discovered in 1896 in a 5th-century papyrus codex written in Sahidic Coptic. This Berlin Codex was purchased in Cairo by German diplomat Carl Reinhardt. Although the work is popularly known as the Go ...

'' in

, and John Rylands Papyrus 470, a prayer in

Koine Greek Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...

to the

Theotokos ''Theotokos'' ( Greek: ) is a title of Mary, mother of Jesus, used especially in Eastern Christianity. The usual Latin translations are ''Dei Genitrix'' or '' Deipara'' (approximately "parent (fem.) of God"). Familiar English translations a ...

, written about 250 CE in brown ink, the earliest known copy of such a prayer. It was acquired by the Library in 1917.John Rylands Papyrus 470
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Volumes

* . (P.Ryl.Copt.) * . (P.Ryl.Dem.) ** Volume I: Atlas of Facsimiles. ** Volume II: Hand-copies of the earlier documents. ** Volume III: Key-list, Translations, Commentaries and Indices. * . (P.Ryl. I) * . (P.Ryl. II) * (P.Ryl. III) * . (P.Ryl. IV)

Notes

External links

The Rylands Papyri
on the