The manuscript collections of Trinity College, Cambridge, are famous for their treasures. However, less well known is a relatively small but intriguing group of fragmentary Egyptian papyri in a variety of languages. These materials, now fully digitised by the Wren Library, are accessible online.
The papyri are stored in boxes labelled according to language: “Greek,” “Coptic,” and “Arabic.” However, even a cursory inspection shows that these divisions should be treated as approximate: for example, fragments classified as “Coptic” contain Greek material, and vice versa. Furthermore, the collection includes the so-called “Murray Papyri,” which were donated by A. G. W. Murray (1884–1919) to the Library. These also appear to include additional Coptic pieces.
The bulk of the collection consists of documentary texts on papyrus. Yet scattered among them are occasional literary texts on papyrus, parchment, and paper. Until now, only the Arabic material has been preliminarily inventoried by Petra Sijpesteijn. In this post, I would like to draw attention to the small group of Coptic biblical fragments in this collection.
Biblical Fragments from the Pauline Corpus
One of the most striking parchment pieces is the last, unnumbered Murray fragment, which contains a portion from the Epistle to the Galatians (4:13–26) in Sahidic. Its script suggests a date as early as the sixth century, making it a valuable witness for the transmission of the Pauline corpus in this dialect.
A Sahidic paper fragment from the same group, Murray 5, preserves First Epistle to Timothy 4:12–5:4. The fragment is paginated 158/159 (even/odd!), which suggests that it once belonged to a substantial codex. On palaeographical grounds, it is unlikely to predate the thirteenth century CE, and thus belongs to the final phase of Sahidic as a literary language.
A Gospel Fragment
Among the papyri inventoried as Coptic, perhaps the most noteworthy is “Coptic 17,” which derives from a papyrus codex of the Gospel of John. The fragment is written in a handsome Alexandrian uncial, pointing to a date in the seventh or eighth century.
Other Interesting Material
Among the fragments grouped as “Coptic 15,” one item (no. 7) appears to be liturgical. By contrast, item 6 from the same frame is clearly documentary, probably an account in Sahidic. The verso was subsequently reused to accommodate a private letter in Arabic. The importance of this document lies in the fact that the Sahidic text preserves a precise date: the month of Mesore, year 661 of the Era of the Martyrs, corresponding to July/August 945 CE.
Assuming that this is indeed the date when the Coptic text was written, the document in question is particularly noteworthy, as it may represent one of the earliest securely dated Coptic paper manuscripts. The transition from papyrus and parchment to paper in medieval Egypt remains poorly understood. Although paper had already come into widespread use in the Islamic caliphate, Coptic scribes appear, at least into the tenth century, to have reserved paper primarily for more ephemeral or utilitarian texts such as accounts and letters. By contrast, parchment continued to be preferred for biblical, liturgical, and other literary manuscripts. In this context, parchment functioned not only as a more durable writing surface, but also as a material marker of authority and prestige.
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