Amherst papyri

The Amherst papyri are a collection of ancient papyri now mostly kept in the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.^[1] They were acquired by John Pierpont Morgan in 1912.^[2] They are named for Lord Amherst of Hackney, who began assembling the collection in the 1860s through purchases from R. T. Lieder and John Lee.^[3] He kept them at Didlington Hall in Norfolk.^[1]

Hieroglyphic papyrus from the Twenty-sixth Dynasty (664–525 BC), containing the Book of the Dead, now Amherst Egyptian Papyrus 22.4

The collection includes or included 42 papyri in Egyptian written in hieroglyphic or hieratic script;^[2] 84 in Coptic, of which only 37 were ever catalogued, the rest being described as "very decayed, powdery and worthless";^[2] and 237 mainly in Demotic Egyptian and Greek, but including a few in Coptic, Arabic and Latin.^[4]

List

• Astarte and the Insatiable Sea
• Papyrus 12
• Papyrus Amherst 3a
• Papyrus Amherst 63
• Papyrus Leopold II
• Philinna Papyrus
• Uncial 076