ï~~Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 44 (2007) 41-73
Back to Oegstgeest
The von Scherling Papyrus Collection
Some von Scherling Texts in Minnesota1
Marja Bakker, Alette Bakkers, and Klaas Worp
Leiden University
Abstract
Survey of the dispersal of the von Scherling papyrus collection and
edition of eleven von Scherling texts in the University of Minnesota
collection.
Part 1: The von Scherling Papyrus Collection
The website of the Department of Special Collections and Rare Books at
the University of Minnesota University Libraries2 contains scans of a small
but interesting collection of two ostraka, numbered 1 (a Greek text) and 2
(an Egyptian text), and almost two dozen papyrus fragments. The latter are
numbered consecutively 1-21 and most of them are written in Greek. But #19
is actually written on leather, while #3 is a papyrus with Egyptian hieroglyphs.
A few items were bought from Maggs Brothers in London,3 but most came
from Egypt to Minnesota via the Netherlands.4 They were bought before or
after WW II from Erik von Scherling, a rare book dealer of Swedish descent
selling, among various collectibles, papyri and manuscripts from his office in
Oegstgeest (a suburb of Leiden) through a private journal called Rotulus (on
this, see below). When visiting Egypt in 1935/6 he apparently bought from
1 This paper derives the first part of its title from a novel, Terug naar Oegstgeest, by
the well-known Dutch author Jan Wolkers. We owe many thanks to our colleague B.P.
Muhs for polishing our English. Moreover, he gave a decisive impetus to this paper by
his discovery of the website mentioned in n. 2.
2 See http://special.lib.umn.edu/rare/papyri.
3 Papyri nos. 7-9a-b.
4 Ostraka nos. 1-2; papyri nos. 1-6, 10-21.
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