The Rylands Papyri are a collection of thousands of papyrus fragments and documents from North Africa and Greece housed at the John Rylands University Library, Manchester, UK. The collection, purchased by Bernard Pyne Grenfell in Egypt in 1920, includes the Rylands Library Papyrus P52, also known as the "St John's fragment", a fragment from a papyrus codex, generally accepted as the earliest extant record of a Canonical gospel.See 7Q5 for an alternate candidate."N.T. Ancient Manuscripts", List of Ancient New Testament Manuscripts.
The collection The Rylands Papyri collection held by the John Rylands University Library, is one of the most extensive and wide-ranging papyrus manuscript collections in the United Kingdom. It includes religious, devotional, literary and administrative texts. The collection includes 7 hieroglyphic and 19 hieratic papyri which are funerary documents dating from the 14th century BCE to the 2nd century CE. It also holds 166 demotic papyri, mostly dating from the Ptolemaic period, including the famous Petition of Petiese (pRylands 9)Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae, G. Vittmann ed., P. Rylands 9, Demotische Textdatenbank, Akademie für Sprache und Literatur Mainz from the reign of Darius I of Persia.The Rylands Papyri on the John Rylands University Library website
The collection also houses about 500 Coptic papyri, and around 800 Arabic papyri consisting of private letters, together with tradesmen's and household accounts. Among the roughly 2,000 Greek papyri are the famous fragments of the Gospel of John and Deuteronomy, the earliest surviving fragments of the New Testament and the Septuagint (Papyrus 957, the Rylands Papyrus iii.458) respectively; Papyrus 31, a fragment of a papyrus manuscript of the Epistle to the Romans; and Papyrus 32, a fragment of the Epistle to Titus. Also held in the collection is Papyrus Rylands 463, a copy of the apocryphal Gospel of Mary in Greek, and John Rylands Papyrus 470, a prayer in Koine Greek to the Theotokos, written between 3rd to 9th centuriesHans Förster, «Die älteste marianische Antiphon - eine Fehldatierung? Überlegungen zum "ältesten Beleg" des Sub tuum praesidium», in Journal of Coptic Studies 7 (2005), pp. 99-109. in brown ink, the earliest known copy of such a prayer. It was acquired by the Library in 1917.Prayer to Mary (Greek P 470)
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)
See also John Rylands Library P.Ryl. I 4 (p4 on the list Gregory-Aland) — fragment of the Epistle to the Romans in Greek; P. Ryl. I 5 (p5 on the list Gregory-Aland) — fragment of the Epistle to Titus in Greek; P.Ryl. III 457 (p52 on the list Gregory-Aland) — fragment of the Gospel of John in Greek; 2nd century; P.Ryl. III 458 — fragments of the Book of Deuteronomy in Greek; 2nd century BC; P.Ryl. III 463 — Greek manuscript of the apocryphal Gospel of Mary; 3rd century Manchester Odyssey (P. Ryl. Gr. I 53) - Greek manuscript of the oldest surviving codex of The Odyssey
Notes
External links The Rylands Papyri on the John Rylands University Library website An Arabic Papyrus From The John Rylands Library, 65 AH / 684-685 CE Petition by Pediese, a priest of Amen serving during the reign of Darius I