Description
In 1929, seven Manichaean papyrus codices of the fourth century were discovered during an illicit excavation in the Egyptian desert. Half were acquired by A. Chester Beatty, for his library, and the other half by Carl Schmidt, for the papyrus collection of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. With special access to the copious files, inventories and correspondence in Berlin, Robinson provides translations of German and French documents to increase access to information previously unavailable to the scholarly community. He narrates the slow and problem-ridden path of the acquisition, conservation and editing of these important works, including their movements between dealers, collectors, scholars and the military in Egypt, London, Dublin, Berlin, Schondorf, Göttingen, Warsaw, Leningrad, Los Angeles, Claremont and Copenhagen.
