PHOTOGRAPHS OF

THE MORGAN COPTIC MANUSCRIPTS

SET of fifty-seven volumes recently presented by Mr. Morgan brings images of people widely separated in time and place. When Charlemagne was still within the memory of many, and King Alfred was trying to free his island home from the Danish Northmen, monks in northern Egypt were bending over tables and writing on parchment their memories of what their teachers and elders had told them about the Saints, or copying and translating from other manuscripts texts of the Bible for the use of the monastery. At some later day trouble came to that monastery and pious hands buried in the sand of the desert those books which they could not carry off. How long the sands and ruins covered them we do not know, but we do know that in 1910 a party of Arabs digging for sabakh ( a kind of fertilizer found in ruins) discovered sixty parchment manuscripts on the site of the Coptic monastery of the Archangel Michael, in what we now call Hamouli, on the southern border of the province of the Fayum. In 1911 the late J. Pierpont Morgan bought as many of these manuscripts as still remained together, and now his son has sent to a few libraries a complete photographic reproduction of the collection.

When the Arabs found the treasure they failed to appreciate its import, and they tried to peddle the books piecemeal. Portions of the collection are now in the University Library at Strasburg, at Freiburg in Breisgau, the Neues Museum in Berlin, the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and perhaps other places, but fortunately the Morgan library contains the greater part of the find, and if the traditional number sixty is correct, the entire collection can be accounted for.

Whether the whole library was thus buried, or whether part was buried and part carried away, is merely a matter of conjecture. In the fourteen years since the first discovery nothing more has been dug up. That some monastic libraries were carried far from home by monks fleeing from invaders we know from the fine collection of Syriac manuscripts that once belonged to a monastery in the desert of Scete, in the Nitre valley about thirty-five miles to the left of the most western branch of the Nile. In the early part of the nineteenth century these were distributed between the British Museum and the (former Imperial, now the Public) Library at St. Petersburg or Leningrad.

These fifty odd volumes offer excellent opportunity for the study of Coptic monastic life and Coptic book arts. We have here portions of the Coptic translation of the Old Testament, nearly the whole of the New Testament, the liturgy of the Coptic church, and many sermons by and eulogies and lives of early Saints and martyrs. The dated manuscripts range from 823 to 914, with

one of about 1014. They are all in enlarged minuscules, and, except one, are in the Sahidic dialect of Upper Egypt; the one exception is in the Fayum dialect. When the manuscripts came to the Morgan library many were damaged. They had suffered not only from use, but from the efforts of the scribes who had tried to decorate them and had not known the proper kinds of pigments to use; the colors had sometimes worked themselves through and through the sheet of parchment and the decoration had damaged rather than embellished the page. Bookworms too had riddled the papyrus bindings before they had been buried; and after they had been dug up, and were waiting to learn their fate in the market place, they had been carelessly stored so that damp and rot had injured them!

The collection was entrusted for care and arrangement to Professor Henry Hyvernat of the Catholic University at Washington, and on his recommendation was sent to the Vatican Library at Rome for restoration. While in Europe the manuscripts and their bindings were photographed, and twelve sets bound, under the direction of Professor Hyvernat, for distribution to research libraries throughout the world.

There are fifty-six volumes of text and one index volume. Professor Hyvernat prepared in 1919 “A Check List of Coptic Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library," privately printed in an edition of 150 copies, to serve as general introduction to this collection and the other Coptic manuscripts in the Library.

TWO GIFTS

HROUGH the interest of former Secretary of State of the State of New

TH

York, James A. Hamilton, and the present Secretary, Mrs. Florence E. S. Knapp, the Library has received the copy of the Bible (Douay version) on which Governor Smith took his oath of office last January. The book used at his first inauguration was given to his mother, that used at the second went to his wife, and the one marking the induction into office of the first man since William Learned Marcy to be elected for a third term, came to the public library of the city of his birth.

Thoughts of the crusades and the wars of Henry the Fourth of France, of the troubadours and of the great Duc de Sully, of medieval sieges of Coucy and of its occupation by the Germans ten years ago, come over any one who glances at the 37 volumes and 13 pamphlets recently given by Mr. Theodore Gilman.

As a member of the Bethune family, Mr. Gilman's interest in Maximilien de Bethune, Duc de Sully, led him to collect anything he could find relating to the companion and adviser of Henry of Navarre. The pride the duke took in his connection with Coucy naturally brought into the field books on the family of Coucy and the place itself. Thence the step was short to the story of the unfortunate lovers Raoul de Coucy and La Dame de Fayel.

It is a pleasure to add this valuable material to what the Library already could offer for study of northeastern France. It is an equal pleasure to recall the concluding paragraph of the letter from Mr. Gilman, that came with the books, saying "The best way to preserve books is to give them to a library where they will be valued and kept in perpetuity. I do not feel that I am parting with these books. I am only giving them another home. They are as accessible to me as when on my shelves and much more so to any one hereafter who may desire to consult them."

FRENCH AND OTHER PRINTS

ECENTLY acquired portraits by Jacques Reich and prints by contemporary French artists, together with wood engravings by the late W. G. Watt, have been placed on view in Room 316.

Reich's etched portraits of Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, Marshall, Lincoln, Cleveland, Roosevelt, Carnegie, Whistler, and many others, form an interesting contribution to the iconography of makers of the United States.

The French prints, a gift, through the Committee of Diffusion of French art, from Mr. J. S. Bache, include wood engravings by P. E. Colin, scenes in Lorraine, of a sober, restrained richness, and by Naudin, done with an engrossing, nervous line. "Chiaroscuro" prints there are by Vibert and Camille Beltrand, and further woodcuts by Guinhald, Deslignières, Darcy, Latour, Gormien (engaging portraits of musicians, among them Ravel and Florent Schmitt), and others. Among the etchings are color plates by Bernard Boutet de Monvel, with a delicate flavor of the Second Empire, landscape etchings by Jacques Simon and Demarle, Dufour's series "Autour de Notre Dame," Gardier's "Venise: le Grand Canal" (faintly recalling Goeneutte), war series by Seevagen and Barrière, Helleu's portrait of Raymonde Delaunois, Dresa's illustrations for Regnier's "Le Bon Plaisir," and plates by Besnard, Brissaud, E. Perrin and H. C. Wagner. Etchings by Pissarro, Raffaëlli, and Bracquemond, and the lithographic illustrations, by Steinlen, for Richepin's "Chanson des Geux," add further to the diversity in style and subject here presented.

Watt, who died last year, followed with distinction in the footsteps of those who contributed most notably to the achievement of our "golden age' of wood engraving in the eighteen-eighties and -nineties.

NEWS OF THE MONTH

GIFTS

URING the month of January, 1925, there were received as gifts 3,676

393 and 20 prints.

important and interesting of these gifts were the following:

From the Estate of Robinson Locke, in addition to the collection of dramatic clippings already received, came a box of clippings and photographs relating to Henry Dixey. Mr. Theodore Gilman, of Yonkers, N. Y., gave a collection of early French and English books, including “Histoire Genealogique de la Maison de Bethune," par Andre du Chesne, Paris, 1639; “Memoires de Maximilien de Bethune, Duc de Sully," volumes 1-8, Paris, 1767; "Pièces relative à la Famille de Bèthune-Sully" (manuscripts relating to the lawsuit of the Duke of Sully and his son, dated June 12, 1610-May 7, 1695); in all 37 volumes and 13 pamphlets. From Mrs. George Bowen de Long came 19 volumes, among which were "The Early Work of Aubrey Beardsley, with a prefatory note by H. C. Marillier," London and New York, 1899; “Les Femmes de Brantome," by Henri Bouchot, Paris, 1890; "The Book of the Pearl," by G. F. Kunz and C. H. Stevenson, New York, 1908. Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan gave the Library "A Map of the Province of New York with Part of Pensilvania and New England, from an Actual Survey by Captain Montresor, Engineer, 1775," inscribed by Captain Montresor to the Right Honorable Sir Jeffery Amherst.

From the Secretary of State, Albany, New York, came the Bible used by Governor Alfred E. Smith in taking the oath of office for his third term as Governor of the State of New York.

From Mrs. Jacob Kamm, Portland, Oregon, came a copy of a work privately printed for her-"A History of Oregon 1792-1849, drawn from Personal Observation and Authentic Information, by W. H. Gray, Portland, San Francisco, New York, 1870," reprinted in 1924 with much added material. From Mr. E. O. Weeks, Tenafly, N. J., came the original manuscript Day Book, kept by Col. Timothy Pickering as Quartermaster General of the Army of the United States, at Newburgh and New York City from April 1, 1784 to May 12, 1786. Mr. William Gwinn Mather, of Cleveland, Ohio, gave a copy (No. 202 of 250 printed by Bruce Rogers at the Harvard University Press, Cambridge, in June, 1924, from the original types of John Baskerville) of the privately printed work, "Portraits of Increase Mather with Some Notes on Thomas Johnson, an English Mezzotinter, by Kenneth B. Murdock, Ph.D." From Mrs. Alice McFadden Brinton, Philadelphia, came a copy (No. 3 of an edition limited to 100 copies) of the "Catalogue of the Collection of Pictures formed by John McFadden, Esq., of Philadelphia, by W. Roberts, London, 1917. Mr. Harry Worcester Smith, of North Grafton, Mass., gave a copy of the privately printed (in an edition of 90 copies only) work, "The Warwick Wood