THE CHESTER BEATTY
LIBRARY, DUBLIN
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Downloaded description of the collections
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THE WESTERN
COLLECTIONS
The Western Collections of the Chester Beatty Library are
possibly the most diverse of the three Collections, with images and
texts (in numerous languages) copied onto a range of materials, such as clay,
wood, papyrus, parchment and paper. The objects come from the Middle East,
Africa (Egypt & Ethiopia) and Europe and range in date from the
third millennium BC to the twentieth century.
The formation of the collection reflects the trends set
by the great American book collectors of the early twentieth century where as
far as possible only the best quality items were acquired.
The Library is famous for its rare and illuminated
manuscripts and biblical papyri, but Chester Beatty also collected over 3,000
rare printed books and over 26,000 prints and drawings.
In addition, there are over 1,000 important examples of
European book-bindings, which, together with the early papyri and Coptic
bindings collections, show the development of the Western book over the
last millennium from the origin of the codex in the second century
AD.
1/ Papyri
Ranging in date from 1800 BC to AD 800, the Chester
Beatty Library's collection of papyrus includes rolls, codices and individual
documents from Ancient, Roman and Coptic Egypt. It includes many works of
outstanding importance, with unique documents and, in some cases, the earliest
known copies of particular texts.
Many of the papyri in the collection (both religious and
documentary) are written in Greek, the official language of Egypt for over 1000
years from the conquest of Alexander the Great until the Arab conquest. In
addition, there are texts written in hieroglyphic, hieratic, Demotic and
Coptic.
1.a/ History of
the collection
The Papyrus Collection was, for the most part,
established in the 1920s. Under the guidance of senior curators in the British
Museum's Department of Egyptian Antiquities and Department of Manuscripts,
allied Oxford and Cambridge academics also contributed to the formation and
development of the extensive collection.
Harold Idris Bell, Frederick Kenyon, Alan Gardiner and
Edward Edwards, as well as Herbert Thompson, Charles Alberry and W. E. Crum,
were retained by Beatty as advisors.
The principal papyri were purchased through dealers or
through a museum syndicate, which included many American museums and
universities. Beatty's acquisition of papyrus manuscripts began to turn the
emphasis of his collection away from illuminated manuscripts towards rare
texts, and in several contemporary newspapers he was referred to as 'a British
Egyptologist.'
Beatty's papyrus collection would eventually develop into
one of the most important private collections in the world, which few other
private collectors, and only the largest public institutions, could match. He
was now in active competition with some of the great imperial museums of
Europe, and in some cases his acquisitions were made in an arena of great
rivalry between the British and German national collections.
In the course of forming the Collection, Beatty very
often disposed of material. The most important of his donations was to the
British Museum: Papyrus Chester Beatty II-XIX (London, BM 10682-10699). Beatty
also gifted smaller collections of documentary papyri to his friend and fellow
collector Wilfred Merton. In 1958, the Merton Collection of Papyri was
bequeathed to Chester Beatty and now forms part of the Library.
Unlike most of Beatty's other purchases, the Papyrus
Collection demands extensive conservation, an ongoing process. In the past,
this was usually carried out at the British Museum or by German conservators in
Berlin.
A significant part of Beatty's Coptic Papyrus Collection
was confiscated by Russian forces in Berlin at the end of the Second World War
and removed to the Soviet Union. The collection was returned to East Berlin in
the 1960s and eventually to Ireland in 2001.
1.b/ Egyptian
In comparison with later periods, the collection of
Ancient Egyptian papyrus manuscripts is relatively small. Apart from the single
roll containing the Love Poems and other texts from Deir el-Medina, the
remaining manuscripts are largely a collection of miscellaneous funerary or
business texts from 1800 BC to the Roman period.
The earliest items - a number of fragmentary Lahun
documents - have been dated to 1800 BC and there are several books of the dead
(tenth/ninth century BC to first century AD), but most are in a fragmentary
state except for the Book of the Dead of the Lady Neskons (c. 300 BC). Other
documents include accounts, contracts and registrations.
1.c/ Greek
The majority of the documentary texts in the Library’s
collection are single documents or fragments of documents relating to business
affairs, taxes, wills and other matters of daily life.
Among the Greek documentary papyri acquire by Beatty was
a roughly made codex, largely blank but containing several tax receipts dated
to AD 339-345. Upon closer inspection it was revealed that the codex was made
of a number of sheets glued back to back and doubled over to form a single
quire. In places were the adhesive had loosened, earlier text was revealed on
the inner surface. Conservation was undertaken at the British Museum to
separate the sheets of the codex, where it was discovered that the re-used
papyri came from two long rolls containing the official correspondence of the
Strategus of the Panopolite nome (AD 298-300), primarily relating to the
impending visit of the Emperor Diocletian to Panopolis (CBL PapPan I & II).
This unique record has provided historians with a wealth of information on
Roman administrative practices (and bureaucratic idiosyncrasies).
1.d/ Biblical
The incredible discovery and acquisition of the Chester
Beatty Biblical Papyri was first made public in The Times on 19
November 1931. Before this find, the earliest and most important manuscripts of
the Greek New Testament were parchment codices from the fourth and fifth
centuries.
Only a few small fragments of papyrus with portions of
the New Testament from an earlier date were known, and most of these were too
small to be of much significance.
The discovery of the Chester Beatty New Testament papyri
caused a sensation because they were at least 100 years older than the most
important parchment codices at that time.
By acquiring these papyrus manuscripts, including the
earliest surviving codex containing all four gospels and acts in one book, the
earliest copy of the collection of Saint Paul's Letters and the
earliest copy of the Book of Revelation, as well as many other early or
unique versions of homilies, epistles or pseudo-canonical texts, Chester
Beatty's Library became one of the major centres in the world for the study of
early Christian texts.
1.e/ Witness
The biblical manuscripts in the Chester Beatty Library
bear witness to the human story of the development of Christianity during the
early centuries of its history.
The New Testament papyri and the Greek translations of
the Jewish Scriptures show the type of book that would be used by an early
Christian community for worship and for study.
Other manuscripts in the collection, most notably the
Commentary on the Diatessaron, are evidence of a crucial debate of the earliest
centuries of Christianity: whether there should be one definitive account of
the life of Jesus, or whether several narratives, each with a slightly
different emphasis, should stand side by side as equally authoritative.
The translation of the Bible into many languages is the
result of the spread of Christianity throughout the world.
The importance of the early Scriptures in all these
different strands of Christianity bears witness both to the unity and the
diversity of the world's largest religion.
The biblical treasures in the Chester Beatty Library are
not only of great significance for Christians, but they are also of great value
to anyone interested in the development of human history and culture.
1.f/ Merton
Wilfred Merton (1888-1957) was the business partner of
Sir Emery Walker, the publisher of nearly all of Alfred Chester Beatty's early
collection catalogues. Merton was also a close friend of Chester Beatty and a
fellow book collector, specialising in rare Oriental printing and papyri.
In tribute to their long friendship and association,
Merton bequeathed many of his books and manuscripts to Beatty on his death in
1957. The Merton Papyri are, for the most part, Greek documentary papyri, but
the collection also includes some Demotic, Coptic and Arabic texts.
These texts are invaluable records not only because they
are dated but also because they provide a very clear account of everyday life
in late Roman Egypt. Included are private and official letters, as well as
documents dealing with business affairs and two of life’s certainties – death
and taxes.
1.g/ Coptic
Coptic texts form one of the largest groups within the
Chester Beatty Papyri Collection.
Coptic is the latest stage of the written form of the
Egyptian language. It borrows most of its letters from the Greek alphabet but
with the addition of several Coptic letters for sounds not found in the Greek
language (inherited from Demotic script).
The majority of the Coptic texts are Christian in subject
matter and include biblical manuscripts, homilies and accounts of martyrdoms
from the period c. AD 300-800, although there are also some fragments of
literary and business documents.
In addition, some of the papyrus manuscripts retain their original bindings, composed of boards of papyrus covered with leather on the outside.
In addition, some of the papyrus manuscripts retain their original bindings, composed of boards of papyrus covered with leather on the outside.
1.h /
Manichaean
The most important and largest collection of
non-Christian texts on papyrus acquired by Chester Beatty is the remarkable
Manichaean codices, written in Coptic and dated to around AD 400.
The now separated folios are housed in over 1,000 frames
and include many unique sacred texts of a lost religion which once rivalled
Christianity and Islam and spread from North Africa to the Near East.
The Iranian prophet Mani (put to death in AD 276)
believed that he was the successor of Jesus. He absorbed the teachings of
Christianity, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism and preached a new religion based on
the dual forces of light and dark. (psalmbooks etc)
2/ Manuscripts
The Western Collection includes examples of European
manuscripts, important for their texts, ornamentation (although not all are
illuminated), and bindings. Beatty formed separate collections of
Armenian, Byzantine, Coptic, Ethiopian, Hebrew, Slavonic and Syriac
manuscripts.
These collections vary in depth depending on the
availability of quality material for what Beatty would have considered
reasonable output at the time he was focusing on that area.
2.a/ Armenian
The Armenian Collection of the Chester Beatty Library
consists of manuscripts, primarily containing the texts of the Four Gospels,
painted miniatures and detached metal covers.
These were acquired by Chester Beatty over a thirty-year
period, starting before 1920 but increasing towards the end of the 1920s and
into the 1930s. Some of most impressive material, however, was not acquired
until just after the Second World War (1946-48). The highlight of Beatty's
purchases from this period is a thirteenth-century Gospel-book (CBL Arm 558),
acquired from the Phillipps Collection in 1947.
Beatty employed several Armenian scholars to write the
descriptive entries for his manuscripts, but a published catalogue did not
appear until 1958.
2.b/ Byzantine
The Byzantine manuscripts include gospels, commentaries
on the Scriptures, homilies, liturgical works and books of devotion which range
in date from the tenth to the fifteenth century. Many are illuminated with
miniatures and decorated initials.
Beatty acquired most of these manuscripts in the 1920s
from dealers in Paris. His correspondence contains letters from dealers in
Istanbul offering Byzantine objects or textiles for sale, but in general Beatty
declined.
Among the earliest manuscripts are three that date from
the tenth and eleventh centuries (CBL W 131, W 132 and W 133), which were
originally from the Russian monastery of Panteleïmon on Mount Athos.
3.c/ Coptic
Textually the collection of Coptic manuscripts (on
parchment) is linked with the Coptic papyri collection, as similar texts were
in circulation written on both media; the choice of material was dependant on
the resources of the community. Coptic has four principal dialects, Bohairic,
Fayumic, Sahidic, and Akhmimic, most of which are represented in the Chester
Beatty Collections, either as the main text or as later glosses.
The most important manuscripts were acquired by Beatty
from dealers in Cairo in the 1920s. One purchase included three of five books
that came from the Monastery of Apa Jeremias at Saqqara (the remaining two
belong to the University of Michigan). These manuscripts (CBL Cpt 813, Cpt 814
and Cpt 815) were written in the Sahidic dialect and date from c. AD 600. They
were found with Byzantine coins (minted at Alexandria in the sixth century),
which help to date the deposit of the material. The bindings of these
manuscripts are among the earliest surviving examples of Western binding
structures, with decorated leather tooling and stamp ornament.
3.d/ Ethiopian
The collection of Ethiopian manuscripts includes both
codices and scrolls, some of which are of exceptional importance. In addition
to the beautifully illustrated Gospel Books and psalters, there are examples of
popular devotional works such as the Praises of Mary (Weddase Maryam)
and the Miracles of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Ta'amera Maryam). There
are also several fine examples of amulets, or magic scrolls, that were used
against sickness or for spiritual protection.
The manuscripts range in date from the seventeenth to the
nineteenth century and are primarily written on parchment. Chester Beatty
purchased most of the collection at Sotheby's auctions in London, some in the
1930s but most were acquired after his move to Dublin in 1950. A small number
of books were added to the collection by bequest, by transfer from the National
Library of Ireland or by donation from the late Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Dermot
Ryan.
The collection is augmented by many fine printed books
(which show the early use of Ethiopian type) housed in the Rare Book
Collection, such as travel accounts (especially those of Jesuit missionaries)
and colour-plate books depicting landscapes, architecture and dress.
3.e/ European
Chester Beatty first found fame as a book collector of
Western illuminated manuscripts. The collection began modestly in the years
preceding his move to London in 1913, but with the help of expert advice, by
the end of the 1920s it had grown to become one of the most important
collections in England.
Beatty's preference for illuminated manuscripts can be
deduced from archival sources, as mention is made of French Books of Hours,
five of which were in his possession by 1910.
After moving to London, Beatty began buying much earlier
manuscripts from the Carolingian and Ottonian periods, including manuscripts
which were not illuminated but were highly important on palaeographical
grounds.
By the end of the 1920s, he had assembled a collection of
well over 200 European manuscripts which, together with his other collections,
made him the most important book collector in England in the mid-twentieth
century.
While over half of the European manuscripts Beatty
collected throughout his lifetime were bequeathed to his personal estate, the
Library retains some fine and important examples of beautifully illuminated
medieval texts.
3.f/ Hebrew
While some of the collections within the Chester Beatty
Library, such as the Hebrew Collection, contain only a small number of volumes,
they still reflect Beatty’s requirement for ‘quality’.
The Hebrew manuscripts were primarily acquired in the
1930s and 1940s from the dealer and collector Dr Abraham Shalom Yahuda
(1877-1951).
The majority of the Hebrew texts are dated to the
eighteenth or nineteenth century and consist primarily of Esther and Torah
scrolls. Most of theses would appear to have originated in Italy, as many
are written in an Italian quadrate script. In addition, the collection
includes a number of illuminated manuscripts including a sixteenth century
Italian Hebrew Bible (CBL Heb 772), a thirteenth-century Hebrew Yemenite
Pentateuch bound together with a copy of Tijan's Grammatical Introduction to
the Bible (CBL Heb 761) and a Hebrew cabalistic and astronomical codex from
Spain (CBL Heb 762) dating to c. 1762.
The collection also includes a number of Samaritan texts
including two important Pentateuchs (CBL Heb 751 and Heb 752), or the Five
Books of Moses, the only book Samaritans share with the Jewish faith. The
Samaritan text is written in a variant of the Old Hebrew alphabet, related to
but distinct from the Hebrew alphabet used in Judaic texts.
3.g/ Slavonic
Chester Beatty had extensive business interests in pre-
and post-Revolutionary Russia. He visited his mines there several times prior
to 1917 and was one of the first Western businessmen to engage with Stalin. He
reopened mines in Serbia that had not been worked since Roman times, for which
he was honoured by King Alexander of Yugoslavia.
Beatty's engagement with Slavonic culture did not
manifest itself in large additions to his collection but he acquired a number
of fine examples of Slavonic texts, some beautifully illuminated.
3.h/ Syriac
The present-day area of southeast Turkey, Syria and parts
of Iraq were once predominantly Christian. The language spoken was Syriac until
replaced by Arabic in the thirteenth century. Important centres for book
production were established in these areas and fine illuminated manuscripts
were created by and for the various churches. Aspects of early Syriac book
design and illumination influenced other medieval Christian decorated
manuscripts.
The collection includes several early evangelaries and
choir books, as well as an illuminated copy of the Harclean version of the
Gospel Book, written in Syriac and dating from the 12th century (CBL Syc
703). The most important text is Ephraem’s Commentary on the
Diatessaron of Tatian (CBL Syc 709), c. AD 490-510. Although parts of the
Diatessaron, a harmony of the four Gospels, is preserved in later translations,
the Chester Beatty manuscript is the earliest copy known of this text and the
only one in the language in which it was originally written. It is a unique
document in the history of Christianity for which Chester Beatty received a
special papal blessing from Pope Pius XII in 1959. The Trustees of the Library
have since made two additional acquisitions of leaves relating to this codex.
4/ Prints &
Drawings
Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a
print cabinet was an essential element of a gentleman's library. This usually
consisted of portfolios of prints or print albums arranged either by subject
matter or, more often, by artist or engraver.
The European print collection formed by Chester Beatty is
in this tradition. He started to collect prints around 1910 and he was
particularly interested in the works of northern European artists, especially
the engravings and woodcuts of Albrecht Dürer and the group of engravers known
as the 'Little Masters' (e.g. Heinrich Aldegrever and George Pencz).
The collection includes examples of work by artists such
as Wierix, Leyden, Hollar, Collaert, Piranesi, Goya, and Frye, as well as print
series, like the satirical prints of the French Revolution and prints from both
the nineteenth and twentieth century editions of the French fashion
magazine Journal des Dames et des Modes.
Beatty's collection grew to over 26,000 prints,
approximately 4,000 of which are individual sheets with the remainder mounted
in albums. This figure does not include the hundreds of prints in the Rare
Books Collection.
The collection of drawings is relatively small as Chester
Beatty donated most of this collection to the National Gallery of Ireland.
THE ISLAMIC COLLECTIONS
The Islamic Collections are amongst the finest in existence
and are internationally renowned for the overall high quality and scope of the
material.
The manuscripts that comprise the collections range in
date from the eighth century to the early years of the twentieth century.
They derive primarily - though not exclusively - from the
Arab world, Iran, Turkey and India, and include some of the greatest documents
of Islamic art and culture.
Together they illustrate in exquisite form and detail the
history and development of all aspects of the Islamic book: calligraphy,
illumination, miniature painting and bookbinding.
The Islamic Collections consist of five sub collections.
[Also: Islamic Seals online database of seal impressions
found in the 2600 manuscripts of its Islamic Collections.]
1/ Arabic
Most of the manuscripts of the Qur'an, Persian, Indian
and Turkish Collections have exquisite calligraphy and are magnificently
illustrated and illuminated. In contrast to these manuscripts, however, are the
approximately 2,650 manuscripts of the Arabic Collection, few of which contain
any decoration at all.
These were collected by Chester Beatty for their texts,
many of which are unique and preserved only in the Chester Beatty Library.
They embrace a vast range of topics: religion,
jurisprudence, history, geography, medicine, astronomy, mathematics and
linguistics to name but a few, as well as many early translations into Arabic
of the works of the ancient Greeks.
2/ Qur’an
The Qur'an Collection includes more than 260 Qur'ans and
Qur'an fragments and is one of the most important collections of Qur'ans
outside the Middle East.
The gem of the collection - and indeed one of the most
treasured objects of the entire library - is the splendid Qur'an copied in
Baghdad in the year 1001 by Ibn al-Bawwab, one of the three greatest medieval
Islamic calligraphers.
3/ Persian
The Persian Collection consists mainly of copies of the
works of the great Persian poets: Firdawsi, Nizami, Sa'di, Hafiz and Jami, to
name but a few. Highlights of the approximately 330 manuscripts that make up the
collection include illustrated folios from the so-called Great Mongol (Demotte)
Shahnama, or Book of Kings, of about 1335, and a fragmentary copy of this same
text made in the late sixteenth century for the Safavid ruler, Shah 'Abbas the
Great.
One of the most beautiful and most extensively
illuminated manuscripts in the Library is a copy of the Gulistan of Sa'idi,
made in the 1420s for Baysunghur, one of history's greatest patrons of the book
and a prince of the Timurid dynasty that ruled much of Iran throughout the
fifteenth century.
4/ Turkish
The Turkish Collection consists of just over 160
manuscripts, making it the smallest of the Islamic collections. Nevertheless,
it too is extremely important.
Patronage of the arts, including the arts of the book, on
behalf of the Ottoman sultans of Turkey peaked in the sixteenth century. The
Turkish Collection includes some of the greatest manuscripts produced in this
period, such as a rare, illustrated volume of The Life of the Prophet Muhammad
and an illustrated History of Suleyman the Magnificent.
5/ Mughal-era Indian
The Library's Mughal-era Indian Collection comprises both
illustrated manuscripts and a breathtaking array of almost 1,000 individual
paintings, produced in India during the period of Mughal rule for Islamic,
Hindu and also European patrons.
The collection is of especial renown and encompasses some
of the finest examples of painting produced under the guidance of the emperors
Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jahan. Prominent amongst these are the illustrated
folios from the Akbarnama, or History of Akbar, and the numerous portraits of
the emperors themselves.
THE EAST ASIAN COLLECTIONS
The East Asian collections represent cultures all across
the Far East, including parts of Central, East, South and South-East Asia -
from non-Islamic India in the south-west to Japan in the north-east, and from
Mongolia in the north-west to Sumatra in the south-east.
Within the context of the Library's collection as a
whole, the East Asian Collection is relatively small.
Parts of it, such as most of the Chinese manuscripts and
works of art were bought as furnishings or decorative pieces while Chester
Beatty was still a novice collector, on a trip he made to China and Japan in
1917-18.
Some of the categories in which Beatty collected would
have been considered mere oriental curiosities - until recently. Now, areas
such as the Japanese picture-books from Nara (Nara e-hon) are much prized in
Japan, and are a focus of international scholarly exchange.
1/ China
The decorative arts of China date mostly from the Qing
dynasty (1644-1911) and include almost 950 snuff bottles of all kinds, a rare
group of seventeen jade books, most of them made for the Qing Qianlong Emperor
(r. 1736-95) and textiles and robes including seven dragon robes.
There are also a number of books - including three
volumes of the sixteenth-century recension of the Great Encyclopaedia of the
Yongle Era (Yongle dadian, 1406) - some 250 painted scrolls and albums and
woodblock prints and engravings.
The collection of prints and engravings includes several sets designed for the Qianlong Emperor by his European Jesuit court artists. As many of these pictures were, in fact, engraved and printed in Paris, they are shared with the Library's Western Collection.
The collection of prints and engravings includes several sets designed for the Qianlong Emperor by his European Jesuit court artists. As many of these pictures were, in fact, engraved and printed in Paris, they are shared with the Library's Western Collection.
The Qianlong Emperor's jade books are considered
singular examples within Chinese art history.
2/ Japan
From Japan's decorative arts, which mostly date to the
Edo period (about 1600-1868), there are tsuba (sword-guards), netsuke (toggles)
and inrō (boxes), as well as portable shrines and other lacquer boxes and
containers and over 120 painted scrolls and manuscripts, including many Nara
e-hon and sutras.
The Japanese woodblock prints include some 450 ukiyo-e
prints, as well as 350 privately produced surimono prints, the latter acquired
in 1954 from the Dr M. Cooper collection and built up by Jack Hillier between
then and about 1964.
3/ Tibet, Mongolia, South and South-East Asia
The Tibetan and Mongolian collections, which are mainly
Buddhist, include Tibetan Buddhist sacred texts, ritual objects and sixty-seven
thangkas, and a small amount of Mongolian religious literature.
The South and South-East Asian collections comprise
mainly Buddhist sacred manuscripts, including twenty Thai folding books telling
the story of the monk Phra Malai, an extensive set of Burmese ordinations texts
(kammavaca), Burmese parabaik folding books of Buddhist scenes, Jain, Hindu,
Sikh and Buddhist manuscripts from the area of India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, and
bark divination books from the Batak people of Sumatra.
Photos of items from visit in June 2017:
http://picturesofdubhlinn.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-chester-beatty-library-collections.html
http://picturesofdubhlinn.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-chester-beatty-library-collections.html
