British MuseumThe British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. The British Museum was the first public national museum to cover all fields of knowledge. In 2022 the museum received 4,097,253 visitors, an increase of 209 per cent from 2021. It ranked third in the list of most-visited art museums in the world.
ManuscriptA manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has come to be understood to further include any written, typed, or word-processed copy of an author's work, as distinguished from the rendition as a printed version of the same. Before the arrival of prints, all documents and books were manuscripts.
Ptolemaic KingdomThe Ptolemaic Kingdom (ˌtɒlɪˈmeɪ.ɪk; Ptolemaïkḕ basileía) or Ptolemaic Empire was an Ancient Greek state based in Egypt during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 305 BC by Ptolemy I Soter, a companion of Alexander the Great, and ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty until the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC. Reigning for nearly three centuries, the Ptolemies were the longest and final dynasty of ancient Egypt heralding a distinctly new era for religious syncretism and the blending of a new Greco-Egyptian culture.
Great Pyramid of GizaThe Great Pyramid of Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid and served as the tomb of pharaoh Khufu, who ruled during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom. Built in the early 26th century BC, over a period of about 27 years, the pyramid is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and the only wonder that has remained largely intact. It is the most famous monument of the Giza pyramid complex, which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Memphis and its Necropolis".
Egyptian hieroglyphsEgyptian hieroglyphs (ˈhaɪrəˌɡlɪfs, ˈhaɪroʊˌɡlɪfs) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters. Cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts were derived from hieroglyphic writing, as was the Proto-Sinaitic script that later evolved into the Phoenician alphabet.
VellumVellum is prepared animal skin or membrane, typically used as writing material. It is distinguished from parchment when it is made from calfskin, rather than that made from other animals, or having a higher quality when it is not. Vellum is prepared for writing and printing on and used for single pages, scrolls, codices, or books. Modern scholars and experts use the general and potentially-confusing term "membrane" more often. It may be very hard to determine the animal species involved (let alone its age) without going to a laboratory depending on the way of making the paper.
OxyrhynchusOxyrhynchus, (ɒksɪˈrɪŋkəs ; Oxýrrhynkhos, okˈsyr̥r̥yŋkhos; Pr-mdjd; Pemdje) also known by its modern name Al-Bahnasa (el-Bahnasa), is a city in Middle Egypt located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo in Minya Governorate. It is also an important archaeological site. Since the late 19th century, the area around Oxyrhynchus has been excavated almost continually, yielding an enormous collection of papyrus texts dating from the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Roman Egypt.
HieraticHieratic (haɪəˈrætɪk; hieratiká) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BC until the rise of Demotic in the mid-first millennium BC. It was primarily written in ink with a reed pen on papyrus. In the second century, the term hieratic was used for the first time by the Greek scholar Clement of Alexandria to describe this Ancient Egyptian writing system.
Oxyrhynchus PapyriThe Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (, modern el-Bahnasa). The manuscripts date from the time of the Ptolemaic (3rd century BC) and Roman periods of Egyptian history (from 32 BC to the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640 AD). Only an estimated 10% are literary in nature.
OstraconAn ostracon (Greek: ὄστρακον ostrakon, plural ὄστρακα ostraka) is a piece of pottery, usually broken off from a vase or other earthenware vessel. In an archaeological or epigraphical context, ostraca refer to sherds or even small pieces of stone that have writing scratched into them. Usually these are considered to have been broken off before the writing was added; ancient people used the cheap, plentiful and durable broken pieces of pottery around them as a convenient medium to write on for a wide variety of purposes, mostly very short inscriptions, but in some cases very long.