Meretseger Books

The Wilbour papyrus. Vol. I: Plates

GARDINER Alan Henderson

Item #M0622b

Extremely rare. Published for The Brooklyn Museum at The Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1941. First edition. Elephant folio with 6 pages of text and 72 double leaves (Plates) numbered 1a to 73a. Contemporary olive cloth, with gold lettering to spine. A fine copy. This is the first volume of a series of four dealing with the Wilbour papyrus: it contains the complete facsimile plates, with facing hieroglyphic transliteration. Written in a very cursive hieratic, the main part of the Wilbour Papyrus contains an account of measurements and assessments of land made over a period of about 23 days in the fourth year of Ramses V, about 1150 B.C. In 1893 egyptologist Charles Edwin Wilbour bought the papyrus from a farmer when he visited the island of Elephantine near Aswan, Egypt. After Charles died, his wife donated the papyrus to the Brooklyn Museum. It was translated by Alan Gardiner. Most of the first section of the papyrus was lost due to decomposition. The name of the ruling king at the time was never mentioned but it is believed it was written during the time of Ramses V. Broken up into two parts, text A and text B, the document is roughly 33 ft in length, contains 127 columns and over 5,200 lines. It has information on about 95 miles of land and is written by more than one scribe. Although it is not the largest papyrus ever found, it is the largest in its class. It also contains more information than other papyri which succeed it in size. It is the largest non-funerary papyrus known to ancient Egypt. Language: English. Relevant subjects: Egypt: New Kingdom, Language, Texts & Writing.

Language: English.

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