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History and Content
History of the collection
The collection was bought in Berlin in the 1930's from the coptologist Carl Schmidt, who was also a dealer in antiquities. Some of the envelopes containing the papyri have the signature 'Nahm', which might indicate that Carl Schmidt in turn bought the papyri from the antique dealer Maurice Nahman, active in Cairo and Paris.
Content
In terms of chronology, geography and typology, the collection is not uniform. The main part consists of documentary papyri, but there are also literary texts. Several centuries separate the oldest papyri from the youngest, and they come from a variety of places in Egypt. Some are complete, others are very fragmentary; some are in good condition, others are not. They also differ much as far as the scripts are concerned. There are no rolls in the collection, only sheets that once have been parts of rolls as well as fragments from single sheets.
Among the papyri are e.g. a short extract of a song from Homer's Iliad, a fragment of a text by the historiographer Thucydides, parts of an astronomic calendar, several texts related to the administration of the temple in the village of Bakchias (today's Kom Umm-el-Atl), receipts, leases and letters.
