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AB - Abstract The following article examines the Revd Greville John Chester’s activities in the Egyptian antiquities trade from 1889 to 1892, specifically his involvement in discovering and distributing Hebrew manuscripts from the now famous Cairo Genizah. Based on letters written by Chester to the Bodleian Librarian, E.W.B. Nicholson, as well as other supporting documentary evidence, this investigation provides insights into the early history of the Cairo Genizah manuscripts before Solomon Schechter’s celebrated ‘discovery’ of them in 1896/97. Overall, this article shows that the provenance story of ‘the Cairo Genizah’ is multi-faceted and needs to be subjected to much greater scrutiny. In the annals of Egyptology, the clergyman and collector Revd Greville John Chester (1830–1892) is remembered chiefly as a prodigious and discerning supplier of archaeological artefacts to the British Museum and other major institutions.1 The British Museum’s online database of collections indicates that 1,207 of its objects were donated by Chester and it identifies another 6,887 objects that were purchased from him.2 Chester also furnished the recipients of his donations and sales with helpful provenance information.3 In recent times, Chester’s name has been invoked frequently in relation to the eponymous ‘Greville Chester Great Toe’, an artificial cartonnage toe from around 600 bc, one of the ‘earliest working prostheses to have been identified from the ancient world’.4 Chester discovered the prosthetic toe in Egypt and sold it to the British Museum in 1881. Among the other institutions he supplied, the Ashmolean Museum benefited most prolifically from his generous and diligent determination to build up Oxford’s archaeological collections, an ambition that was itself born out of a strong devotion to his Alma Mater. And Chester’s outspoken criticisms of the way Oxford University was neglecting its collections, at the time spread randomly across multiple locations, helped pave the way towards the later construction of a single dedicated museum building for the antiquities.5 The Bodleian Library likewise gained from Chester’s Oxonian partialities with large gifts of coins from Europe, most notably from medieval Italy and the Levant,6 and with extensive collections of papyri, particularly Greek fragments from the fifth and sixth centuries ad discovered in Arsinoë in the Fayum.7 With regard to Orientalia,8 Chester is often credited with having supplied the earliest manuscripts from the Cairo Genizah to Europe. A ‘genizah’ is a temporary storage place for worn out or defunct sacred Hebrew scrolls and books; in the case of the ‘Cairo Genizah’, all manner of written documents are believed to have been stored for many centuries in the Ben Ezra Synagogue (hereafter bes) in Old Cairo. After the bes manuscripts came to light in the late nineteenth century, they – and other similar and sometimes matching manuscripts discovered over the course of several decades – were distributed by scholars, collectors and dealers to libraries and institutions around the world and some were retained in private collections. The label the ‘Cairo Genizah’ was applied ex post facto to all these various collections, presently calculated at over 325,000 fragments.9 But the assumption of an original single source for every piece means that the specifics of how each ‘Cairo Genizah’ collection was assembled and acquired has been under-investigated. Even today, over 120 years later, the situation is hardly better than that described by Richard Gottheil and William H. Worrell in 1927: ‘The Genizah and its contents have had a long history which unfortunately cannot yet be written because of the incompleteness and hear-say character of the evidence.’10 Certainly, the details of how Chester discovered such manuscripts and shipped them to the Bodleian between 1889 and 1892 have remained little known. When in the early 1890s, the above-mentioned American Semitics scholar, Richard Gottheil observed ‘portions of books’ on the desk of Adolf Neubauer, the Bodleian sub-librarian and Reader in Rabbinics,11 he was informed that they had come from the East but at the same time he was told that ‘professional discretion’ precluded Neubauer from disclosing their exact source.12 And as we shall see from the letters below, Chester himself swore the Bodleian to secrecy as to his activities. When the Bodleian finally publicly acknowledged Chester’s contribution in the Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library (1906), it was simply stated that: ‘The contents of the Geniza were first brought to notice by the Rev. Greville J. Chester, the well-known collector, who, when in Cairo in 1890, bought some leaves for the Bodleian Library.’13 At any rate, by the summer of 1897, all earlier manuscript discoveries would become overshadowed by Solomon Schechter’s famous exploits in Cairo, which brought the Ben Ezra Synagogue and its genizah to world attention.14 In his celebrated account of the bes genizah for The Times (3 August 1897), Schechter observed that: . . . one can hardly realise the confusion in such a real old [emphasis mine] Genizah until one has seen it. It is a battlefield of books, a battle in which the literary productions of many centuries had their share, and their disjecta membra are now strewn over its area. Some of the belligerents have perished outright, and are literally ground to dust in the terrible struggle for space, whilst others, as if overtaken by a general crush, are squeezed into big unshapely lumps, which even with the aid of chemical appliances can no longer be separated without serious damage to their constituents. As to the type of material, Schechter expressed frustration at the high levels of printed matter: ‘the amount of the printed fragments is very large, constituting as they do nearly all the contributions to the Genizah of the last 400 years. Most of my time in Cairo was spent getting rid of these parvenus.’ Yet, the ‘real old’ genizah chamber which Schechter reported seeing in 1897 was in fact a nineteenth-century reconstruction, the crumbling medieval edifice of the bes having been subjected to a dramatic restoration project between 1889 and 1892. When Chester first encountered the bes genizah manuscripts in December 1889, many of them were still situated in a room within the medieval structure which was slowly being dismantled. The contents of the room included manuscripts, leather scrolls, and early printed works. Chester described encountering dust and dirt, but the overall impression of what he witnessed is far less messy and chaotic than the scene recounted by Schechter seven years later. After Chester returned to Egypt in November 1890, someone sent him batches of medieval Hebrew manuscripts – most likely from the same source – until his last visit in 1892, the same year in which the Ben Ezra Synagogue restoration was completed and the building was back in use. The following article will examine in detail Chester’s communications to the Bodleian Librarian, E.W.B. Nicholson15 during this key period between 1889 and 1892, as well as other supporting records, in an attempt to shed light on the early provenance, transfer, and reception of genizah materials. Fortunately, the Bodleian Library kept good records of its transactions and related correspondence. Chester’s letters from this period are all archived under one record: Bodleian Library Records e. 479, which is designated as ‘Correspondence relating to the purchase of Hebrew manuscripts, papyri, etc. from the Rev G. J. Chester, 1889–1892.’16 This archive contains forty-four letters and postcards: twenty-six were sent from Egypt; nine of the missives were sent from various locations around Britain, and five were from Chester’s travels in Naples and Rome. Chester sent a total of forty-nine packages and parcels, all but two of which contained Hebrew manuscripts. Other consignments, sent in parcels, but also delivered by hand, included: coins; Samaritan, Greek and Armenian manuscripts; Cufic and Coptic papyri; Syriac books; a wooden tablet; Turkish, Coptic and Arabic books. The first document in the archive is a postcard from London which begins in medias res with the words ‘Yes, I am satisfied with the price you name’, suggesting that it formed part of a continuing conversation, either spoken or in writing. The postcard is marked July 1889 and informs the recipient, in this case Nicholson of the Bodleian Library, that the writer hopes to bring or send shortly ‘2 nice little coins of Pisa’. Chester ends his note with some personal information: ‘Just now I am in great anxiety from the dangerous illness of my two sisters’. He signs himself ‘In haste, Yrs, GJC.’ Although brief, this opening note gives us an immediate insight into Chester’s main collecting interest (coins), his direction of travel (Italy to London) and his method of conducting transactions, i.e., allowing his chosen institution (in this case the Bodleian) to name the price. The fact that this note combines business with personal information – as do many of the following letters – reveals that the writer and addressee enjoyed a closer relationship than simply dealer and client.17 Five months later, as he journeyed back to the Middle East, Chester wrote to Nicholson from Beirut to offer Samaritan manuscripts for sale. The journey to Egypt included a first stop at the port of Jaffa in Palestine, followed by travel northwards to Beirut in the Lebanon; from there he headed south into Egypt via Jerusalem. His dispatches also confirm the cities in which the main antiquities dealers resided and where the main points of Oriental collecting interest lay. Chester reported to Nicholson that he had sent off in three registered book packets ‘a quantity of fragments of Samaritan mss on paper & parchment’, which he obtained in Jaffa and ‘which are stated to have been found recently in a cave on Mount Gerazim [sic]’. ‘Some of them appear to me to be very ancient, & a few leaves are in larger characters than the ones I have seen before.’ The Bodleian was given first refusal, and Nicholson was asked to appraise them.18 Such manuscripts were keenly sought by collectors as they provided early evidence of the biblical text and these particular copies purportedly came from Nablus, where there had been a Samaritan site for thousands of years.19 For Chester, who could not penetrate the language to assess its contents, it was the parchment leaves as well as the larger written characters that suggested a greater age for these documents. In the same letter, he quickly switched subject to lambast the actions of the Ottoman customs authorities in confiscating ‘without a shadow of the law’ his coin collection. But behind this statement lay his angry feelings towards the Turkish Government for their treatment of the Christians living in the Balkans and towards the British Government – especially Disraeli and his foreign minister, Salisbury – for their handling of the situation.20 Taking a side-swipe at them, he wrote: ‘It is to this depth that Lord Salisbury’s diplomacy has brought the interests of British subjects.’ Finally, he asked Nicholson to convey the news of his coin loss to ‘Oman’ (presumably Sir Charles William Chadwick Oman, a prodigious collector of coins, and later President of the Royal Numismatic Society).21 Fifteen days later, Chester arrived in Cairo and made his way to Fustat (Old Cairo), no doubt to revisit the Coptic churches and the ancient synagogue he had described in great detail during one of his earlier visits in 1872.22 This time, however, his visit to Fustat occurred just as its ancient synagogue was undergoing a dramatic change. In 1888, the building had reached such a state of disrepair that the community decided to restore it by dismantling most or all of the medieval structure and by rebuilding an exact replica in its place.23 When Alfred Butler viewed the results of a similar restoration project carried out on the Hanging Church in the early 1880s, he noted that it ‘has been carried out with more care and truthfulness than seemed possible.’24 But for other visitors to the region, such as Elkan Nathan Adler, the son of England’s Chief Rabbi, who was on a relief mission to the Holy Land in 1888, the news of the bes’s impending restoration was horrifying. In an account written after he had returned to Cairo in 1896, he described the synagogue as ‘changed out of all knowledge’.25 Chester’s reaction upon witnessing the construction site in 1889 was even more severe: he denounced the local community custodians as ‘wretches’ (a response partly driven by his mistaken belief that the old building was a former church).26 Another man on the ground at that time, Count Riamo d’Hulst (c.1850–1916), an officer of the Egypt Exploration Fund (eef) hired to excavate for Fatimid pottery,27 noted the rebuilding of the synagogue and bemoaned the destruction of several Roman sites to clear a space for it.28 December 1889 to March 1890: discoveries and dispatches When Chester arrived on the scene in Fustat on 20 December 1889, he witnessed the bes building being ‘demolished’, as well as some parts of the Roman fortress being dismantled, and he saw a room in the synagogue ‘laid open’ with a floor ‘covered with fragments of mss’. Chester sent two messages to Nicholson that day: the first was a short note on a postcard written with a palpable sense of urgency: Post Restante.29 Cairo. Dec: 20 [1889] I sent some portions of ancient Hebr. mss. Please tell me as soon as possible if you want them, what you think they are worth, & whether you wd like more, as they might be had, but I fear my leaving for the Nile will make a difficulty. Yrs GJC These manuscripts (subsequently bound together at the Bodleian Library and classified as Bodl. ms Heb.d.22) comprised four items with a total of nine folios: six were quarto pages of vellum containing various portions of Talmudic commentaries. The vellum was in good condition with hardly any stains or tears. Three were on paper: one on octavo was a section of Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah; the other a casuistical treatise in an Italian Rabbinic hand. The paper manuscripts were less well preserved than the vellum with greater amounts of staining present and torn edges. Nevertheless, the folios were mostly intact and in their physical appearance quite unlike the thousands of smaller torn and stained fragments that would come to light in Solomon Schechter’s massive Cairo Genizah hoard.30 Chester sent postcards to alert Nicholson whenever he had mailed packages or if he had urgent news to convey; lengthier communications with more private content were sent in letter form.31 Thus, later that same day, Chester composed a letter to Nicholson to explain where the Hebrew manuscripts had been found, under what conditions, and how he had selected them; furthermore, as noted above, he took the opportunity to rail against the restoration project itself. This private account is of great importance to genizah history: Chester not only described the treatment of the historic medieval building and its contents by the locals, he also provided testimony as to the appearance and type of materials that had been buried within its walls. Cairo, 20 December 1889 My dear Mr Nicholson, Since I sent off the Hebr. mss fragments this morning I have obtained a quantity more, amongst wch are one or two complete ones.32 The matter must not be talked about at present, but I tell you they come from the oldest synagogue at Mus′r El Ateekeh – Old Cairo – once the Ch. of S. Michael, given in the Early Middle Ages by an Arab Sultan to the Jews. These wretches have demolished the most curious & interesting old building & are building a new one on the same site, to provide materials for wch they are pulling down a splendid Bastion tower of the Old Roman fortress of Babylon. A room has been laid open whose floor is literally covered with fragments of mss & Early printed Hebr. books & mss of leather. From these I selected what I have got, & thought I bought the best I could find[.] [T]here are doubtless numbers of others worth having, I only fear the lot will be destroyed or perhaps buried, & I could not get the people to say what will be done with them. Some fragments of a book I got seems to me to be Cabalistic. As I go on board my dahabeyeh33 tomorrow I cannot send off any more, but when I have time, I will sort the mss, clean out the filth, try to straighten them out, & send them to you by Book Post from time to time.34 I will only ask for you to make a list of the number I sent. I was almost suffocated with dust & devoured by fleas when making my selections. If you wish to write soon, my inst.35 Chester G. J Poste Restante Asiout36 Upper Egypt I suppose most of the bits are earlier than ad 1400 & some much more so? Yours sincerely, Greville J. Chester The room that had been ‘laid open’ was most likely the previously sealed medieval genizah chamber. However, from Chester’s description of a floor covered with manuscripts, it sounds less full than the genizah chamber witnessed and described twenty-nine years earlier in 1860 by Jacob Sapir (who additionally noted that it was filled with roof debris)37 and not as full or as messy as the chamber Schechter encountered in 1897. Most likely the locals had already begun to remove materials from the room, and this in-progress removal may have added to Chester’s concern for the fate of the manuscripts. Chester also remarked upon the presence of ‘Early printed Hebr. Books’ (a contrast to Schechter’s 400 years of printed texts), which may help scholars reconstruct the period when the original medieval genizah chamber was in full use. Other key statements in Chester’s letter, reveal that in spite of the dust and fleas, he was able to ‘select’ materials and buy ‘the best’ he could find. This encounter with the bes genizah chamber differs greatly from Schechter’s experience seven years later when he was faced with a chamber full of materials in complete disarray, a ‘battlefield of books’, which took weeks to sort through. Chester’s selection was strictly based on his knowledge of material types, calligraphic clues and physical appearance and not on content. Furthermore, his time to search would have been limited to the hours between the mailing of his postcard at some point during the morning of 20 December 1889 and the mailing of his follow-up letter sent that same day. Thus, in spite of having a limited time to search and lacking Schechter’s intimate knowledge of Hebrew texts, the fact that Chester still managed to select items of great value to the Bodleian suggests that the pile from which he had to choose was of a different stock and in a greatly different state to the badly damaged, fragmentary papers of varying content and age retrieved by later collectors. Chester also mentioned that there were ‘mss Books’ among the piles, which may mean that some of the original contents of the chamber were subsequently torn up to create individual leaves or smaller sections (Schechter’s disjecta membra).38 As an afterthought, Chester added a note questioning the age of the manuscripts: ‘I suppose most of the bits are earlier than ad 1400 & some much more so?’ In fact, even though he could not read the texts, Chester supposed quite accurately with regard to the age of his Hebrew manuscripts: of the several hundred items he retrieved that day from the bes, none of the dated documents are later than the fourteenth century,39 and most of the undated manuscripts appear to be no later than the fifteenth century. Chester’s sense of urgency about the fate of the manuscripts was compounded by the fact that he could obtain no information on what the community planned to do with the materials (burial or destruction appear to have been the only two options on offer at that point) and he was helpless to act, being about to set off for his journey up the Nile. Nevertheless, it seems likely that the great interest he paid to these materials and his generous payments may have gone some way in inducing the synagogue authorities to think twice about how to deal with the manuscripts. In the introduction to the catalogue of genizah fragments in the Charles Lang Freer collection, the editors, based on information from an anonymous source, speculated that ‘Before the repairs, the [manuscripts’] contents and their whereabouts were well known, but not their value. That fact appeared to the Synagogue authorities only after they had seen the beadle sell to the dealers.’40 Moreover, this anonymous source enables us to know what happened after Chester had visited the half-demolished room: ‘The workmen on tearing down the roof dumped all the contents of this attic into the court-yard, and there the mss were lying for several weeks in the open. During these weeks many dealers could obtain bundles of leaves for nominal sums. They later sold these bundles at good prices to several tourists and libraries.’ 41 It was probably during this period that the Russian Archimandrite, Antonin Kapustin acquired his genizah collection (National Library of Russia, mss Yevr.iii.a-b). Antonin resided in Jerusalem where he was the leader of the Ecclesiastical Mission from 1865 to 1894. In addition to his tireless work developing Church land and building schools, he was deeply engaged in archaeology and took great interest in Christian history and antiquities.42 Exactly how or when he acquired his genizah manuscripts and when or how they were transferred to St Petersburg remains unknown. What is noticeable, however, is how similar Antonin’s collection appears to the one acquired by Chester in terms of state of preservation, type and content of material. Indeed, the condition of the Antonin collection led scholars to speculate that ‘being among the first on the scene, [Antonin] was able to acquire a choice selection of the material.’43 The following day, Chester boarded a Nile houseboat (the humorously named ‘Rudder Grange’),44 taking with him several hundred manuscripts from the bes. Two days later, on 23 December 1889, he stopped en route to mail four packages of Hebrew manuscripts to the Bodleian.45 The accompanying postcard also mentioned his Oxford friend and fellow collector, the Assyriologist, Archibald Henry Sayce, who spent every winter on board a dahabiah while he travelled to various archaeological sites and inspected items on the antiquities market.46 Even though Sayce would be involved many years afterwards in shipping genizah manuscripts to the Bodleian, it seems unlikely that Chester shared details of his bes discovery with him for it would take Sayce (assisted by the Count d’Hulst) until March 1895 to discover where similar manuscripts were being hidden within the newly built bes. Indeed, such was the secret that d’Hulst later claimed: ‘I know from the Revd. Greville Chester himself that he had none of the Old Cairo mss’.47 At this point, Chester’s hasty note from 23 December, ‘On the Nile above Cairo’, simply captured the excitement of their joint collecting ventures: ‘I sent today Registered48 4 more packages of Hebr mss & a bit of Cufic.49 Let me hear of a number. Have more to send. Sayce has arrived. We have wind of Arab ms, & so can’t go on. GJC.’ Nicholson sent a message confirming the price he was willing to pay for the Samaritan manuscripts but this did not reach Chester until 4 January 1890. Writing back on 5 January, Chester disclosed that the amount offered would cause him to lose money on the transaction.50 ‘Rudder Grange’, On the Nile, near Abou Teeg; 5 January 1890 My dear Mr. Nicholson, My thanks for your note of Dec: 23rd, received yesterday at Asiout. You can keep the Samaritan mss at the price you name, though I am sorry to say I gave more for them. Please <£4>51 pay the £3 in to my account with Hermes, Farquhar & Co. 16 St James’s Street, SW, when convenient. I sent off yesterday the three last packets of Hebr. mss from Siout Registered. I sent a parcel from Minieh Dec. 31st, & a Book parcel on the same day wch accidentally was not registered. I shall be glad to hear what you think of them. The coins I was robbed of I was importing not exported [sic], and it was simply an act of high-handed violence now common in the Turkish Empire, since the British Government suffers them to do so with impunity. Nothing will be got back. I am better, but have been very ill with gout in the tongue. Yours sincerely Greville J. Chester You don’t mention a small Armenian ms I sent to the bl as a present from Smyrna by Book Post on November 27th I send you the Postal Receipts for the various packets I have sent you. Chester’s letters reveal how he dispatched these consignments of materials in separate packages from different locations in order not to draw attention to his activities. It would have been more difficult for the customs authorities to keep track of or to pay attention to small packages being sent sporadically from different cities and by different postal methods: registered, book parcel or book post. And it should be remembered that at the same time he was supplying the Bodleian with books, manuscripts, papyri, tablets and coins, he was also busy furnishing the British Museum and other museums with many important archaeological artefacts.52 In this same letter of 5 January, Chester added that he was sending along ‘the three last packets of Hebr. mss.’ This was the last of the pieces he had retrieved directly from the bes sixteen days earlier on 20 December 1889. The Bodleian later recorded that ‘Of the Hebrew mss. no fewer than 38 are volumes of fragments from the ruins of an ancient synagogue.’53 A close study of the Bodleian catalogue of Hebrew manuscripts (1906) shows that the materials sent by Chester in 1889 and in early 1890 numbered 212 Hebrew manuscripts (1,200 folios): 64 per cent of these were on vellum; 70 per cent were multi-folio pieces, and only 21 per cent were labelled as ‘injured’. In the provenance notes for each volume, the manuscripts are described as having been ‘Bought through the Rev. G. J. Chester, 1890 (from the Genizah)’. Materials sent after he returned to Cairo for the next season, November 1890-March 1891, were subsequently catalogued as purchases from ‘1890–1891’ or as purchases from ‘1891 (from the Genizah)’. These amounted to 394 manuscript fragments (a total of 2,005 folios). During the third season, packages sent between November 1891 and March 1892 were classified as ‘Bought through the Rev. G. J. Chester, 1892 (from the Genizah).’ These last batches amounted to 371 manuscript fragments (1,632 folios). Moreover, the ratio between the number of manuscripts and the number of leaves decreased each year (from 1:6 in 1889–90 to 1:4 in 1891–92); put another way, the items were becoming more fragmentary and less manuscript-like over time. As for the first consignments he sent between December 1889 and January 1890, the Bodleian’s purchase ledger confirms that Chester received a payment of £19 1s. 6d. for them on 1 March 1890 just as he was beginning his annual ritual of leaving Egypt for England, travelling via Italy. Nonetheless, back in January 1890, Chester expressed disappointment at the prices offered for his manuscripts. The payment worked out to an average of approximately 1s. 10d. for each manuscript (that is, around £7 a manuscript in today’s money).54 Today, similar manuscript fragments would fetch prices in the region of £3,000 a manuscript, particularly given the famous provenance attributed to them.55 Chester also expressed his anxieties concerning the discovery of his exports, cautioning Nicholson not to write about them ‘openly on a post card’. ‘Rudder Grange’, Luxor; 18 January 1890 My dear Mr. Nicholson, Many thanks for answering so promptly. I am disappointed to find that the mss are are [sic] of so little value, but you can keep them at the price fixed by Dr. Neubauer. In future, however, as I had thought you were aware, I will beg you not to speak of the reception of the mssopenly on a post card as it might tend to their being watched for & confiscated in the post! It would not be legal to do so probably, but that would make no difference with the powers that be.56 When the mss have all arrived & have been sorted, please pay the price to my acct with Herries, Farquhar C/o,57 16 St Francis Street SW I bought a very fragmentary Egyptian Papyrus yesterday – it is probably part of a ritual, but I thought some of the vignettes looked unusual. I am, as always, Sincerely Yours, Greville J. Chester E. B. Nicholson Esq Despite the lower than hoped-for purchase price, suggesting that the Bodleian did not rate the value of these manuscripts very highly, it appears that Neubauer kept all of them. The only evidence that Neubauer rejected and re-sold genizah manuscripts occurs much later in connection with the collection sent to him in 1895–6 by Sayce and the Count d’Hulst.58 Certainly, the Annual Report of the Bodleian Curators (published in May 1891) described Chester’s manuscripts in glowing terms: Among the rarest of the items obtained from this curious source are some fragments of the Babylonian Talmud written in 1123 (ms. Heb.b.1) and thus older than any similar ms yet known; an almost complete prayerbook according to the Egyptian rite (ms. Heb.g.2), of which no other copy is known; many other unknown liturgical fragments, among them some by the celebrated Saadyah Gaon (mss. Heb.e.25, f.20); and fragments of unknown Arabic translations and commentaries, including one on Esther by Saadyah Gaon (ms. Heb.f.19). The cost of the mss. obtained from this quarter was £19 1s 6d.59 Chester’s journey continued south of Luxor at least to Gebel el-Silsila where he examined some Greek inscriptions with Sayce.60 A few weeks later, he was heading back up the Nile, stopping at Girgeh, north of Luxor.61 On 11 February he sent a postcard from ‘Rudder Grange’ to re-affirm to Nicholson that he should ‘Keep the mss at the price you fix’ and to remind him that his Armenian manuscript gift from Smyrna had still not been acknowledged. By 18 February, ‘Rudder Grange’ was moored near Manfulut, a city 230 miles south of Cairo, and writing in ‘utmost haste’ Chester offered Nicholson two ‘bilingual papyri – Cufic and Coptic’, and noted that ‘Sayce has seen them & they are very rare & curious’. After arriving at Naples in March 1890, Chester wrote to Nicholson about a mistake in the sum sent to his bank and that he had not received the full amount promised. The tone of his letters remained polite even though he had assiduously sent parcel after parcel of manuscripts, accepted lower prices, and waited patiently for payment. Notwithstanding, he continued in an enthusiastic vein to offer additional items for sale, including ‘two bilingual Papyri, Cufic and Coptic (or Greek), some other fragments of papyri, a beautifully written Syriac book, & two great Hebrew Vols.’ Writing from Rome five days later on 31 March, Chester confirmed receiving his payment for the Hebrew manuscripts and asked again about the papyri. In addition, he mentioned having several coins to donate to the Bodleian collection and proposed to offer the Library a ‘Wooden Tablet smeared with wax on which are portions of Greek writing.’62 He was transporting two specimens with him which, he claimed, ‘are very rare, as you can imagine’. Chester’s luggage, had it been opened, would certainly have generated great interest at the customs house.63 Thus, while he waited patiently for lower-than-expected payments, he continued to collect items for donation. These eventual gifts, and others, were well received by the Bodleian, as recorded in a subsequent library report: The Rev. Greville J. Chester B.A., gave 2 very singular incised wooden tablets, from Egypt; some of the letters are apparently Coptic . . . but others have hitherto baffled identification, while some known Coptic letters seem to be altogether absent. Mr. Chester also gave two ancient reed-pens found at Ekhmim, and these, the first specimens of such articles acquired by the library, are exhibited in the glass cases. The same donor presented a collection of letters of Italian princes between 1489 and 1782 (ms. Ital. c. 2).64 November 1890 to April 1891: supply and demand Chester continued to write to Nicholson during the months of May and June, mostly on the subject of the Coptic papyri originally intended for the British Museum65 and once on the matter of a personal upset suffered by Nicholson (12 May 1890).66 Another short note sent from Buxton in July provided a provenance for the wooden tablet: ‘I believe your Tablet came from Sakkâra, where there is a Greek and Roman cemetery & the other came from the Fayoum.’ In the course of the remaining summer months and early autumn there was a hiatus in the correspondence, but Chester spent some time in Oxford cataloguing a collection of Hittite and Phoenician seals he had donated to the Ashmolean Museum.67 During this period, he must have met with Nicholson and been introduced to Adolf Neubauer as his notes and letters during the next season often contain greetings for ‘Dr. Neubauer’. Manuscript acquisitions must have been discussed, for when Chester returned to Cairo at some time in mid-November his correspondence picks up immediately where he left off the previous January, with a postcard bearing news that he was dispatching a consignment of Hebrew manuscripts. From this point on, it is clear that Chester was relying on someone else to send him manuscripts. In a later letter he divulges the fact that he was ‘expecting some more Hebrew fragments’ and in another note he informs Nicholson that he had ‘received another instalment of Hebr. mss’. It is not clear how he established this supply, but it seems he was confident about obtaining more, even underlining a recommendation that the Bodleian should take time to look the manuscripts over ‘at leisure’. Poste Restante; Cairo, Egypt; 2[0] November 1890 I send off today 2 small packets of Hebrew mss fragments wch please allow to be looked over at leisure, so then you will see if anything is wanted for the Bod. One piece looks very old & curious. I expect to send more soon, wch please treat in the same way. Professor Lanzone says it will be most useful & important to Egyptologists if the Coptic Magical papyrus were published, as the formulae wd be ancient. Don’t trouble to acknowledge this till you see if more arrive. Yrs GJC Chester’s casual reference to Rodolfo Vittorio Lanzone, the Cairo-born Italian Egyptologist and enthusiastic collector of Arabic manuscripts and Egyptian antiquities, confirms that the two were well known to each other.68 The mention of Lanzone sandwiched between two notes about the Hebrew manuscripts may indicate that he was in some way connected to their acquisition. Certainly, when Chester returned to Cairo looking for such manuscripts, he would have needed to turn to his established connections to help him locate where the materials he had seen in the half-demolished genizah chamber had been stored so that he could purchase them directly from the source, or to find a dealer who could supply them. If we consider what ‘keys’ had been needed by other collector/scholars to gain access to the bes genizah manuscripts, we shall see that having the right connections and the ability to communicate in Arabic or Hebrew were vital. For the Jerusalem-based scholar and collector, Solomon Aaron Wertheimer, who sold genizah manuscripts to the Bodleian and to Cambridge in the 1890s, the easiest way to acquire such manuscripts was to set up an agreement with someone who regularly conducted business in Egypt and who was known to the local community. This partner was Yakob Megas Kasurelka, a Yemenite Jewish trader, and Wertheimer made an agreement with him on 10 Adar 5653 (26 February 1893) to pay him an initial ‘two English pounds’ for the purchase of ‘ancient writings’ and then to split any profits from the sales.69 When the lawyer and bibliophile, Elkan Nathan Adler first travelled to Cairo in 1888, the fact that his father was the Chief Rabbi of England gave him direct entry into the upper echelons of Egyptian Jewish society where he connected with influential people such as members of the Italian-Jewish-Egyptian Mosseri family. Upon his return in 1896, entry to the bes genizah was easily obtained, and he was allowed to remove a sack of materials. A year later, Solomon Schechter, arriving in Cairo armed with letters of introduction (one of them written by Adler), quickly become a trusted entity to the Egyptian-Jewish community not only because of his charismatic, engaging personality and the time he spent ‘courting’ key people, but equally because he was a deeply erudite, orthodox Jew whose intimate knowledge of traditional Jewish learning particularly commended him to the Chief Rabbi, Aaron Raphael Ben Shimon. In addition, while he was there Schechter made friends with important allies connected to the British embassy.70 When a non-Jewish collector like Archibald Henry Sayce was faced with the challenge of trying to locate genizah manuscripts for Adolf Neubauer after Chester’s death in 1892, he enlisted the help of Count Riamo d’Hulst, a permanent resident in Cairo and a fluent speaker of modern, colloquial Arabic.71 At the very least, d’Hulst’s ability to converse with the locals in modern Arabic would have been one less communication barrier to gaining insider knowledge as to the whereabouts of the manuscripts and the possibility of purchase;72 and, indeed, he finally gained access to manuscripts stored in the bes in 1895. By the late nineteenth century, Egypt was replete with antiquities dealers. Still, guidebooks like the Baedeker did not list any of them by name. When legislation in 1912 required Egyptian dealers to gain an official permit, the Antiquities Service received 250 applications.73 Among the approximately fifty known dealers operating in the period 1889–92, we can narrow down the possible candidates for Chester’s supplier by considering the key attributes needed: his dealer would have had to be someone either known to him during his thirty years of visiting Egypt and engaging in the antiquities trade, or at least someone with whom his trusted dealers or Cairo associates (like Lanzone) could put him in touch. Based on the evidence in these letters, Chester did not simply buy these manuscripts at random from a bazaar shop, nor did he buy manuscripts that the dealer already owned as the availability of the supply often seems uncertain. Thus, this person would have needed to be able to connect with key members of the largely French- or Italian-speaking Jewish society or with the local Arabic-speaking synagogue custodians in order to locate and buy a steady supply of genizah manuscripts. From the list of fifty, five dealers fit some or most of these requirements and, furthermore, each one is known to have dealt with genizah manuscripts either before or after Chester’s time. The five are the aforementioned Count d’Hulst, ‘Ali Abd el-Haj el-Gabiri, Theodor Graf, Giovanni Dattari and Maurice Nahman. The Count d’Hulst had a long history with genizah manuscripts, starting from when he first discovered some discarded fragments in 1889 through to when he was commissioned by the Bodleian to excavate genizah manuscripts in 1898. In 1899, he attempted to purchase bags of recently disinterred genizah manuscripts, and he may have been selling fragments into the early twentieth century.74 But d’Hulst was not Chester’s dealer for, as we have seen above, he believed that Chester was unconnected to the genizah finds. ‘Ali Abd el-Haj el-Gabri (also known as Ali El-Arabi), was a long-established dealer in Giza and, together with his partner Farag Ismain, supplied important papyri to major institutions.75 He would have been known to Chester through his excavation and sales of papyri from the Fayum, and through Chester’s regular trips to Giza.76 In addition, Ali el-Arabi later sold a small collection of genizah manuscripts (largely epistolary fragments) to Charles Lang Freer in 1908.77 Theodor Graf was likewise involved in the acquisition of the Fayum papyri, buying many thousands of them which he then sold on as a complete collection to the Austrian nobleman, the Archduke Rainer. Included in the Archduke Rainer collection in Vienna are genizah manuscripts, which are presumed to be from the same source. Graf’s main antiquities store was in Vienna, with a secondary branch in Cairo; nevertheless, during this period, he was otherwise engaged in an international tour to exhibit his mummy portraits.78 Giovanni Dattari, an Italian living in Cairo, is known to have supplied genizah manuscripts to the Geneva Hellenist and collector of Greek papyri, Jules Nicole in 1896.79 Dattari’s main collecting interest, numismatics, was, of course, shared by Chester. Yet, Dattari made his first major purchase of coins only in 1891.80 It is possible that he had already made purchases of other antiquities, and perhaps his first foray into the antiquities world was through the Hebrew manuscripts that had suddenly found their way on to the Cairo market in 1890 and for which Chester was seeking an intermediary. Alternatively, this may have been a role more likely embodied by Dattari’s friend, the Jewish dealer, Maurice Nahman.81 Dattari and Nahman both got into private dealing during this early period; both were working in other fields (Dattari worked for Thomas Cook near the Shepheard’s Hotel and Nahman was a clerk in the Crédit Foncier Égyptien) while they sold collections privately out of their apartments. Most significantly in favour of Nahman as Chester’s mysterious dealer is the fact that he was born to a well-connected Egyptian-Jewish-Macedonian family whose ancestor Mattatias Nahman, a successful merchant from Northern Greece, owned an imposing mansion in the commercial district where he entertained members of the Austrian Habsburg dynasty; additionally, the Nahman family had ties to the wealthy Egyptian-Jewish-Italian family, the Mosseris (who were later connected to genizah discoveries).82 Maurice Nahman became known as a major Cairo dealer after he was officially licensed in 1912 and was listed in the Baedeker guide.83 By the 1920s, he was the ‘go-to’ person for Egyptian antiquities and papyri, selling to institutions around the world and drawing in hundreds of visitors to his mansion-sized shop on 21 Sharia el-Madabegh.84 He can certainly be linked to sales of genizah fragments during the 1920s and 1930s. For example, his sale of papyri to B. P. Grenfell and W. F. Kelsey in 1920 included three Hebrew manuscript fragments (one of which, P.Mich.Inv. 533, matches with others in genizah collections).85 Yet, with regard to his early antiquities career – how he started out in 1890, what sort of materials he sold, and how he built up his business – little to nothing is known. Five days after Chester sent his postcard to Nicholson mentioning Lanzone, he wrote again to notify him that he hoped to ‘send off No. 1 Hebr. mss today.’ He also added a note of instruction ‘Fix the price you think fair on fragments as before, & keep the pieces you don’t want till my return.’ And in between short statements about mailings and prices, he shared news about his ‘very bad cough.’ This was the first time that Chester sent instructions about how to deal with any unwanted manuscripts, a possible indication that he yet lacked confidence about the quality of the material received. Neubauer may have rejected a small portion of these 1890–91 consignments, and this may correspond with Chester’s sale of thirty-three manuscripts to Cambridge University Library in 1891.86 Otherwise, as noted above, there are no other records to indicate that materials were sent back to Chester or sold on to someone else. In fact, as we shall see, the demand from Oxford for these manuscripts seems to increase during the course of this season. In a postcard mailed two days later on 27 November, Chester sounded more confident about the package contents, particularly with regard to the inclusion of a palimpsest: Cairo; 27 November Some more Hebr. mss including some documents will be sent off tomorrow. One is a palimpsest & the under writing looks very old. Some I expect will prove curious. When all have arrvd wch won’t be until after next week, let me know what you think they are worth. Ask if Dr Neubauer, to whom please give my kind regards, will like to look them over. Yours GJC Indeed, he was not wrong: the palimpsest was subsequently hailed as a great treasure by the Oxford scholar G. H. Gwilliam, who published five leaves in 1893 as fragments from the Palestinian Syriac Old Testament, claiming that they were ‘some of the oldest extant specimens of the particular hand which they exhibit.’87 A note in the archive, dated 19 January and written on the back of a library reading room slip, records payments made to Chester for his various consignments sent late in 1890, including a comparatively generous payment of £2 6s. 0d. for the palimpsest. Chester’s connection to the Syriac palimpsest would later be forgotten, however. Whereas Gwilliam’s 1893 publication recalled that the Bodleian had received these palimpsest leaves from him in 1891, this fact was overlooked by the time Neubauer’s Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts at the Bodleian was compiled and published in 1906, and only the statement ‘from the Genizah’ is firmly asserted next to an uncertain date (1892?) supplied in parentheses.88 In addition, the manuscripts’ shelf mark had been altered from Syr.c.4 to Syr.c.15–18. Following on from his spate of postcards, Chester sent a lengthier letter on 29 November to confirm the details of his recent mailings. He expressed great anxiety about the packages being seized by officials at the Post Office as a result of increased restrictions on the export of antiquities. Cairo; 29 November 1890 My Dear Mr. Nicholson, After I had dispatched & registered 5 packets of Hebrew mss yesterday, I was told on pretty good authority that the officials are not unlikely to stop Books & mss in the po, & that they are authorized to do so. It seems almost incredible, but I shall be very anxious to hear whether what I have sent arrives or not, & will therefore sent you a list of the times of their departure. Nov: 20 Two packets Hebrew mss, not registered89 Nov: 23 Five packets, &c, not registered90 Nov: 26 Two Arabic Books, not registered Nov: 27 Four Coptic Books, of whchtwo are registered Nos 3119 & 3121 Nov: 28 Five packets of Hebrew mss, not registered, nos 3049, 3351, 3353, & 3355 & 3357 I am expecting some more Hebrew fragments, but will not send them until I hear the fate of those already sent. I am in treaty for 2 large Arabic mss, with Coptic illuminations resembling the curious designs in some of the textiles. Trusting you are well, I am, as always, Sincerely Yours Greville. J. Chester E. B. Nicholson Esq The list provides evidence that Chester continued to divide the Hebrew manuscripts in his possession into multiple packages and separate mailings. In the next postcard, sent on 9 December, Chester disclosed that not only had he mailed two packets of manuscripts from an alternative location, Zagazig, he was including ‘some’ with the present mailing and he intended to ‘divert the next batches to Dr Neubauer’ – perhaps in the hope that by listing a different mailing address and addressee he would also mask his activities. Chester did not receive his anticipated instalment of manuscripts until fifteen days later, on 14 December. Nevertheless, it seems to have been worth the wait (and the increased payment) as his anonymous supplier had found him another palimpsest. Cairo; 14 December 1890 My Dear Mr Nicholson, I have received another instalment of Hebr. mss, & sent off 5 packets this morning to you & Dr Neubauer. I trust that some of this batch will be more valuable, as I have paid more for them, & I observe that one is a palimpsest. Thanks for your card. I gave your messages to Sayce. Pray don’t on an open card mention of what the packet Recd consists, as I believe they are apt to be stopped at the PO, if the contents were known. One book I sent, this morning seems very beautifully written. I hope you recd the Coptic Books safe, & that they will be acceptable. I start up the Nile tomorrow, but my address will be as usual here. With all good Christmas wishes, I am Sincerely Yours, Greville. J. Chester E. B. Nicholson Esq While Chester continued to accept the Bodleian’s evaluation of the Hebrew manuscripts, he questioned the price offered for a Coptic manuscript, expressing great confidence in its value. Reporting a delay in dispatching more Hebrew manuscripts, he confirmed that he was questioned at the Post Office and forced to declare that the manuscripts were not Egyptian or Arabic (an indication that Jewish manuscripts were considered outside the realm of the antiquities laws). Again, the letter displays a touch of the personal, divulging intimate details of his digestive health. Near Cairo, on the Nile; 6 January 1891 My dear Mr. Nicholson, I yesterday received at Siut your kind note and four postcards & feel quite ashamed to have caused you to write so many. I hastily reciprocate your kind Christmas & New Year wishes. I write to say that I accept your valuation of the mss & will beg you to pay the amount to my acct with Mssrs Herries Farquhar & co, 16 St James’s Street, SW, giving me one line to say what the amount comes to. I am much surprised to hear the Coptic Vocabulary is so worthless – I know they are very scarce in Egypt & although I have been on the look out for years, it is the first I have met with. I should not like to take less than £2 for it, & £1 for the S. [table]. If you agree to that add the sum to the other account. Please keep the Books & fragments you don’t take till my return. Have still a few more Hebrew fragments, but I dare not send them at present, as questions were asked as to the last & I had to sign a certificate they were not Arabic or Egyptian. The weather here is glorious, but it is very cold night & morning. Have been very ill with dysentery but am better. Yours sincerely Greville J. Chester E. B. Nicholson Esq Chester was not entirely alone on the Nile; he was accompanied on his journey to Luxor by the Goodisons from Liverpool.91 George Goodison was a civil engineer and Mrs Anne Goodison was an amateur Egyptologist and a member of the Egypt Exploration Fund. Anne Goodison had become proficient in hieroglyphics, first under the tutelage of the American journalist and Egyptologist, Charles Edwin Wilbour and then with Lanzone, and Chester was helping her to acquire antiquities on this trip.92 In the next set of mailings, Chester’s comments to Nicholson indicate that the Bodleian was now keenly interested in the supply of Hebrew manuscripts, possibly due in part to the hope of receiving more ancient writings in palimpsest form.93 Writing from Luxor on 16 January, Chester informed Nicholson: ‘I may perhaps receive some more mss when I return to Cairo next month.’ He stressed the point again in a postcard sent from Girgeh, near Luxor, on 4 February, in response to a letter from Nicholson (dated 19 January): ‘I cannot move in the matter of obtaining more mss until we reach Cairo which I earnestly trust will be in less than 3 weeks. I will then lose no time & will forward what I get as soon as possible.’ True to his word, Chester was back in Cairo by 22 February, when he made sure to send off ‘two little harbingers of a larger flight in the week’ telling ‘Dr. N.’ to fix what he regarded as a fair price. The next consignment (two packets) was sent registered from Alexandria on 3 March, making it, as Chester observed, ‘the last batch’. He also added ‘I think the 2 last must contain something curious.’ It is not clear why this batch would in particular contain ‘something curious’ but an analysis of materials in the collection according to date (the volumes were bound up in some sort of chronological order based on when they were received and when they were arranged) indicates that in addition to the regular biblical, Talmudic and liturgical manuscripts, typical of the earlier packages, Chester’s 1891 packages included many more grammatical works, Arabic theological and astrological treatises, and medieval rabbinic commentaries, philosophical, mystical and medical works than were included in his original selection from the bes. Another visitor to Cairo, at some time between March and April 1891, was the American Jewish scholar, Cyrus Adler who purchased a genizah collection in the Cairo bazaars. Twenty-five years later, he recalled buying ‘some fifty fragments of Hebrew and Arabic manuscripts from a dealer in antiquities, the origin of which was, of course, not then known to me [emphasis mine].’94 And twenty-five years after that, in his autobiography, he remembered: ‘I wandered about the shops very often. I happened one day to find several trays full of parchment leaves written in Hebrew, which the merchant had labeled anticas. I saw at a glance that these were very old . . . indicating an interest in the whole lot I purchased them, big and little, some of the pieces only one sheet, some of them forty or fifty pages, at the enormous price of one shilling per unit.’95 Adler’s recollections and the nature of his collection itself allow us to see the type and condition of materials being sold at that time in the Cairo antiquities shops. Most of the antiquities stores were to be found in Islamic Cairo: principally within the large, labyrinthine souk, Khan el-Khalili, not far from the Haret al-Yahud (the Jewish Quarter), both of which were reached by walking along the narrow street bazaar, Sharia al-Muski, which itself was lined with many Jewish shops. It is important to note that Adler did not make a selection: he simply took everything in the shop trays. Many of the manuscripts that Adler scooped up in the market that day were like Chester’s: 50 per cent of them were on vellum; 73 per cent were multi-folio manuscripts; a number of them were well-preserved substantial sections of codices still bound with string; most held biblical, rabbinic or liturgical content; some included medieval commentaries and treatises, philosophical and mystical works (Nahmanides, Maimonides, Al Fasi, Ha-Levi of Corbeil, Azariah of Faro); very few were documentary or epistolary in nature like so much of the later collections; none of the manuscripts in Adler’s purchase were the late printed materials that so perturbed Schechter; none of them resembled Schechter’s hoard of ‘big unshapely lumps’. One of Adler’s manuscripts (ms Halper 130), a 28-paper fascicle of Moses Maimonides Mishneh Torah Hilkot Tefillah 13.14- Hilkot Tefillin 7, belongs with manuscript leaves that Chester retrieved directly from the bes (Heb.d.32, f.39). Both portions are in excellent condition. Fragmentary leaves from the same manuscript were discovered subsequently in Solomon Schechter’s collection (e.g., t-s ns 252.34) and in the Mosseri collection (Mosseri v 280), although these later fragments have suffered much tearing and water damage. Nevertheless, apart from this one piece and a few additional ‘joins’ between Adler’s collection and others, it is impossible to say whether all originally hailed from the same source (i.e., the bes) or if some were mixed in with manuscripts in the market shop’s existing inventory and originally derived from other synagogues or locations. Certainly, one of Adler’s manuscripts (Halper 441 now rar ms 47), a seventeenth-century copy of Isaac Luria’s Kabbalistic doctrines comprising 148 leaves, may well have come from another source: being a substantial manuscript, it is unlike most of the other fragmentary folios and quires retrieved from the bes, and it is much later in date than anything received by Chester.96 The original find-spot for Chester’s first dispatches, i.e., ‘the oldest synagogue at Mus′r El Ateekeh’ (the Ben Ezra Synagogue) is no longer mentioned in his letters. Even though the rebuilding of the synagogue was presumably underway, no details are available at present about how this progressed. There are no known contemporary written accounts of the rebuild, and the only confirmation that the building was completed in 1892 comes from a member of the Mosseri family, Jacques, who was a seven-year-old child at the time of the rebuild and who wrote about it much later in 1914.97 On his return journey home through Italy, Chester sent a postcard from Naples on 28 March to confirm that he had received two letters from Nicholson and that he accepted the payments offered. Arriving in Rome that same day, he wrote a short postcard to confirm that he had ‘no more mss to send’, possibly indicating that the communications from the Bodleian contained requests for more materials. Another sign that Nicholson and Neubauer must have referred to the Hebrew manuscripts as rare and hard to find is further evidenced by Chester’s closing remark: ‘I am glad to have got to the bl what cannot often be obtainable’. In April he was paid an additional £25 for his manuscripts. At a total of around £50 for his 1890–91 consignments, Chester was paid more per manuscript than the scholar-collector Solomon Wertheimer, who generally received payments of between £3 and £6 for the bundles of genizah manuscripts he sold to the Bodleian between the years 1892 and 1893. At the end of April, Chester dispatched a postcard from London, apologizing that he had ‘failed to get off the 3 accompanying packets of mss from Egypt.’ It is not clear why Chester would have forgotten about these manuscripts and had previously declared that he had none to send, but perhaps it is not surprising given the amounts and variety of materials and objects and various institutions with which he was dealing. The note further discloses that his luggage contained ‘2 books & some Coptic fragments . . . & some coins’. In May, he wrote another short message to Nicholson: ‘please don’t pay me yet as I may have something else to offer. I have no more Hebr. fragments.’ November 1891 to March 1892: last consignments At the start of the winter season in 1891, Chester travelled back to Egypt in the company of Egyptologist, Percy Newberry. In a letter to Francis Llewellyn Griffith, Newberry recalled their stopover in Italy and their sightseeing in Ancona.98 When Chester got back to Cairo that November, he resumed his task of acquiring Hebrew manuscripts for the Bodleian. This time he refers directly to Eugène Grébaut’s restrictions on exports, divulging that he had devised yet another method of fooling the officials at the post office by using a numbering system rather than describing the items enclosed. Cairo; 29 November 1891 My dear Mr. Nicholson, I am fortunate in the prospect of obtaining more Hebr. mss. I sent off one packet numbered & registered & hope to send off more in a few days. I will ask you to acknowledge their arrival. Merely putting the Nos & not mentioning on the p.c. what they are as I fear their export – although quite legal – might be stopped in the Post under the present Grebaut regime of tyranny. I enclose a beautiful bit of Syriac ms & wd like to know what it is. Please put the price you value each packet at that I may know what to expect. I have quite a dreadful cough & have as yet been unable to get a boat for the Nile journey. As always, Sincerely Yours Greville. J. Chester E. B. Nicholson Esq Unbeknown to him, this was to be Chester’s last season in Egypt, and the signs of his increasingly weak health were showing. The Nile was considered restorative and Chester was anxious to get there. In spite of his bad cough, however, he still endeavoured to dispatch some packets of manuscripts, as well as a papyrus fragment discovered with Sayce in the Fayum.99 Cairo; 7 December 1891 My dear Mr. Nicholson, I [purpose] sending off today 5 more packets of mss whose receipt please acknowledge to Poste Restante, Luxor, Upper Egypt. I also send here[with] a fragment of papyrus found in the Fayoum, wch Sayce considers not later than the 3rd century. My cough is very bad, but I hope to reach my dahabeyeh at Siout tomorrow, & to be better on the Nile. Yours sincerely, Greville.J.Chester Chester wrote again to Nicholson on 22 January from Luxor thanking him for his valuation of the manuscripts sent in December, and he promised that ‘when I get back to Cairo in March I will try to get some more’. His postcard also mentioned that the influenza epidemic was ‘raging in Cairo’. However one month later, in a postcard sent from ‘Near Cairo’, dated 23 February, Chester notified Nicholson that he was sending him four packages of manuscripts. With regard to his return to Cairo proper in March, Chester stated on the postcard: ‘I can fix no certain address at present’. This was followed by a note about his health: ‘I am progressing favourably though very slowly, & am very weak and emaciated,’ and in spite of his weak state, he closed the postcard with the statement: ‘There may be one more batch in a week’s time; that will be the last’. One week later on 1 March, it appears that he did indeed dispatch the promised batch of manuscripts together with a postcard stamped ‘Guiza’ (Giza). Although Chester did not state so explicitly on the postcard, his message ‘I hope to send another batch on Friday’ (4 March), suggests that a package was enclosed. Yet, when 4 March came around, the day Chester had hoped to ‘send another batch’, he mailed a postcard from the Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo with the news that he had been ‘unable to get any more Hebr. mss.’ Offering no further explanation, he reminded Nicholson that he would be in Naples by 18 March, and he digressed into a note about his health, underlining the fact that ‘I do improve but very slowly’. The brevity of this note suggests that there is nothing more to be gleaned from his failure to acquire the last batch of manuscripts. However, a letter sent the very next day, on 5 March 1892, to The Academy paints a different picture. Writing from Ramleh, a European enclave east of Alexandria,100 and a first stop on his journey back home, he began: ‘Permit me to draw public attention to an almost incredible act of vandalism which was perpetrated during the last year in Egypt . . .’ This dramatic opening was followed by a description of the Roman Fortress of Babylon in Old Cairo together with a description of the ancient synagogue and the following announcement:All this is now a thing of the past. The Jews – and I suppose they had a legal right “to do what they would with their own” – have razed the ancient church and synagogue to the ground, and in its place have erected a hideous square abomination, supported literally on iron pillars. What, however, is most of all to be deplored is that the Franco-Anglo-Egyptian authorities should have permitted the simultaneous destruction of the fine Roman wall which bounded the property, and with it the bastion-tower . . . Of these not a vestige now remains.101 Chester’s letter to The Academy provides a terminus ad quem for the completion of the Ben Ezra Synagogue rebuild. In addition, the language and tone of his letter suggests that his discovery of this ‘hideous square abomination’ was very recent. He would not have seen it when he first returned to Cairo in November 1891, at the beginning of the 1891–92 season, as the building was only reported as finished in 1892.102 It is possible that he saw the new synagogue in late February or early March as he was journeying back down the Nile towards Cairo, but never one to hold back from expressing his views, it would have been somewhat out of character for him to wait until 5 March to express his incredulity. One would assume that, based on prior behaviour, Chester would have said something to Nicholson had he seen the new synagogue at any time before sending his postcard of 4 March, just as he did when he first saw it being dismantled back in 1889. Thus, the following reconstruction might be feasible: at some point before mailing his last postcard to Nicholson on Friday 4 March, Chester met with his dealer near or in the Shepheard’s and the news about the Hebrew manuscripts was shared with news about the Ben Ezra Synagogue building. After informing Nicholson that he had been ‘unable to get any more Hebr. mss’, Chester made an impromptu visit to Fustat (approximately three miles distant from Cairo) to see the new building for himself. Horrified by what he discovered there, particularly with regard to the Roman fortress, he made sure to fire off a letter to The Academy as soon as he reached Ramleh the next day. The fact that he now shared this information about the synagogue publicly (rather than merely informing Nicholson, as he did in December 1889) supports the idea that the new building was somehow connected to the end of his lucrative manuscript supply chain that he had hitherto felt necessary to keep secret. After all, Chester no doubt believed he would be returning to Cairo the next season. After leaving Egypt, the additional stress of the long journey back home must have exacerbated his underlying health condition. Writing from Italy on 16 April 1892, his friend and fellow collector, Henry Wallis reported seeing Chester ‘in a bad way’ in a hospital in Naples: ‘his complaint being angina pectoris they said he might be carried off at any moment.’103 Chester made it back to London, but on the postcard he had sent to the Bodleian dated 4 March, Nicholson added a note in his smaller, neater handwriting: ‘The last he ever wrote us. He died in a London private hospital a month or two later.’ Conclusions Chester’s letters and postcards to the Bodleian Library between 1889 and 1892 recording his collecting activities, donations and sales make fascinating reading on many levels, but most importantly they are highly significant for reconstructing the early history of the Cairo Genizah collections. More than a century later, the exact provenance and acquisition stories of many of these collections remains unclear. The unifying idea of ‘the Cairo Genizah’ stems from Solomon Schechter’s famous discovery of the bes genizah in 1897. Thereafter, all the previous and subsequent collections of Hebrew manuscripts that came out of Egypt (making together with Schechter’s hoard a combined total of over 325,000 fragments) were assigned the same provenance, even though many of them were discovered in other synagogues and buildings, or unearthed from multiple burial sites, or were purchased along with other manuscripts in the market places of Cairo, Alexandria, Jerusalem and Jaffa. In addition, many of them had multiple and multifaceted ownership stories before reaching their final designation as a ‘Cairo Genizah’ collection. The rich details in Chester’s correspondence help shed light on this complex history, beginning with the year in which he discovered the medieval Ben Ezra synagogue being demolished (1889) and ending in the year when he came upon its newly opened reconstruction (1892). In his key eye-witness account from 20 December 1889 he discloses that he entered the scene just as the medieval room was being emptied down to the ground. Chester’s description of the medieval room floor covered in manuscripts is one of only two known descriptions of the medieval bes genizah chamber in existence (the previous one is by Jacob Sapir in 1860). Moreover, his letter reveals that the locals did not have plans – or at least, would not share their plans – for the fate of the materials. Chester’s intervention at this point, i.e., his offer to buy materials may have altered their fate and the attitude of their custodians. Rather than being destroyed or forever buried, they were sold or placed in temporary locations from where they were subsequently retrieved and returned to the new bes. Chester’s correspondence and his manuscript collection offer important evidence of what was being offered for sale and purchased in this period. A close study of the manuscripts Chester recovered directly from the bes shows that they comprise a higher proportion of near-complete folios and a higher number of early medieval liturgical texts than those found in other Genizah collections. Most lack the descriptive labels ‘injured’ or ‘mutilated’ that are so often applied to the later collections, like that retrieved from the bes synagogue basement by the Count d’Hulst and Archibald Henry Sayce in 1895–6. Thus, the quality and content of Chester’s manuscripts indicates that the nature of ‘the Genizah’ underwent alteration before Solomon Schechter’s celebrated ‘discovery’ of his ‘battlefield of books’ in 1896–7. And, in 1898, the Count d’Hulst reported his suspicions that the locals ‘carried & carry all sorts of rubbish paper together, to mix them up which with what was left with a view to selling them’. Such practices may account for why Schechter encountered a super-abundance of printed matter. Communications sent by Chester between November and December 1890 and again in December 1891, show how he acquired large batches of Hebrew manuscripts through an unnamed dealer in Cairo, and how he acted covertly to ship the material in instalments to the Bodleian. By comparing Chester’s collection with others from the same period (those of Cyrus Adler and Antonin), we can see that manuscripts similar to those selected by Chester’s supplier were also for sale in the marketplace but that they may have been mixed in with manuscripts from other sources. And a comparison between these three pre-1892 collections and those discovered later exposes stark differences in content and state of preservation. Finally, Chester’s correspondence, together with other supporting documentation, allows us to reconstruct a date for when the materials were most likely returned to the bes. Chester’s hope to secure a last batch of manuscripts in Cairo on 4 March 1892 was followed by a letter on 5 March in which he shared his discovery of the ‘hideous’ new bes building. The timing of these two letters suggests that the one event (a failure to obtain manuscripts) may well have been effected by the other (the re-opening of the bes). In sum, subjecting Chester’s activities to acquire ‘what cannot often be obtainable’ to a more in-depth enquiry enables us to look again at the history of the bes genizah and the ensuing idea of ‘the Cairo Genizah’. It encourages us to look more attentively and consider with greater inquisitiveness the original state and contents of the bes genizah, the state and type of manuscripts on the market at that time, and the manifold ways in which hoards of Hebrew manuscripts were discovered, uncovered, retrieved, secreted, disinterred and re-interred, commissioned, sold, sent, distributed around Egypt and out of Egypt and around the world. Overall, a close study of Chester’s collection and his collecting habits underlines the fact that the provenance story of ‘the Cairo Genizah’ is multi-faceted and needs to be subject to much greater continuing scrutiny. Footnotes 1 ‘Greville John Chester, 1830–1892’ in M. L. Bierbrier (ed.), Who was Who in Egyptology, 3rd rev. edn (London, 1995), pp. 96–7). Chester’s life and work was the subject of research conducted by Gertrud Seidmann (Wolfson College, Oxford) for her M.Litt. degree; she published a number of articles on the same subject, see ‘Forgotten pioneers of archaeology in Victorian Oxford: The Rev. Greville John Chester (1830–1892)’, Oxoniensia 71 (2006), pp. 145–50, for example. 2 Chester’s contributions can be viewed by searching for ‘Greville John Chester’ at: http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx 3 J. Thompson, Wonderful Things: A history of Egyptology 2: The Golden Age: 1881–1914 (Cairo, 2016), pp. 125–6. 4 N. Reeves, ‘New light on ancient Egyptian prosthetic medicine’, in Studies in Honour of Egyptian Antiquities: A tribute to T.G.H. James, ed. V. Davies (London, 1999), p. 73. 5 G. Seidmann, ‘The Rev. Greville John Chester and “The Ashmolean Museum as a Home for Archaeology in Oxford”’, Bulletin of the History of Archaeology 16 no. 1 (2006), pp. 27–33. 6 Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library (supplement to no. 770) (Oxford, 9 May 1893), p. 481. 7 See, for example, E. Craster, History of the Bodleian Library 1845–1945 (Oxford, 1952), pp. 200, 210, 214–15, 223. Chester sold to Oxford over 1,000 pieces from the immense mass of papyrus fragments of the fifth to seventh centuries ad discovered in the Fayum in 1877. The greater portion of this find was recovered by the dealer, Theodore Graf for the Archduke Rainer. Other collections like Chester’s probably came through the dealers of Giza (see Bernard P. Grenfell et al., Fayum Towns and their Papyri (London, 1900), pp. 18–19). 8 Although not noted by Craster, op. cit. (note 7), Chester sold many miscellaneous Coptic and Cufic papyrus fragments, as well as Syriac and Arabic books, Greek and Samaritan manuscripts, to the Bodleian. 9 The Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society database of Genizah manuscripts records 326,973 fragments in its inventory of fifty-nine digitized collections amounting to 511,692 digital images. 10 R. Gottheil and W. H. Worrell (eds), Fragments from the Cairo Genizah in the Freer Collection (New York, 1927), p. xi. 11 Adolf Neubauer (1832–1907), Reader in Rabbinic Hebrew at Oxford University (1886–1900) and a Bodleian sub-librarian (1873–99). 12 See Gottheil and Worrell, op. cit. (note 10), p. xii. 13 A. Neubauer and A. E. Cowley (eds), Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library . . . vol. ii (Oxford, 1906), p. iv. 14 Solomon Schechter, ‘A hoard of Hebrew mss’, The Times, 3 August 1897, p. 13. 15 E.W.B. Nicholson, Bodleian Librarian from 1882 to 1912 (for further biographical details, see M. Clapinson, ‘Nicholson, Edward Williams Byron (1849–1912), librarian’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H.C.G. Matthew, B. H. Harrison and L. Goldman (Oxford, 2004). 16 This is a section of the Bodleian Library Records concerning collections (b) within a subsection dedicated to purchases (b.1.4) 17 Chester had already corresponded with Nicholson in 1887 when he sent him a collection of papyrus fragments (see Craster, op. cit. (note 7), p. 200, and E.W.B. Nicholson, The Bodleian Library in 1882–7. A report from the Librarian. (Oxford, 1888), p. 8). 18 See ‘Miscellaneous Samaritan Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library’ on the online resource http://archiveshub.ac.uk for a record of the Samaritan manuscripts purchased by the Bodleian. Chester does not appear to have been interested in making large profits on his antiquities sales. As Wallis Budge pointed out: ‘his good classical education and a naturally good antiquarian instinct enabled him to acquire many valuable objects at very moderate prices . . . he made it convenient to sell them, making a small profit on the transaction.’ (E. A. Wallis Budge, By Nile and Tigris. A narrative of journeys in Egypt and Mesopotamia on behalf of the British Museum between the years 1886 and 1913, by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge (London, 1920), p. 84). 19 Such was the hunger for Samaritan manuscripts, that local scribes even produced fakes to sell to those ‘who made the pilgrimage’ to Nablus; see Alan D. Crown, Samaritan Scribes and Manuscripts (Tübingen, 2001), p. 146. 20 See the Jewish Chronicle, 8 September 1876, p. 363, where Chester’s article denouncing the atrocities in Bulgaria is quoted alongside his apoplectic description of Disraeli as the ‘Jew Earl, Philo-Turkish Jew, and Jew Premier’. Chester began his ‘protest’ writing as early as 1856 in an pamphlet about ‘Statute Fairs’ in which, despite promising to offer plain words ‘humbly’, he compared the process of selecting servants to the American slave-market, see Statute Fairs: Their evils and their remedy (York, 1856), p. 7. And the letters of Egyptologist, Charles Edwin Wilbour reveal that Chester had been banned from the Luxor hotel after writing up an adverse review of its food. See Travels in Egypt [December 1880 to May 1891] Letters of Charles Edwin Wilbour (Brooklyn, ny, 1936), p. 504. Describing Chester’s character, his friend, Sir Flinders Petrie noted: ‘A striking man in many ways, his [Chester’s] strong preferences and objections and his outspoken manner brought Dr. Johnson to mind.’ See Flinders M. Petrie, Seventy Years in Archaeology (New York, 1932), p. 23. Dr Samuel Johnson suffered from Tourette Syndrome. 21 P. Griffith, ‘Oman, Sir Charles William Chadwick (1860–1946), historian’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004) retrieved 29 May 2018, from: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-35312. Chester and Oman both appear in the Bodleian Curators’ Annual Report for their donations of coins. 22 See Greville J. Chester, ‘Notes on the ancient Christian churches of Musr el Ateekah, or Old Cairo, and its neighbourhood’, Archaeological Journal 29 (1872), pp. 120–34. Chester even provided measurements in feet and inches of the nave, apse, and aisles. In addition, colourful descriptions of the places in and around Cairo that he visited frequently can be found in ‘Donkey rides around Cairo’, Aunt Judy’s Magazine 17 (1879). 23 See Charles Le Quesne, ‘The Synagogue’, in Fortifications and the Synagogue: The fortress of Babylon and the Ben Ezra Synagogue, ed. Phyllis Lambert (London, 1994), p. 92. According to the architectural survey, the walls of the new synagogue were thinner and there is evidence of poorer materials being used, e.g., iron pillars instead of marble. 24 Peter Sheehan, Babylon of Egypt: The archaeology of Old Cairo and the origins of the city (Cairo and New York, 2010), p. 122. 25 E. N. Adler ‘An eleventh century introduction to the Hebrew Bible . . .’, Jewish Quarterly Review 9 no. 4 (1897), p. 672. 26 See Chester, op. cit. (note 22), where he erroneously describes the Ben Ezra synagogue as having once been the Coptic church of St Michael, and Le Quesne, op. cit. (note 23), p. 80. 27 See Rebecca Jefferson, ‘A genizah secret: The Count d’Hulst and letters revealing the race to recover the lost leaves of the original Ecclesiasticus’, Journal of the History of Collections 21 (2009), pp. 125–42. 28 R. D’Hulst, ‘Arab architecture in Cairo’, The Academy 43 (1893), p. 113. 29 Poste Restante: a direction on a letter, etc., indicating that it is to remain at the post office for an agreed period until collected by the addressee. 30 For example, some of the manuscript leaves that Chester retrieved directly from the bes, Bodl. ms Heb.d.22/1, fols 1–4, portions of the Halakhic midrash to Leviticus known as Sifra, belong to the same manuscript as fragments in the Cambridge collection (cul mss t-s c5.4, t-s c5.8–9, t-s e1.158, t-s f2(1).71, t-s k25.113, t-s ns 175.73, t-s ns 176.55, t-s ns 252.4, and t-s as 80.192), but all of the Cambridge fragments are torn and damaged whereas Chester’s folios are all intact and well preserved. 31 The postcard and letter were both sent on 20 December 1889, but the postcard has been placed after the letter in this archive, probably reflecting the order in which they arrived at the library. It makes more sense, however, to suppose that the postcard was written first as it would have accompanied the mailing of the first parcel sent earlier that day. Furthermore, the postcard was sent Poste Restante Cairo; whereas the letter contained the upcoming address: Poste Restante Assiout. 32 For example, Heb.c.11, a beautifully preserved vellum manuscript copy of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s commentary on the Pentateuch in a Spanish Rabbinic script comprising fifty-five folios, probably from the fourteenth to fifteenth century. 33 Dahabiah, from the Arabic word dahabiyah meaning ‘golden’, refers to a type of large river sailing vessel used for living and sailing on the Nile. See a description in I. C. Dear and P. K. Kemp (eds), The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea, 2nd edn (Oxford and New York, 2005), p. 151. Chester did not seek the comforts of a Nile boat until he was in his sixties (see Gertrud Seidmann, ‘The Rev. Greville Chester aims to be the new perpetuum mobile’, Romulus (2007), pp. 28–9). A good contemporaneous description of a dahabiah and the Nile journey can be found in Amelia A. B. Edwards, A Thousand Miles up the Nile (New York, 1888), pp. 35–42. 34 The book-post system was introduced in 1848 allowing for any single volume to be delivered in the United Kingdom at the rate of 6d. per pound weight. This system was afterward extended to the colonies (Egypt was a de facto colony from 1822 to 1922); see William Lewins, Her Majesty’s Mails: An historical and descriptive account of the British Post Office together with an appendix (London, 1864), p. 166. 35 This abbreviation was used to refer to something ‘present at the time defined’, or it was used to refer to the current month. 36 Asyūṭ, the largest city in Upper Egypt is located on the western bank of the Nile 280 miles south of Cairo. It has been the capital of al-Ṣaʿīd (Upper Egypt) since the early part of the nineteenth century (see M. Gaborieau, R.M.A. Allen and G. Krämer, The Encyclopaedia of Islam Three (Leiden and Boston, 2007), [online edition]. 37 Jacob Sapir, Iben Safir (Lyck, 1866), fols. 21a-b [Hebrew]. 38 Indeed such actions were witnessed in 1895, as attested by Chester’s friend, the Oxford Assyriologist, Archibald Henry Sayce. See his letter to Adolf Neubauer, Assouan, 26 March 1895 (Bodleian Library Records, d. 1084). 39 The latest dated piece, Bodl. ms Heb.c.13/2, is a Ladino letter from ad 1338. 40 Gottheil and Worrell, op. cit. (note 10), p. xiii, n. 10. 41 Ibid. It is also possible that the anonymous source was Freer’s dealer, Ali Arabi or perhaps his other dealer, Maurice Nahman. 42 Lucien J. Frary, ‘Russian missions to the Orthodox East: Antonin Kapustin (1817–1894) and his world’, Russian History 40 (2013), pp. 133–51. In a personal communication, Frary indicated that Antonin’s diaries, which detail his daily activities, are presently being analyzed and published. It is to be hoped that the diaries from the 1890s will eventually expose the details of how and where he got his ‘Genizah’ collection. 43 Abraham I. Katsch, The Antonin Genizah in the Saltykov-Schedrin Public Library in Leningrad (New York, 1963), p. 1. 44 Rudder Grange was the title of a highly popular novel published by Frank R. Stockton in 1879, which told the amusing adventures of a family living on a canal boat. Two photographs of the ‘Rudder Grange’ dahabiyah appear in the Church Missionary Gleaner 29–30 (London, 1902), p. 168. 45 The parcel receipts are also retained in the archive. 46 See the account of his visits to Egypt in his memoir: A. H. Sayce, Reminiscences (London, 1923). 47 Bodleian Library Records, d. 1084: the letter from Count Riamo d’Hulst to Falconer Madan, dated 24 December 1914, p. 11. He repeats this claim again in a letter dated 20 May 1915, at p. 13. 48 Dispatching post from the Nile was not problematic. The Nile had been transformed into a tourist resort by Thomas Cook & Son in the 1880s. By 1890, 1,300 tourists, most of whom were British, travelled up the Nile and such excursions included stops at tourist stations equipped with post and telegraph offices (see F. Robert Hunter, ‘Tourism and empire: the Thomas Cook & Son enterprise on the Nile, 1868–1914’, Middle Eastern Studies 40 no. 5 (2004), pp. 42–3). 49 Cufic: alternative spelling of Kufic, from Kūfī: one of the earliest scripts employed to write Islamic texts, especially the Quran. See the entry on Kufic in Gaborieau et al., op. cit. (note 36). 50 Curiously, Craster’s history of the Bodleian Library (op. cit. (note 7), p. 212) does not mention Chester’s involvement in this purchase. It simply records that: ‘In 1890, the library bought twenty-four Samaritan manuscripts for £44. Some were biblical, the rest liturgical.’ 51 Even though Craster states that the Samaritan manuscripts cost £44, it appears that the price offered was £4, and indeed £4 was the amount recorded in the Bodleian Ledger (c.59) for 25 January 1890 and noted in pencil above the word ‘please’ in Chester’s letter from January 5. 52 The British Museum collections database records 300 objects for 1890; 300 for 1891, and 15 objects in 1892. 53 Annual Report of the Bodleian Curators, 5 May 1891, p. 443. This calculation is slightly incorrect as the Bodleian bound forty-five volumes that year: Chester’s materials were bound into thirty-seven volumes and the materials from the Count d’Hulst through the Egypt Exploration Fund were bound into eight volumes but mistakenly recorded as seven. 54 These calculations were taken from the National Archives Currency Converter: 1270–2017: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency-converter/. 55 See the Kestenbaum & Company Catalogue of Fine Judaica, 14 June 2018, p.119 for the listing of three Cairo Genizah fragments from the private collection of Julius Bisno (http://www.kestenbaum.net). 56 This is probably a reference to the Antiquities Service, which was then headed by the French Egyptologist, Eugène Grébaut (1846–1915). Grébaut’s excavation and export policies and his methods of imposing them were unpopular with Egyptologists and the native dealers (see Sayce, op. cit. (note 46), pp. 258–9). 57 Herries, Farquhar & Co. was established in 1770 by Robert Herries who instituted the idea of ‘circular notes’ for people travelling abroad who did not wish to carry cash. These notes could be exchanged for cash at most towns abroad where Herries had correspondents. The popularity of this system induced other partners to join Herries, including Farquhar in 1799 (see F. G. Hilton Price, Handbook of London Bankers, with some account of the predecessors the early Goldsmiths (London, 1876), pp. 74–5). 58 Bodleian Library Records d.14, 9 May 1896, minutes by Rev. Dr. Macgrath V. C.: ‘It was agreed to authorize the giving away exchange or sale of unbound fragments of Hebrew writing recently purchased or in future to be purchased which Dr. Neubauer (with the [concurrence] of the Reg. Professor of Hebrew) may report to be not worth adding to the collection of Hebrew mss.’ 59 5 May 1891: Annual Report of the Bodleian Curators, p. 443 60 See the letter from A. H. Sayce reproduced in the ‘Archaeological news’ section of the American Journal of Archaeology and of the History of the Fine Arts 6 nos 1/2 (1890), p. 161: ‘Mr Greville Chester had informed me that inscriptions were to be found on a line of rocks on the western bank south of Heshan, and about four or five miles north of Silsilis. We accordingly spent a day examining them.’ 61 In her famous travelogue, Amelia Edwards described the ruined, picturesque town of Girgeh as a place to stop to send and collect post (see Edwards, op. cit. (note 33), pp. 109–10). 62 These donations (the tablets and coins) were mentioned in the ‘Annual Report of the Curators of the Bodleian Library’ (Oxford 10 May, 1892), pp. 468, 473. 63 E. A. Wallis Budge noted, ‘We always marvelled how he managed to pass his treasures through the Custom Houses of Egypt, Turkey and Greece’; see Thompson, op. cit. (note 3), p. 125. 64 See op. cit. (note 62), p. 469. Chester’s Coptic manuscripts are described in the entry for ‘Miscellaneous Coptic Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library’ on Archives Hub: http://archiveshub.ac.uk. 65 Chester’s letters on the subject of the Coptic papyri demonstrate his concern to keep collections together: ‘I meant to offer a Coptic ms to the British Museum, & a Coptic & Cufic bilingual one to you. It turns out they are both on the same subject – magic – & ought consequently to go together. In Papyri I think the bm has the prior claim, so I write to ask you to allow me to offer it the two together – if, however, you object to this, I must beg you to go in for both.’ (London, 25 April 1890). 66 In spite of Nicholson’s many reforms and improvements, he attracted much internal opposition which included anonymous complaints in newspapers. The battles with staff even affected Nicholson’s health. See Clapinson, op. cit. (note 15). 67 American Journal of Archaeology and of the History of the Fine Arts 6 no. 3 (1890), pp. 400–401. 68 Ed Gyllennhaal, ‘From parlor to castle: the Egyptian collection at Glencairn Museum’, in Millions of Jubilees: Studies in Honor of David P. Silverman, ed. Zahi Hawass and Jennifer Houser Wegner (Cairo, 2010), pp. 175–203. Chester had consulted with Lanzone on aspects of his Phoenician gem collection back in 1885, see G. J. Chester, ‘Notes on some Phoenician gems’, Palestine Exploration Fund: Quarterly Statement (January 1885), pp. 129–32. 69 Wertheimer’s first sales to the Bodleian were late in 1892 (see Bodleian Ledger c.59 where a first payment is recorded on 5 November 1892 for £1 1s. and a second on 24 December for £3 5s. The next payment was on 17 March 1893 for £1 10s.). For the agreement with Yakob Megas Kasurelka, see Sara Jo Ben Zvi ‘Whose Geniza?’, Segula 5 (June, 2011), p. 66. 70 Rebecca J. W. Jefferson, ‘Dangerous liaisons in Cairo: Reginald Q. Henriques and the Taylor-Schechter genizah manuscript collection’, Judaica Librarianship 20 (2017), pp. 21–51. 71 Joining a discussion on the modern pronunciation of place-names in Egypt, Sayce commented ‘What we want to know is the modern local pronunciation of Arabic words and names . . . I specially want the Count to be clear on the subject, as he is one of those on whom we depend for a knowledge of the actual pronunciation of the Egyptian fellahin’. ‘Tel El-Amarna tablets’, The Academy no. 1066 (1892), p. 315. 72 On the benefits of speaking Arabic as a way to enhance the collector’s bargaining skills, see Fredrik Hagen and Kim Ryholt, The Antiquities Trade in Egypt 1880–1930: The H. O. Lange Papers (Denmark, 2016), pp. 28–29. 73 Ibid., p. 40. 74 See Jefferson, op. cit. (note 70). 75 Hagen and Ryholt, op. cit. (note 72), pp. 192–5. 76 Craster, op. cit. (note 7), p. 200. 77 For a description of Ali el-Arabi’s life and work, see Hagen and Ryholt, op. cit. (note 72), pp. 192–5. For his connection to Genizah manuscripts and to Freer, see Ann C. Gunter, A Collector’s Journey: Charles Lang Freer and Egypt (Washington, dc, 2002), p. 102. 78 Hagen and Ryholt, op. cit. (note 72), p. 217. 79 Barbara Roth-Lochner in The Cairo Geniza Collection in Geneva – Catalogue and Studies, ed. David Rozenthal (Jerusalem, 2010), pp. 42–5 [Hebrew]. 80 Adriano Savio et al., Giovanni Dattàri: Un numismatico italiano al Cairo (Milan, 2015), p. 29. 81 They would later work together in 1902 in what would become a failed attempt to secure a collection of gold coins and medallions through a third party in Minieh; see Savio et al., op. cit. (note 80), pp. 24, 181–2. 82 See Samir Raafat, ‘Robert Nahman – End of his Era’, in Egy.com: http://www.egy.com/judaica/99-11-10.php. 83 Hagen and Ryholt, op. cit. (note 72), pp. 253–4, fig. 23. 84 According to his Visitor Book (https://archive.org/details/bml-scr n362_n14), Nahman’s store received visits from the likes of Archibald Henry Sayce (1918), Chester Beatty (1926), Cyrus Adler (between February and April 1929) and Howard Carter (1935), as well as many representatives of leading museums and libraries. 85 See John G. Pedley, The Life and Work of Francis Willey Kelsey: Archaeology, antiquity, and the arts (Michigan, 2012), p. 217. The manuscripts are listed in the inventory of items purchased by B. P. Grenfell and F. W. Kelsey compiled by Arthur Hunt at: https://www.lib.umich.edu/files/libraries/papyrology/acq-reports/Inventory%20of%20Papyri%20Oct.%201920.pdf . The join between Michigan’s Talmudic fragment and six other genizah manuscripts can be found on the Friedberg Jewish Manuscript Society database. 86 Stefan C. Reif, Hebrew Manuscripts at Cambridge University Library (Cambridge, 1997). p. 30. 87 See G. H. Gwilliam (ed.), The Palestinian Version of the Holy Scriptures: Five more fragments recently acquired by the Bodleian Library, Anecdota Oxoniensia; Semitic Series 1/1 (Oxford, 1893), p. vi: ‘They will occupy a place of their own amongst the treasures of the Bodleian Library.’ 88 Neubauer and Cowley, op. cit. (note 13), p. xvi. Chester’s contribution was also overlooked in the second publication of these fragments. See op. cit. (note 25). 89 This was actually mailed on 22 November. 90 Chester writes 23 November in this letter, but the stamp of the postcard mailing is dated 25 November. 91 See Wilbour’s letter dated 14 December 1890, op. cit. (note 20), p. 575. 92 See an account of Mrs Goodison’s collection and its provenance in ‘Goodison Egyptology collection in Southport exhibition’, BBC News (24 October 2014): http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-29709001. 93 When Jules Nicole showed Neubauer the box of manuscripts from Dattari, he recalled that Neubauer was particularly interested in four pages written in Hebrew on a Greek palimpsest in beautiful uncials. See Lochner, op. cit. (note 79), p. 3. 94 American Jewish Yearbook 18 (1916–17), p. 44. 95 Cyrus Adler, I have Considered the Days (Philadelphia, 1941), pp. 116–17. 96 This manuscript has been reclassified by the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Libraries, as cajs rar ms 47. 97 J. Mosseri, ‘The synagogues of Egypt: past and present’, Jewish Review 5 no. 1 (1914), p. 39. 98 See T.G.H. James, Howard Carter: The path to Tutankhamun (London, 2012), p. 23. 99 This may be Bodl. ms Heb.35.f (p) which is described as a tiny papyrus fragment from the Fayoum. 100 See ‘Correspondence’, in The Academy no. 1037 (1892), p. 285. Chester’s letter was entitled ‘Vandalism in Egypt’. An account of the European visitors in Ramleh can be found in ‘Ramleh’, Saturday Review 48 no. 1240 (2 August 1879), pp. 142–3. 101 Chester’s point about the iron pillars is corroborated by later archaeological investigations which concluded that the cast-iron replacements were ‘painted to imitate marble’ and that the originals were ‘presumably either sold or discarded as structurally unsound’; see Le Quesne, op. cit. (note 23), p. 92. 102 See Mosseri, op. cit. (note 97). 103 British Museum, Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory archives, letter from Henry Wallis to A. W. Franks, Ravenna, 16 April 1892. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. 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TI - ‘What cannot often be obtainable’: the Revd Greville John Chester and the Bodleian genizah collection
JF - Journal of the History of Collections
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DA - 2019-08-03
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