Manuscript Collections
Special Collections maintains a small collection of manuscripts that date from antiquity to the present. The collection is intended to demonstrate the physical characteristics of the book before printing, and it contains a wide variety of scripts and materials from various time periods. From antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, the collection includes:
- Eight cuneiform tablets from the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods
- Around a dozen manuscripts in book form, ranging in date from ca. 1150 to ca. 1600
- Over 200 leaves and fragments, including seventeenth century book collector John Bagford’s manuscript leaves and fragments, Fragmenta Manuscripta, dating from the eighth to the seventeenth century
- A handful of leaves from the Koran, palm leaf manuscripts, and other examples of manuscripts from non-Western cultures
Finding Aids for Manuscript Collections
Cuneiform tablets.
Special Collections holds eight cuneiform tablets whose exact provenance is unknown. Six of the tablets date from the Ur III period (2100-2000 BCE),…
Fragmenta Manuscripta Collection.
Fragmenta Manuscripta is a collection of over 200 manuscript leaves and fragments dating from the eighth to the seventeenth century. Originally…
Literary and Historical Manuscripts
Special Collections holds modern manuscript materials in the form of books, correspondence, and personal papers. These materials were collected at…
Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.
Special Collections maintains a small collection of European manuscripts intended to demonstrate the physical characteristics of the manuscript books,…
Pages from the Past Collection
Pages from the Past is a collection of original manuscript and rare book leaves compiled and sold by a New York book dealer Alfred W. Stites from 1964…
Selected Items
[Cuneiform tablet]. [Messenger text].
obverse
1. 5(disz) sila3 kasz saga 3(disz) sila3 ninda
#tr.en: 5 sila of high-quality beer, 3 sila of bread,
2. 2(disz) gin2 i3 2(disz) gin2…
Bible commentary on Canticle of Canticles
Provenance: John Bagford (1650s-1716) to St. Martin-in-the-Fields; sale 1861 to Sir Thomas Phillipps, n.15758; his sale 22 May, 1913, lot 742; Sir…
Book of hours (use of Rome) : with added prayers and Marian litanies.
A nearly complete fifteenth-century Book of Hours from the Convent of Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. In addition to the Hours of the Virgin,…
Instructions to his son
Contents: H. G. Jones, "Peter Idley's Instructions to his son," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen74 (1973) 686-689.
Book of hours for Dominican use.
Example of the sort of Book of Hours that would have been familiar to most bourgeois 15th century Frenchmen and women in its original state. Perhaps…
Chess Diagrams
Provenance: John Bagford (1650s-1716) to St. Martin-in-the-Fields; sale 1861 to Sir Thomas Phillipps, n.15758; his sale 22 May, 1913, lot 742; Sir…
