From Bernardino Drovetti's Collection to Amedeo Peyron's Classification. The Coptic Literary Codices Held in the Museo Egizio: An Overview

The remains of more than twenty papyrus codices are housed in the Museo Egizio’s papyrus storeroom largely under the shelf mark CGT 63000. They all almost certainly belong to the same ancient library, which, on the basis of internal elements (content, titles, selection and combination of texts) and external clues (codicological and palaeographic features), can convincingly be dated to the late 7th or early 8th century. The single leaves—bifolii that were cut into two when the manuscripts entered the museum—are kept under glass, normally labelled to indicate their sequence within the codex. This article describes their provenace and history.