Now available online: ancient Egyptian manuscripts
Written by Don Skemer, Curator of Manuscripts

Pharaonic Roll, no. 5 (detail). Transformation spell, no. 86: Swallow perched on mummy.
In the late 1920s, Garrett acquired several such rolls, chiefly from the Ptolemaic period (305-30 BCE), in the antiquities trade. He purchased a fully mounted Saite recension of the Book of the Dead in Hieratic, 26th Dynasty, from Spink & Son (London) in 1928. Others were purchased still fully rolled. One of these, a Hieroglyphic Book of the Dead (Pharaonic Roll, no. 5), New Kingdom, 18th/19th Dynasty, was partially examined at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1944-48 by Egyptologist and fellow Princetonian William C. Hayes (1903-63), Class of 1924. Five of Garrett’s Pharaonic rolls were finally unrolled and mounted in the Library’s Preservation Office in 1998-99 under the supervision of paper conservator Ted Stanley.
READ MORE on the Manuscripts blog.
Newsletter
Subscribe to Princeton University Library’s e-newsletter for the latest updates on teaching and research support, collections, resources, and services.