The Challenges of a Purchase by the Berlin Papyrus Collection in 1926

Abstract Where do Arabic papyri come from? The article shifts the question to “How did the Arabic papyri reach modern institutions, and why do we know so little about their provenance”? In an exemplary way, the purchase of 142 texts from Maurice Nahman in Cairo by the Berlin Papyrus collection in 1926, which is exceptionally well documented, will be discussed here. The collection was then headed by Wilhelm Schubart, who was assisted in this purchase by Adolf Grohmann and Ludwig Borchardt. It turns out that several of the steps from the findspot to the museum were settled on the margin of legal norms, which meant that the actors had an interest to disguise business partners and archeological contexts. For this reason, most acquisitions cannot be traced back to the original findspot. If we intend to reconstruct groups of related documents, it will probably be easier to analyze internal features, like the mentioned persons and the style of handwriting. Museum archives can then complement this information.