4/12/06

GJudas: The Mr. Bruce Ferrini File.

I hit the jackpot here with what appears to be a few more archived articles, and then a purported list of all fragments and such sold by Ferrini on Ebay until January 2006. He has enough Coptic fragments that Pearse's link (see previous post) could really be to any text.

There is some interesting commentary at the bottom, which provides a little backstory to Ferrini's collection on Ebay:

Late in 2005 Bruce P. Ferrini, an antiquities dealer in Akron OH, declared bankruptcy and began to offer items from his collections on eBay. A significant percentage of these offerings were papyri -- cartonnage as well as fragments in demotic, coptic, greek and arabic -- along with some related items on linen and lead. Without knowing, or being able to find out, how extensive the collection might be, I began to catalog the items offered and to offload the (generally excellent) images that were provided. My hope was that although the materials would end up with a large number of purchasers, presumably mostly private, it would still be possible to know what items had been sold and possibly to trace their distribution. I also bid on some pieces, especially cartonnage, to use in an upcoming seminar on papyrology at the University of Pennsylvania as well as to have on hand for study.

I am not quite sure who the "I" is here. I have a great guess, but it is a bit confusing towards the end of the webpage. Extremely interesting nonetheless.

(Update: The UPenn. page is by Dr. Robert Kraft. What a great idea to keep a record of where all these fragments have gone.)
(Update 4/18: The Beacon-Journal has published a lengthy biography of Ferrini. It is a tale of woe, and...validates the "van Rijn angle.")

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