The Schøyen Collection: Manuscripts from around the world spanning 5000 years of human culture & civilization

The Schøyen Collection crosses borders and unites cultures, religions and unique materials found nowhere else. The Collection, based in London and Oslo, contains over 20,000 significant manuscripts of major cultural importance and is an important part of the world’s heritage.

There is no public collection that has the Schøyen Collection’s unique array of manuscripts from all the greatest manuscript hoards, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, The Cairo Genizah of Hebrew MSS, The Oxyrhynchus hoard of classical papyri, the Dishna Biblical papyri, The Nag Hammadi Gnostic papyri, the Dunhuang hoard of Buddhist MSS, and many others. Nor is there one with such a variety, geographically, linguistically and textually, and of scripts and writing materials, covering so a great span of time — 5,000 years of history.

The Schøyen Collection was started around 1920 by Engineer M.O. Schøyen (1896-1962), father of Martin Schøyen, who collected some 1000 volumes of early and later editions of Norwegian and international literature, history, travel, science, as well as antiquities.

Martin Schøyen first extended the collection with ancient coins, antiquities, early printed books and incunables.  From that beginning, he went on to acquire important manuscripts that can now be found across the themes and categories presented on this website.

The latest additions to the Schoyen Collection have included movie scripts and storyboards, and examples of modern classical virtual notation in the Music collection.

• 
  Home
  
• 
  About Us
  
• 
  Bibliography
  
• 
  News
  
• 
  Contact
  
• 
  Help
  
• 
  Site Map
  
• 
  Search
  

• 
  Bible
  
  • 
    Introduction
    
  • 
    Hebrew & Aramaic
    
  • 
    Septuagint & Greek NT
    
  • 
    Coptic Bible
    
  • 
    Latin Bible
    
  • 
    Other Bible
    
• 
  History
  
  • 
    Sumerian
    
  • 
    Babylonian
    
  • 
    Assyrian
    
  • 
    Persian, Greek, Byzantine
    
  • 
    Roman
    
  • 
    Medieval
    
  • 
    Modern
    
• 
  Literature
  
  • 
    Sumerian
    
  • 
    Babylonian
    
  • 
    Assyrian
    
  • 
    Classical Greek
    
  • 
    Classical Roman
    
  • 
    Medieval & Renaissance
    
  • 
    Modern
    
• 
  Palaeography
  
  • 
    Early Writing
    
  • 
    Greek Book Scripts
    
  • 
    Latin Book Scripts
    
  • 
    Latin Documentary Scripts
    
  • 
    Greek & Other Documentary Scripts
    
  • 
    Aramaic, Hebrew & Syriac
    
  • 
    Arabic
    
  • 
    Native American
    
• 
  Religions
  
  • 
    Introduction
    
  • 
    Extinct Religions
    
  • 
    Living Religions
    
• 
  Music
  
  • 
    Notation
    
  • 
    Composers
    
• 
  Special Collections
  
  • 
    Patristsic Literature
    
  • 
    Liturgy
    
  • 
    Law
    
  • 
    Mathematics
    
  • 
    Magical Literature
    
  • 
    Calendars & Almanacs
    
  • 
    Dead Sea Scrolls
    
  • 
    Scribal Activity & Learning
    
  • 
    Papyri & Ostraca
    
  • 
    Bindings & Bookboxes
    
  • 
    Seals
    
  • 
    Apocryphal Literature
    
  • 
    Nordic Countries
    
  • 
    Dictionaries & Lexical Texts
    
  • 
    China
    
  • 
    Pre-Gutenberg Printing
    
  • 
    Buddhism
    
• 
  Smaller Collections
  
  • 
    Architecture
    
  • 
    Books of Hours / Prayerbooks
    
  • 
    Letters
    
  • 
    Legends
    
  • 
    Children's Literature
    
  • 
    Library Catalogues
    
  • 
    Maps
    
  • 
    Marine Life
    
  • 
    Medical Texts
    
  • 
    Miracles & Saints
    
  • 
    Peerage Genealogies
    
  • 
    Roman Military Diplomas
    
  • 
    Ships & Seamanship
    
  • 
    Slavery
    
  • 
    Weights & Measures
    
  • 
    Wine & Beer
    
  • 
    Women Authors
    
  • 
    Miscellaneous Texts
    

Daniel Hadas Dictionaries (general) Dictionaries (regional) Grammar and syntax Texts (series) Texts (electronic resources) Manuscripts Bibiographical resources Please note that none of the lists are to be seen as complete, or free from all errors

Open Greek and Latin Project of the Open Philology Project The ultimate goal is to represent every source text produced in Classical Greek or Latin from antiquity through the present, including texts preserved in manuscript tradition as well as on inscriptions, papyri, ostraca and other written artifacts.  Over the course of the next five years, we will focus upon converting as much Greek and Latin, available as scanned printed books, into an open, dynamic corpus, continuously augmented and improved by a combination of automated processes and human contributions of many kinds. The focus upon Greek and Latin reflects both the belief that we have an obligation to disseminate European cultural heritage and the observation that recent advances in OCR technology for Greek and Latin make these intertwined languages ready for large-scale work. The Open Greek and Latin Project aims at providing at least one version for all Greek and Latin sources produced during antiquity (through c. 600 CE) and a growing collection from the vast body of post-classical Greek and Latin that still survives. Perhaps 150 million words of Greek and Latin, preserved in manuscripts, on stone, on papyrus or other writing surface, survive from antiquity. Analysis of 10,000 books in Latin, downloaded from Archive.org, identified more than 200 million words of post-classical Latin. With 70,000 public domain books listed in the Hathi Trust as being in Ancient Greek or Latin, the amount of Greek and Latin already available will almost certainly exceed 1 billion words. Where existing corpora of Greek and Latin have generally included one edition of a work, Open Greek and Latin Corpus is designed to manage multiple versions of, and to represent the complete textual history of, a work: every manuscript, every papyrus fragment, and every printed edition are all versions within the history of a text. In the short run, this involves using OCR-technology optimized for Classical Greek and Latin to create an open corpus that is reasonably comprehensive for the c. 100 million words produced through c. 600 CE and that begins to make available the billions of words produced after 600 CE in Greek and Latin that survive. Philological Workflow Module Distributed Review Module Philological Repository Module e-Portfolio Module Open Greek & Latin Texts A collection of machine-corrected XML versions of classical authors and works, freely available to download and reuse. For more information, click on the tabs below. Texts are published in GitHub on an ongoing basis. Watch this space and our Facebook page for updates. athenaeus-dev The works of Athenaeus of Naucratis, Greek rhetorician and grammarian. church_fathers_dev A selection of Church Fathers. english_trans-dev English translations of classical works. misc-dev An undefined collection of TEI and EpiDoc versions of classical texts. cag-dev The Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca. csel-dev The Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. fragmentary-dev A Collection of classical fragmentary authors and works. italian_trans-dev Italian translations of classical works. patrologia_latina-dev The Patrologia Latina. catenae-dev The Catenae Graecorum Patrum in Novum Testamentum. dfhg-dev The Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum. french_trans-dev French translations of classical works. libanius-dev The works of the Greek rhetorician Libanius. philo-dev The works of Philo Judaeus, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher.