When Professor Francis W. Kelsey returned to Ann Arbor in the fall of 1920 from an expedition in Egypt, he carried more than ancient artifacts. He brought the seed of what would become an extraordinary library collection.
Kelsey was 62 and chair of U-M’s Latin Department. A champion of archaeology and classical studies, he was interested in bringing antiquities from the Mideast to campus for his students to study.
Working with Bernard F. Grenfell, an eminent papyrologist with the British Museum, Kelsey explored Egypt and purchased 534 papyri documents and numerous fragments from local sellers. The earliest pieces date to the early part of the third century B.C.
U-M President Marion L. Burton said the papyri were discovered in the wake of the First World War, when ancient areas had been leveled to make fertilizer. U-M donors primarily funded Kelsey’s expedition, which “proved to have been undertaken at just the right moment,” Burton said.
The highly fragile papyri reflected both public and private life in everyday Egypt. The fragments contained literature about astrology, grammar, cooking, magic and other subjects. The batches also included written accounts of livestock, loan papers, tax receipts, house leases, census returns and a marriage contract.
Most documents were written in Greek, with others in Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Coptic and Demotic. The collection was moved from Egypt to England and then to the United States, but not before being lost temporarily on a London shipping dock and recovered by Kelsey himself.
Once in Ann Arbor, Kelsey hand-delivered the collection to University Librarian William W. Bishop. “It is a relief and satisfaction to commit the papyri and other materials to the care of the University Library, thus shifting the responsibility. The more I have handled the papyri, the more evident their value has become to me,” Kelsey wrote in his diary.
Today, the U-M Papyrology Collection that Kelsey created is the largest in North America. It is housed in the Hatcher Graduate Library.
Kelsey died in 1927. The University honored him in 1953 by naming the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology.
