‘…As Safe as in the British Museum’: Paul de Lagarde and His Borrowing of Manuscripts from the Collection of Robert Curzon

Abstract

The Coptic collection of Robert Curzon, fourteenth Baron Zouche (1810-73), now in the British Library, contains two manuscripts loaned to and published by the gifted but controversial German orientalist Paul de Lagarde (1827-91): fragments of a Sahidic psalter and an exegetical catena to the Gospels in Bohairic. Lagarde's papers, today in the possession of the University of Gottingen, where he taught oriental languages from 1869-91, throw fresh light on the history of this loan. His correspondence not only forces us to revise the chronology of the publication process, it also lays open how a German professor of limited financial means would resort to half-truths and stratagems in order to persuade a British nobleman to send his valuable Coptic manuscripts out of the country.