LIFE

Penn Museum hosts Pope-related exhibit

'Sacred Writings' offers glimpse of ancient Gospel texts

Renee Winkler
For the Courier-Post
An ancient clay tablet in Sumerian cuneiform from the site of Nippur in Mesopotamia (now in Iraq), circa 1650 B.C., contains the earliest version of the Mesopotamian flood story.  A version of this tale becomes incorporated into the Epic of Gilgamesh, and tells of a flood that destroyed humankind — the story closely parallels the biblical story of Noah.

Almost 120 years ago, two British Egyptologists sifting through sand 100 miles from Cairo made a discovery that still sends chills through people lucky enough to view it.

The fragment, roughly the size of a 5-by-7 envelope, includes the beginning of the Gospel of St. Matthew. Written on both sides of papyrus, the scrap was discovered in what we today would call a landfill, resting intermingled with records of weddings, butcher bills, leases and letters. Testing dates it to the 3rd Century A.D.

The expedition of Bernard Gremfell and Arthur Hunt, which began in 1896, was underwritten in part by the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology through the Egypt Exploration Fund. The  biblical fragment has been in Philadelphia for part of a century.

It is one of a dozen items now on display at the Penn Museum to mark the visit later this month of Pope Francis to the World Meeting of Families. While the Penn Museum will be closed to the public the days of the Pope's time in Philadelphia, the special exhibition will be in place through Nov. 7. It is located in the second floor atrium of Pepper Hall, just above the main entrance to the museum in the 3200 block South St.

“It's been in and out of galleries and in and out of storage,” said Jennifer Wegner, associate curator of the museum's Egyptian section. “I remember seeing it when I was a little kid. People could always see it by appointment,” she said.

Today, the St. Matthew bible is one of the items that can be viewed online at the museum's website, www.penn.museum/. The bible fragment lists the genealogy of Jesus Christ through 15 generations, beginning with Abraham and continues like a litany to Joseph, the father of Christ.

One of the world’s oldest fragments of the gospel of Saint Matthew, written on papyrus and dating to the 3rd century A.D., was once part of a codex (book). This fragment, written in ancient Greek, contains the beginning of the Gospel of Matthew (Ch 1. Verses 1-9, 12, 14-20). It begins with the lineage of Jesus, then describes how Mary became with child by the Holy Spirit. This is one of ten extraordinary pieces on short-term display in the special exhibition, Sacred Writings: Extraordinary Texts of the Biblical World.

Items found in the mounds of sand were preserved by the dry climate, said Wegner. Discovery of the artifacts in the city of Oxyrhynchus (which means the City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish), had none of the glamour of tombs found at Luxor or Gaza, but the work of Gremfell and Hunt brought the largest-ever recovery of ancient papyrus, including other gospels, including one of St. Thomas.

When the pair of Egyptologists packed up in 1907, they had shipped home 700 boxes of documents.

Sharing space in the same hall as part of Penn Museum's "Sacred Spaces'' exhibit is an even older and more stunning find: a small portion of a clay tablet that recounts the earliest version of the Mesopotamian flood story. Paralleling the biblical story of Noah, its creation is set at 1650 B.C. Written on clay with a stylus, a stick-like object made from a sharpened reed, the artifact, roughly 5-inches square and written in the Sumerian language, was discovered an area now known as Iraq. It tells of waves and windstorms that continued for seven days and seven nights until Utu, the sun god, came out.

Dr. Julian Siggers, director of the Penn Museum, said the visit of Pope Francis gives curators at that library and at the libraries of the University of Pennsylvania “the opportunity to put together a truly inspiring exhibit with enormous religious significance.”

Librarians used the great flood episode to showcase 10 bibles, opening each to references to that event. H. Carton Rogers, vice provost and director of library for the university, said the exhibit shows 750 years of historical scholarship.”

It's an opportunity, Rogers said, to show off the extent of the museum's and the university's libraries. Five scholars worked to pull together the exhibition, said Steve Tinney, associate curator-in-charge of the Babylonian section of the Penn Museum.

“There is a thrill to picking up something like the flood tablet and wondering how it came into being more than 4,000 years ago. Someone prepared the clay and wrote down a story deeply meaningful to him,” said Tinney.

The flood was reported not only in the cuneiform, but in religious books sharing the gallery including a richly illuminated Qur'an from Iran – signed by a scribe in 1164. Here also are an illuminated (or illustrated) Latin bible produced in France in the late 13th-century; the first authorized Roman Catholic translation into English of the New Testament, prepared in 1582, and a polyglot New Testament Bible printed in Nuremberg in 1599 that translates the gospels into 12 languages.

An early 16th-century Rabbinic bible printed in Venice is displayed near and the first complete Bible printed in the New World, a translation into the Native American Massachusett or Algonquin language done by Puritan missionary John Eliot in 1663.

A section of the Saint Matthew gospel from an illuminated Latin Bible produced in Arras, France in the late 13th century, from the Penn Libraries' Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. The Bible is part of the new exhibition Sacred Writings: Extraordinary Texts of the Biblical World at the Penn Museum. Photo: Penn Libraries' Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.

One bible tells a story from creation to the election of Pope Sixtus IV in 1471, and features a drawing of Noah's arc showing where animals and plants were stowed.

The most recent, but equally splendid Bible, is from 1999, printed in Massachusetts by Barry Moser, who made only 400 copies. A fundamentalist preacher, Moser used specially designed tape and paper and carved engravings.

In a first-floor gallery in the Penn Museum, under a vaulted ceiling visitors can see large-scale photographs of early Byzantine churches from Turkish architect and photographer Ahmet Ertug. A slide-show of the exteriors of the churches, all designed UNESCO World Heritage sites and some more than 900 years old, continues to display.

At the Penn Museum there is so much more to see, including galleries that focus on Native American history, pre-Columbian civilizations from Mexico and Central America, African objects from the 16th to 20th centuries, and a large display of mummies and ancient Egyptian tomb artifacts. You can even peak into a working laboratory where conservators portect and preserve pieces of Egyptian mummies.

If you go 

The Penn Museum (the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology) is at 3260 South Street, Philadelphia. It is on Penn's campus, across from Franklin Field.

The Sacred Writings exhibit continues through Nov. 7.

The museum is open Tuesday and Thursday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. On the first Wednesday of the month the museum is open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Admission is $15 for adults; $13 for senior citizens over 65; $10 for children 6 to 17 and full-time students with ID. Admission is free for active U.S. Military and to teachers and to members and to children 5 and younger.

For information go to www.penn.museum or call (215) 898-4000.

An enlarged diagram of the ark associated with the biblical story of Noah in a late 15th-century manuscript copy documenting the history of the world. The manuscript copy spans from the creation to the election of Pope Sixtus IV.