John 12.42-13.1; 13.6-24, Four Gospels and Acts, c. 250 AD, Egypt. CBL BP I ff.13-14.
© The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin A unique collection of texts helps bring the Christ’s passion to life, writes Aron Hegarty
An Irish museum forced to close its doors due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) is looking to bring the past to life again this Easter by opening itself to the online realm.
Although the pandemic is currently keeping buildings shut until further notice, the Chester Beatty museum and library is embracing and inviting viewers to see more of its collection via the worldwide web.
Dr Jill Unkel, curator of the Western Collection at Chester Beatty, told The Irish Catholic how one can unlock the museum’s hidden treasures online.
“There are a number of things that people can see without actually having to leave their home,” she says of the museum’s virtual sphere.
“When people go to our website [www.chesterbeatty.ie], they can go along the top of the page where they will see a number of tabs and one of them is ‘Exhibitions’ and the other one is ‘Collections’.
“Under ‘Collections’ you can see a number of highlighted themes, which the curators have put together, or you can search the online collection where we have around 3,000 objects which have been fully digitised and can be viewed in high resolution.”
Formerly known as the Chester Beatty Library, the Chester Beatty was established in Dublin in 1950 to house the collections of Sir Alfred Chester Beatty (1875 – 1968), a successful American mining engineer, collector and philanthropist.
Today the museum, which is based on the grounds of Dublin Castle, is also used a research library for scholars from all over the world.
Collections
The facility opened in February 2000 on the 125th anniversary of Sir Beatty’s birth and was named European Museum of the Year in 2002. The museum’s collections are displayed in two main galleries: the ‘Sacred Traditions’ and the ‘Arts of the Book’.
Both displays exhibit manuscripts, miniature paintings, prints, drawings, rare books and some decorative arts from the Persian, Islamic, East Asian and Western Collections.
Despite the building being forced to shut its doors to the public physically until April 20 due to the coronavirus outbreak, Dr Unkel sees opportunity in being able to reach out to an online audience.
“Online you can get to be much closer to things,” she says of the benefits in viewing the museum’s collection on the internet.
“You can zoom in to see without any glass panel and abbreviations are much easier to find and identify. We have been trying to push and explore ways to expand our online exhibitions anyway before the coronavirus came about.
“At the moment, because the gallery is not directly open to the public, we are going to do are best to portray the collection online, so people can see things that they wouldn’t normally have been on display had they gone to the building as well as things which aren’t on display at the moment.
She continues: “We have quite a large collection and we only ever have 1-2% of the collection on display at any one point and, on top of that, our material is much more delicate and can’t be out for extended periods of time. Nothing in our collection is ever kept out permanently and we have to rotate the materials to maintain and preserve the integrity of them.
Dr Unkel’s own Western Collection contains a board range of material of both Biblical and non-Biblical papyri which dates from the 3rd Century BC all the way up to the 20th Century.
Drawings
The Collection houses many illuminated manuscripts, rare books and Old Master prints and drawings.
For instance, it covers all Christian and biblical texts written in Armenian, Church Slavonic, Coptic, Ge’ez, Greek, Latin and Syriac from diverse cultural and geographical backgrounds.
The papyrus collection, featuring P45 and P46, are some of the earliest surviving Christian artefacts, and also include some of the oldest and most important biblical manuscripts in the world.
For example, the oldest manuscript of Paul’s letters (dated ca AD 200), the oldest surviving copy of all four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles in one codex, and portions of the Book of Revelation dating to the 3rd Century are among the most important manuscripts in the collection.
“We have 11 Old Testament and New Testament manuscripts acquired in the 1930s which are all written in Greek, all written on papyrus and these are the Biblical items from our collection which have been given the most attention by scholars and the public,” says Dr Unkel.
“There are two New Testament texts in particular – the Revelation and the four Gospels and Acts manuscripts – which are all handwritten and date from the 3rd Century, get a lot of attention. The Gospels and Acts manuscripts especially are what people come to see and are really interested in.”
She adds: “The dating of it in the 3rd Century when it was discovered changed the understanding of how Biblical scholars thought about the evolution of their Canon because the New Testament texts had been brought together earlier, whereas previously it had been thought that the four Gospels had been brought together later.”
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At this time of year, coming up to Easter, the Chester Beatty would usually have a lot of visitors looking at the Biblical papyri. For example, 7,942 visitors attended the museum between April 15 and 21 last year (2019) which represented an increase on the 2018 figure of 6,355.
Despite this year’s exhibition being moved online due to the pandemic, Dr Unkel says there will still be plenty of interest in viewing the collection on the web. “We have tons of material that deals with Easter in both the Biblical papyri and later European and Latin manuscripts,” says Dr Unkel.
“A lot of illustrations would relate to the Passion, the Crucifixion, the tortures that happened beforehand, the Resurrection, so we want to push a lot of those images so people can see the variety of ways these have been interpreted across cultures and across time.
“The Biblical papyrus collection is always something people come to see as they are one of the main things that people know about. Some people come as a sort of pilgrimage to see these really early texts because they are really interesting as historical objects.
She adds: “We have a small fragment from P66 which is from the Gospel of John and is a small story of Jesus, along with Mary and John, on the Crucifixion and what makes it really interesting is that there is imagery and a small abbreviation which refers to ‘cross’, ‘crucifix’ or ‘crucify’.”
The Chester Beatty can be viewed from one’s computer or mobile phone, allowing viewers to walk through a virtual museum, see galleries and visit current temporary exhibitions”
Trinity College Dublin graduate Dr Unkel, who grew up a Catholic, has been in her present role at the museum since 2013 and says her job is not to “re-establish” original texts but to look at “how it can be seen”.
“I have come from an academic background of Medieval and Christian iconography,” she says of her connection to the subjects in the field area of the Western Collection she oversees.
“However, I’m not a technical critic trying to re-establish the original text of the New Testament as written by the authors. I come at it from a more visual analysis and perspective.
“I look at how, as a book, it can be seen; how people can understand scripts if they don’t read the language in order to know what they are looking at.”
On the museum’s website, visitors can take virtual tours in 3D, see digital collections and explore learning resources, which are useful for children and parents.
In addition, for teachers, the museum’s collection offer students wonderful learning opportunities in a number of key curricula areas from art history to world faiths, geography, history, languages and STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and maths).
The Chester Beatty can be viewed from one’s computer or mobile phone, allowing viewers to walk through a virtual museum, see galleries and visit current temporary exhibitions.
Online Resources include the museum’s art, the work they do and the history of its founder Sir Alfred Chester Beatty.
One can also discover the museum’s world of art and culture on their mobile phone, by downloading the free Chester Beatty Museum Guide app.
The app features audio tours of the museum’s collection and galleries, including virtual 3D walk-throughs of the museum and online browsing of its world-renowned treasures.
Audio guides are available in a variety of languages: English, Irish, German, French, Spanish and Italian.
The Chester Beatty is one of the ‘premier sources for scholarship’ in both the Old and New Testaments”
“We are trying to make up for not being physically accessible by moving more of our collection online,” she says of the museum offering virtual walkthroughs of all their exhibitions and spaces.
“There would have been events held but these have since been postponed or cancelled, so we are hoping to extend our online presence and focus more on the stories behind the objects which people might find interesting.
“The goal would be to try do some themed stories online and keep with the idea of what’s currently going on.”
According to its website, the Chester Beatty is one of the “premier sources for scholarship” in both the Old and New Testaments and is home to one of the most significant collections of Western, Islamic and East & South-East Asian artefacts.
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Described by Lonely Planet as “not just the best museum in Ireland but one of the best in Europe”, the Chester Beatty contains a number of priceless historical objects.
Furthermore, its collection of papyri is one of the most extensive in the world, which is what Dr Unkel feels makes it “unique” and appealing to culturally-diverse communities in Ireland.
“The Chester Beatty is really important in Ireland for being one of the few places has materials from outside of the country and outside of Europe,” she says.
“It is a unique place for local communities to see things which are beyond their culture, and I think it is really important for people to see things that they didn’t know about, not just things they already do know of.”