As It Happens tends to major on international relations and politics on the United Kingdom but it is also the official blog of the TPPR group.  This comprises not only TPPR itself but Pendry White, a company providing strategic marketing services for international businesses.

Sometimes you come across the dream client that combines intrinsic interest, nice people, honourable conduct and the opportunity to use the skills of both companies.  Such a client is the Schoyen Collection which is the the largest private manuscript collection created in the last 100 years. 

Martin Schoyen, who created it in the course of half a century, is a passionate believer in publication.  The failure to publish has been one of the great drags on the progress of archaeology and its kindred areas of specialist knowledge.  Some of the great archaeologists and antiquaries were excavators and lecturers but could be poor publishers of their work.  Some 60% of the holdings of the Schoyen Collection is presently under research and publication in the Manuscripts in the Schoyen Collection series and this is a remarkable achievement by a private collector, a breed that would be hunted to extinction by some radical ideologues of public ownership.

But this blog posting is not about current cultural policy - a contentious matter at the best of times.  The Schoyen Collection's opinions on these matters are laid out clearly enough on its website, both in the news section and in the main body of the text.  The Press Office is always happy to answer reasonable questions.

What should be equally interesting is the website itself which is an unusual public resource. The Schoyen Collection is not only committed to publication, notably through the Manuscripts in the Schoyen Collection series, but has made an effort to place a representative range of material on the web for the general public and scholars to see, with useful background commentary. Of course, the website does not contain everything. Resources are not limitless and priority is given to scholarly publication, but the Collection's efforts mean that a good deal of it can be accessed anywhere in the world at any time by anyone with access to the internet.

Here are some of the treasures you can see for yourself (this is a personal choice of just fifteen of them and is certainly not the choice of the Collection - you can click on the pictures to get a fuller view):-

• Valdivian or pre-Valdivian stone plaques or star charts which are the earliest evidence of "writing" from the Americas
• The earliest known record of music and musical instruments in history
• The oldest known mathematical text
• Mankind's oldest reference to the Deluge which is, together with 1/3 tablet in Philadelphia, the only other tablet bearing this story in Sumerian
• The Royal Annals of King Tiglath-Pileser I of Assyria which document two previous unknown wars!
• The earliest surviving manuscript of Hesiod's poem, and also one of the earliest MSS of Greek literature
• Remarkable collections of Dead Sea Scrolls and papyri
• The oldest Septuagint Leviticus extant - the greater part of the papyrus is not represented on any Dead Sea Scroll so this is the oldest MS of this part of the Bible
• The earliest Matthew in any Coptic dialect
• The monumental Shepochkin Apostol, which is the only copy of such a Russian Church Slavonic Apostol in private hands
• The earliest surviving manuscript [in Nahuatl] of the Scriptures in the Americas, a primary document concerning the introduction of Christianity into the New World
• The earliest Magna Carta in private hands
• The only extant contemporary literary parallel or actor's part in manuscript of any of Shakespeare's plays - only 2 more manuscripts from Shakespeare's lifetime are known
• The oldest surviving copy of the Nepali (or Bihari) Devimahatmya, Praise of the Great Goddess.
• The Ledger of Chief Little Shield, a participant in the Platte River Indian war - Little Shield was a Cheyenne war leader who also participated at Beecher Island, Washita, Summit Springs and the Little Big Horn battles.

That's enough for now, though I have had to leave out Australian aboriginal treasures, Chinese oracle bones, ostraca and what-have-you - a magnificent collection by a dedicated collector.

[Expression of Interest - TPPR acts as adviser to The Schoyen Collection.  Its subsidiary, Pendry White, runs its Press Office and handles the technical aspects of web content management.]

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