For papyrologists, the best known of Skeat’s many works is probably his Reigns of the Ptolemies (first published in 1954 and reissued in 1969). This invaluable guide with its tables of dates has a place on the shelves of anyone who works on Ptolemaic texts. As an editor his publications have been described as ‘models of the way in which papyri should be presented’. For 14 years, from 1955 to 1968, he was joint editor, with Sir Eric Turner, of the Graeco-Roman Memoirs of the Egypt Exploration Society (the series that publishes the Oxyrhynchus Papyri), and during this period no fewer than 18 volumes were added to the series. Skeat had a considerable input into all of these. As a papyrologist, his most notable publications were Papyri from Panopolis in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (1964) and, in 1974, his volume of Greek Papyri in the British Museum, P. Lond. VII: the Zenon archive, which completed the publication of papyri from that large archive in major museums. This was and remains an important publication. At the time he expressed dismay at its price of £30.00; others of us considered it an impressive bargain. Overall, Skeat was energetic, productive, painstaking and meticulous in his scholarship.

Papyrology was only one side of Skeat’s scholarly work; many of his important publications were in biblical studies, New Testament texts and book-production. He collaborated with Sir Harold Idris Bell on Fragments of an Unknown Gospel (1935), with Colin Roberts on The Birth of the Codex (1983) and earlier with H.J.M. Milne on Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus (1938). Another important article on that codex appeared in the Journal of Theological Studies for 1999, and a collection of his biblical writings will be published by Brill this month.

Skeat was a retiring individual who shunned the limelight, yet he always offered a warm welcome to colleagues and students alike. With Skeat as Keeper, the Manuscripts Room of the British Museum was a friendly place to work, where at least one beginner student who came to look at papyri received a guiding hand and a personal welcome, the use of his transcripts together with those of Bell and a strong sense of having entered an extraordinarily supportive profession.

By Dorothy J. Thompson

Early in his career as a librarian, two momentous acquisitions put his name in the public arena. He helped H. Idris Bell edit a newly purchased apocryphal gospel now known as the Egerton 2 Papyrus, but then published under the title Fragments of an Unknown Gospel. This collection of hitherto unknown sayings of Jesus caused great public interest. As these fragments are probably the oldest Christian writing extant, the publication has maintained its popularity and influence.

It was during his early years at the library that the famous fourth-century biblical Greek Manuscript Codex Sinaiticus, now on permanent display at the British Library, was purchased from the Soviet government, and it arrived in London at Christmastide 1933. Skeat and his colleague H. J. M. Milne were responsible for rebinding and reconditioning the manuscript. Their reading of its contents and their skilled detective work identified the work undertaken on the manuscript subsequent to its original writing. Their findings were set out in Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus, published in 1938. That work is still regularly cited in books on biblical manuscripts. Skeat himself maintained his interest in the manuscript and continued to write about it during his thirty years of retirement. One of his last articles (published in 2000) was on the nineteenth-century discovery of Sinaiticus at St Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai. In 1999 the centennial volume of the Journal of Theological Studies carried a magisterial article by him discussing the provenance of Sinaiticus and of a comparable biblical manuscript, Codex Vaticanus. As a consequence of that article, a colloquium was organized in Geneva to consider his conclusions. Skeat had also been an advisor to the Vatican library during their preparations to publish a facsimile of Codex Vaticanus for the Millennium.

Some of Skeat’s output of nearly one hundred published articles and books relate to holdings in the British Library, classical texts as well as papers relating to English literature and history; several deal with ancient calendars, especially Ptolemaic chronology; and all bear witness to his meticulous and painstaking scholarship. He came from a background of learning: his grandfather was Professor W. W. Skeat, the famous Anglo-Saxon specialist.

Skeat’s Papyri from Panopolis in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, and his Catalogue of Greek Papyri in the British Museum, volume VII: The Zenon Archive showed him to be a skilled and productive papyrologist, and it was as such that he was regularly consulted by scholars throughout the world.

He was also involved in publishing new biblical finds in the Oxyrhynchus and Chester Beatty collections. But it is his more wide-ranging studies of the techniques of ancient book production and his essays on such matters as dictation, the origins of the codex, or the cost of papyrus that continue to be influential in any subsequent discussions, especially of early Christian literature and of book production. His co-authorship (with Colin Roberts) of The Birth of the Codex, now reprinted several times, stands as a significant monograph. His chapter on early Christian book production in the influential Cambridge History of the Bible is a monumental article.

Skeat’s interest in New Testament textual criticism resulted in his being a member of the Critical Greek New Testament Project, a committee of the British Academy, and he helped further its task of assembling a thesaurus of textual variants in Luke’s Gospel. Skeat in his own right also contributed perceptive articles on text-critical cruces such as the ending of Mark, the beginning of Philippians and the meaning of Mark 7:3 in the Greek New Testament. Even two weeks before his death, he was planning further articles on other variant readings.

The long-lasting significance of Skeat’s work is exemplified in his article on the enigmatic text and original form of Jesus’ saying about the lilies of the field at Matthew 6:28. He first wrote on that verse in 1948. In 2000, a major edition of the Gospels’ sayings source ‘Q’ by James Robinson gave great prominence to Skeat’s pioneering reconstruction of the saying from fifty years earlier.

By Keith Elliott