In the north wing of the New Museum, just past the small cupola-topped room housing the famous bust of Nefertiti, a number of highly fragile treasures await the visitor: ancient Egyptian and Middle Eastern papyri, texts and drawings set down on writing material produced from the papyrus plant, bearing witness to humankind’s first cultures. Since 2008, Verena Lepper, who holds a doctorate in Egyptology, has been in charge of caring for and preserving the Egyptian Museum’s collection of 60,000 manuscripts and papyri.