Papyrology
Encyclopedia
Papyrology is the study of ancient literature, correspondence, legal archives, etc., as preserved in manuscript
s written on papyrus
, the most common form of writing material in the ancient civilizations of Egypt
, Greece
, and Rome
. Papyrology includes both the translation and interpretation of ancient documents in a variety of languages, as well as the care and preservation of rare papyrus originals.
Papyrology as a systematic discipline dates from the 1890s, when large caches of well-preserved papyri were discovered by archaeologists in several locations in Egypt
, such as Crocodilopolis
(Arsinoe) and Oxyrhynchus
. Leading centres of papyrology include Oxford University, Heidelberg University, Columbia University
, the University of Michigan
, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, and the University of California, Berkeley
. Founders of papyrology were the Viennese orientalist Joseph von Karabacek (Arabic papyrology), Wilhelm Schubart (Greek papyrology), the Austrian antiquarian Theodor Graf who acquired more than 100,000 Greek, Arabic, Coptic and Persian papyri in Egypt, which were bought by the Austrian Archduke Rainer
, G. F. Tsereteli
who published papyri of Russian and Georgian collections, Frederic George Kenyon, Ulrich Wilcken
, Bernard Pyne Grenfell
, Arthur Surridge Hunt and other distinguished scientists.
The collection of pagan, Christian and Arabic papyri
in Vienna called the Rainer papyri represents the first large discovery of manuscripts on papyrus found in the Fayum in Egypt
. About 1880 a carpet trader in Cairo acquired on behalf of Karabacek over 10,000 papyri and some texts written on linen. Of those Fayum papyri over 3000 are written in Arabic. The papyri originated from Kôm Fâris (Krokodílon Pólis
) and Ihnasiyyah al-Madinah (Herakleopolis Magna
), the textile pages from Kôm al-‘Azâma. They were exported to Vienna in 1882, and presented in a public exhibition the following year that caused a sensation. Later the papyri were bought by the Grand Duke Rainer and presented to the Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften
in Vienna.
Manuscript
A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...
s written on papyrus
Papyrus
Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
, the most common form of writing material in the ancient civilizations of Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, and Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
. Papyrology includes both the translation and interpretation of ancient documents in a variety of languages, as well as the care and preservation of rare papyrus originals.
Papyrology as a systematic discipline dates from the 1890s, when large caches of well-preserved papyri were discovered by archaeologists in several locations in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
, such as Crocodilopolis
Crocodilopolis
Crocodilopolis or Krokodilopolis or Ptolemais Euergetis or Arsinoe or Krialon was an ancient city in the Heptanomis, Egypt, the capital of Arsinoites nome, on the western bank of the Nile, between the river and the Lake Moeris, southwest of Memphis, in lat. 29° N...
(Arsinoe) and Oxyrhynchus
Oxyrhynchus
Oxyrhynchus is a city in Upper Egypt, located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo, in the governorate of Al Minya. It is also an archaeological site, considered one of the most important ever discovered...
. Leading centres of papyrology include Oxford University, Heidelberg University, Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, and the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. Founders of papyrology were the Viennese orientalist Joseph von Karabacek (Arabic papyrology), Wilhelm Schubart (Greek papyrology), the Austrian antiquarian Theodor Graf who acquired more than 100,000 Greek, Arabic, Coptic and Persian papyri in Egypt, which were bought by the Austrian Archduke Rainer
Archduke Rainer Ferdinand of Austria
Archduke Rainer Ferdinand of Austria was an Austrian prime minister. He was a son of Archduke Rainer Joseph....
, G. F. Tsereteli
Grigol Tsereteli
Grigol Tsereteli was a distinguished Georgian scientist, one of the founders of Papyrology, founder of the Georgian scientific school of Classical Philology, Doctor of Philological Sciences, Meritorious Scientific Worker of Georgia, Honourable Professor.- Life and works :Grigol Tsereteli was born...
who published papyri of Russian and Georgian collections, Frederic George Kenyon, Ulrich Wilcken
Ulrich Wilcken
Ulrich Wilcken was a German historian and papyrologist who was a native of Stettin.Wilcken studied ancient history and Oriental studies in Leipzig, Tübingen and Berlin. He was a disciple of historian Theodor Mommsen, who encouraged Wilcken to take a position as cataloguer of papyri following...
, Bernard Pyne Grenfell
Bernard Pyne Grenfell
Bernard Pyne Grenfell was an English scientist and Egyptologist and a member of The Queen's College, Oxford.With his friend and colleague, Arthur Surridge Hunt, he took part in the archaeological dig of Oxyrhynchus and discovered many ancient manuscripts known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, including...
, Arthur Surridge Hunt and other distinguished scientists.
The collection of pagan, Christian and Arabic papyri
Papyrus
Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
in Vienna called the Rainer papyri represents the first large discovery of manuscripts on papyrus found in the Fayum in Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. About 1880 a carpet trader in Cairo acquired on behalf of Karabacek over 10,000 papyri and some texts written on linen. Of those Fayum papyri over 3000 are written in Arabic. The papyri originated from Kôm Fâris (Krokodílon Pólis
Crocodilopolis
Crocodilopolis or Krokodilopolis or Ptolemais Euergetis or Arsinoe or Krialon was an ancient city in the Heptanomis, Egypt, the capital of Arsinoites nome, on the western bank of the Nile, between the river and the Lake Moeris, southwest of Memphis, in lat. 29° N...
) and Ihnasiyyah al-Madinah (Herakleopolis Magna
Herakleopolis Magna
Heracleopolis or Herakleopolis Magna is the Greek name of the capital of the Twentieth nome of ancient Egypt. It was called Henen-nesut, Nen-nesu, or Hwt-nen-nesu in ancient Egyptian, meaning 'house of the royal child.' Later, it was called Hnas in Coptic, and Ahnas in medieval Arabic writings...
), the textile pages from Kôm al-‘Azâma. They were exported to Vienna in 1882, and presented in a public exhibition the following year that caused a sensation. Later the papyri were bought by the Grand Duke Rainer and presented to the Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften
Austrian Academy of Sciences
The Austrian Academy of Sciences is a legal entity under the special protection of the Federal Republic of Austria. According to the statutes of the Academy its mission is to promote the sciences and humanities in every respect and in every field, particularly in fundamental research...
in Vienna.
See also
- Leiden ConventionsLeiden ConventionsThe Leiden Conventions are an established set of rules, symbols, and brackets used to indicate the condition of an epigraphic or papyrological text in a modern edition...
- Oxyrhinchus
- Greek Magical PapyriGreek magical papyriThe Greek Magical Papyri is the name given by scholars to a body of papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt, which each contain a number of magical spells, formulae, hymns and rituals. The materials in the papyri date from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD...
- Elephantine papyriElephantine papyriThe Elephantine Papyri are a collection of ancient Jewish manuscripts dating from the 5th century BC. They come from a Jewish community at Elephantine, then called Yeb, the island in the Nile at the border of Nubia, which was probably founded as a military installation in about 650 BC during...
- Magdalen papyrusMagdalen papyrusThe "Magdalen" papyrus was purchased in Luxor, Egypt in 1901 by Reverend Charles Bousfield Huleatt , who identified the Greek fragments as portions of the Gospel of Matthew and presented them to Magdalen College, Oxford, where they are cataloged as P. Magdalen Greek 17 and whence they have their...
- Nag Hammadi libraryNag Hammadi libraryThe Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. That year, twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local peasant named Mohammed Ali Samman...
- EpiDocEpiDocThe EpiDoc Collaborative, building recommendations for structured markup of epigraphic documents in TEI XML, was originally formed in 2000 by scholars at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Tom Elliott, the former director of the Ancient World Mapping Center, with Hugh Cayless and Amy...
- EpigraphyEpigraphyEpigraphy Epigraphy Epigraphy (from the , literally "on-writing", is the study of inscriptions or epigraphs as writing; that is, the science of identifying the graphemes and of classifying their use as to cultural context and date, elucidating their meaning and assessing what conclusions can be...
- Writing systems
- PalaeographyPalaeographyPalaeography, also spelt paleography is the study of ancient writing. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of...
- University of Michigan Papyrus CollectionUniversity of Michigan Papyrus CollectionThe Papyrology Collection of the University of Michigan Library is an internationally respected collection of ancient papyrus and a center for research on ancient culture, language, and history...
- Rylands PapyriRylands PapyriThe Rylands Papyri are a collection of thousands of papyrus fragments and documents from North Africa and Greece housed at the John Rylands University Library, Manchester, UK...
External links
- Trismegistos: an academic interdisciplinary portal of papyrological resources
- Places and discovery of papyri
- Introduction to Papyrology
- Columbia University Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS)
- Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri (DDBDP)
- The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection
- John D. Muccigrosso's Papyrology Homepage
- Ancient Egypt papyrus collection and stories behind each scene
- papyri.info
- Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project
- Association Internationale de Papyrologues, Links page
- Updates of papyrological publications, compiled from Papy-L et al.