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The 29th Papyrology Congress begins on July 29, 2019 in Lecce, Italy. Organized by the University of Salento, it hosts the specialists of the papyrus for a week, come to share their latest discoveries on the subject.
" This year, many new literary papyri will be on display. The results of the restoration of the famous papyrus Artemidorus are highly anticipated, it is the centerpiece of this edition "says Mario Capasso. The Italian papyrologist is part of the scientific congress of this 29th edition of the International Congress of Papyrology. 400 professionals come to present their progress, the result of their research and attend conferences. This year, the congress took place in the Puglia region of Lecce. Every three years, another European or American university takes charge of organizing this event. The last time it was organized in Egypt was in 1989 in Cairo.
LecceSette - Università, A Lecce esperti da tutto il mondo per il Congresso Internazionale di Papirologia https://t.co/CngnKj0blz
UniSalento (@unisalento) July 29, 2019Crocodile and offering
In the popular imagination, Egypt is closely related to the papyri, but it is the only one to have used it as a medium of writing. This founding element of the Egyptian civilization is common to all the Mediterranean basin between the 3rd century and the 8th century BC Then it will be replaced by wood. The papyri are only a support and their contents vary: they can be shopping lists, as sacred texts through the accounts of a trade. The exceptional preservation of Egyptian papyri is due to arid soils and dry climate. In Italy, Greece and Byzantium, the papyri destroyed themselves quickly. Woven from reed fibers, papyrus is a biodegradable material that does not resist moisture.
Despite the good state of these Egyptian archives, many of them were studied outside the nation without the agreement of the latter. The looting of papyri in the past has marked the country. At present, Egypt has established an important conservation policy. The papyri are better protected and only rarely leave the country. The country does not open up its national archives very much, but specializes more and more in the study of the papyri, so that it can have its own research results and thus avoid a scientific neo-colonialism. Labor remains scarce, but training is growing.
Two institutions safeguard papyri: museums and institutes of papyrology. " It is always more complex to have access to the archives of museums, because they are in a logic of conservation. In the institutes of papyrology, the study is as important as the conservation "explains Stéphanie Walleckier, researcher in History specialist Hellenistic Egypt.
Hundreds of thousands of papyri belong to private collections scattered throughout the world. Several databases are open-source and facilitate the work of researchers. The University of Louvain in Belgium has opened a database, Trismegistos, where it is possible to find the collections of each university, a huge time saver for researchers. Papyriinfo, a specialized browser for papyrus, operates on a similar principle.
Many lives
Several uses were possible for the same papyrus. Sold by the roll, it could be cut then the sheets were glued to each other to form archives kept in jars. Once used, they could be washed and reused. They also served as a material to fill the offerings made to the gods. The crocodile god of Fayum, Souchos, was regularly offered small crocodiles stuffed with papyrus, in exchange for his clemency. In the end, the unusable papyri were sold to the embalmers, who superimposed and pasted them into mummy ornaments. A common practice that the Egyptian middle class could afford, since we found many plastrons, leggings and slippers to accompany the deceased in their journey to the afterlife.
Stephanie Walleckier and Brigitte Bakech looked at these multi-life papyri. During the congress, they presented six papyrus used for embalming but whose acronyms are still legible. On one of the documents, the black ink stands out well on the yellowish support, whose torn fibers are visible. One of the sides is rounded, like carved, proof that it was used to plaster a mummy. The date is not specified, but they managed to date it from the 3rd century BC. The document could be dated thanks to a study of the letters. The way of writing evolves over time.
The front side served as a Coptic administrative document, dating back to about the third century. The identification of the document established that it was an exchange for agricultural land. " The Fayum administration is asking for the harvest of garlic, herbs and onions to be recovered, as they are likely to expire. The land probably belonged to a Thracian horseman, "says Stéphanie Wackenier. Riders of the regular army were given land by the king, who then recover the harvest. " The layout of the document confirms that this is an administrative document. On the front, someone undertook to write the Greek alphabet, after washing the papyrus, which was common. We think it is a scribal exercise, but it is a hypothesis to be taken with tweezers. Several infrared photos showed the erased signs. The complexity of their research was to establish the course of this document and why the two scripts were found on the same support.