Papyrology
Papyrology is the study of ancient texts that survive on papyrus (and a few other perishable writing materials) from Egypt and occasionally from elsewhere. The texts can be literary or documentary and are most commonly written in a form of Egyptian or in Greek or Arabic. The following links provide various introductions to papyrology.
A paper given at the papyrological congress in Copenhagen in 1992. The “century” ran from 1892 to 1992. By now we have entered the millennium of papyrology – it will take another 1,000 years to publish all papyri so far retrieved from archaeological sites in Egypt (with more coming to light every year).
More developed bibliography on papyrological publications (in French)
Introductory bibliography on Greek literary papyri
Brief introduction to dating New Testament manuscripts
Homepage of the American Society of Papyrologists
Homepage of the Association Internationale de Papyrologues
Comprehensive list of electronic resources (in Italian)
Full listing of text editions and their sigla
Our summary of editorial conventions
Our two sets of “Ten commandments” for preparing and for using editions of papyri
Date Converter for Ancient Egypt
Our uncensored list of weights, measures and money
Bibliography on Greek words, many of which occur in Greek papyrus documents in an unusual sense
Our selection of the most important electronic databases:
Most Greek and Latin papyrus documents published until 1996 are available on the PHI CD-ROM #7 in fully searchable form (depending on the search program)
All Greek and Latin papyrus documents published from 1996 are indexed (as a downloadable file)
Greek and Latin papyrus documents published until ca. 2004 are searchable online.
Greek and Latin inscriptions from Egypt and Nubia are searchable online
Registers of texts (rather than the texts themselves):
Registers of documentary and literary papyri from Egypt, papyrus archives and collections
Another database of literary papyri from Egypt
Database of predominantly American papyrus collections
Other databases:
Gazetteer of villages in the Arsinoite nome
Send your comments to ancient.history@classics.uc.edu.
© Peter van Minnen 2007
Work in progress!
A translation of all documents
from ancient Alexandria
that survive on papyrus.
