Papyrology

Origins of papyrology

Papyrology owes its existence like scientific activity with the very particular convergence of a historical factor and a geographical factor for one given period.

The historical factor

To find papyri and other Greek documents in Egypt, it is necessary that Greeks lived there permanently. During the millenium which finishes with the Arab invasion in the middle of the 7th century, the Greek language was in Egypt the language of the capacity, of the administration. With more or less of generalization, it is the language used by the socially dominant groups economically or, except for the Egyptian high clergy, under the Dynastie of Ptolémées. In -332, the Macedonian Alexandre Large the, which was conquering the Persian empire of the Achéménides, was accommodated by the Egyptians like a liberator. Before leaving, it founded Alexandria, which will become largest of the cities of the same name with which it will strew the conquests which carry out it until the Indus. He dies prematurely in Babylon and its generals share the empire under the nominal direction of the successors hand lanterns of the conqueror. The Macedonian Ptolémée, companion of youth and war of Alexandre, chooses Egypt and, in -304, it crosses the step by proclaiming king of the territories that it subjects soon to his authority, the Egypt, the Cyrénaïque, Cyprus and the Palestine, inter alia. This unit is managed in Greek language on all the levels and is directed from Alexandria, which becomes soon a Greek intellectual center of first importance. The dynasty Macedonian of Ptolémées will survive longest the expansion of Rome in the East.

In -30, Cléopâtre {{VII}} commits suicide to avoid appearing in the triumph of its winner, Octave, the future Auguste. Egypt becomes a Roman province then, but under the exclusive authority of the emperor who wishes to control this attic with corn. Only the army and the Roman high-ranking magistrates who represent the emperor in Alexandria employ the Latin . The Greek language remains the language of management of the country. Soon, even the remained population of Egyptian language ceases using the demotic writing (see below) by using the Greek language for all that it must write or make write by a scribe. As from the 4th century, the things change a little. Byzantine Egypt, which largely christianized itself, soon will depend on the emperors of Constantinople when the Roman Empire is divided into a Byzantine Empire and a Western Empire. The Greek will remain the language of management of the country and the continuous elite of the small towns to receive a Greek traditional education and to even produce Greek works of quality. But - especially because the Christians of Egyptian language must be able to read their texts crowned in translation - creates for itself an adapted Egyptian alphabet of the Greek alphabet, the Copt alphabet (see below). But the Greek remains the language of management of the country, that of Alexandria and that of the administration of most of notable provincial. This role of the Greek quickly will decrease, then to disappear after the Arab conquest.

The historical factor thus shows that one could write in Egypt tens of Greek thousands of papyri which were already published. He does not explain why one could find them, whereas almost nothing was preserved of this kind in the remainder kingdoms hellenistic or the Empires Roman or Byzantine, which however had social and administrative structures more or less close.

The geographical factor

The geographical factor explains this characteristic. To find papyruses, it was necessary that two contradictory elements coexisted: a advanced company which practiced the writing, and an inhuman dryness of the ground so that the papyri did not rot on the spot. Except all in north, for its Mediterranean coastal fringe, Egypt belongs to the immense Saharan arid zone. But, the rainwater of a vast zone of the Africa equatorial and tropical cut through a path until the the Mediterranean by going up south in north through what we call Egypt, an immense green ribbon where the men quickly controlled the annual risings of the the Nile. People lived if possible in extreme cases of the desert not to start the cultures too much, and among waste (which they obviously reject on the side of the desert), one will find letters of all kinds, books spoiled, out-of-date contracts, accounts, etc And the papyrologists, forgetting that, in their childhood, their mother their prohibited to play in the dumps and especially of reading the letters intended for others, threw themselves on top like misery on the world. The cemeteries were installed as much as possible in the desert borders of the cities. When, at the time hellenistic, the nécrotaphes manufactured cases with mummy in boarding, they repurchased of old funds of files or the papyri whose private individuals wanted to get rid. And the papyrologists, always also badly raised, dismantled these cases to take off about it the various layers of papyrus. They made worse. The priests of the village of Tebtynis in the oasis of Fayoum entrusted to the desert the mummies crowned crocodiles, alive symbols of the large god Sobek. They had care to piously stuff the éviscéré belly of these charming small beasts with balls of papyrus of reject, then they emmaillotaient the corpses with rollers of papyrus whose texts did not have any more interest. What do you think that it occurred when the papyrologists discovered this necropolis crowned? An impressive series of beautiful volumes full with documents on the villages of the south of Fayoum; one knows those better that many of our medieval villages. Alexandria, unfortunately, is in wetland, and a papyrus there will never be unearthed, but hundreds of public documents or private envoys of Alexandria in Egypt (Alexandria did not form part of it administratively) were found if they had the privilege to finish their career in a dump in extreme cases of the desert.

History of papyrology

It is only in the last decade of the 19th century that papyrology was truly organized like disciplines major sciences of Antiquity gréco-Roman. She owes her name with the fact that at this time considerable quantities of papyri arrived from Egypt to Europe. It was initially necessary to decipher them and publish them, but at the same time the quantity and the quality of the data which one discovered on Egypt gréco-Roman made that one foresaw the possibility systematically of exploiting all these data by gradually creating instruments of work, methods evaluation critical of the data and first syntheses. Modern papyrology had been born.

Since 1788 one published a document on papyrus which had ended in the the Vatican, a curiosity without a future. The forwarding of Bonaparte in Egypt opened this country with the scientists of all disciplines. These are especially the Greek inscriptions, of which the famous trilingual stone of Rivet washer, which allowed to French A.J. Letronne to trace in 1823 a first draft of the history of Egypt under Ptolémées and the Roman Emperors. Meanwhile the Egyptian peasants learn the value from the papyri which they find. The trade of antiquities will nourish some museums and libraries and soon appear the first volumes of papyri, extremely deserving, but little provided in important texts. The second phase of discovered papyruses was higher announced. As from 1877, the peasants in fertilizer search exploited the nitrogenized ground of the ancient sites of Fayoum and discovered masses of documents which joined some large collections quickly, like those of Berlin, of London, but especially of Vienna.

Began soon the 3rd phase of the discoveries, the scientific excavations of sites ready to provide texts. One of the fields of papyrological excavations most fertile is that of Oxyrhynque, on average Egypt (see Papyri d' Oxyrhynque); the publication was in 2003, with its 68e volume and the following is announced! This 3rd phase of the lucky finds corresponds in time to the transformation of work méritoire of the pioneers into an organized discipline. This one is from the start characterized by the creation of sophisticated instruments of work and by relations very followed between the papyrologists of all countries. These relations, under the sign of the amicitia papyrologorum , gave rise to the International association of the papyrologists, which has his seat in Brussels with Egyptological Association Queen Elizabeth, before Egyptological Fondation Queen Elizabeth.

The name that the circumstances gave to papyrology should not hide the fact that the papyrologist works on all the documents Greek and Latin coming from Egypt, whatever the support of the writing. In addition to the papyri, manufactured in rollers while juxtaposing with right angle of fine longitudinal sections of marrow of papyrus, the clandestine or scientific excavations produced thousands of ostraca. A ostracon is a shard of pottery, generally a fragment of amphora; this cheap material made it possible to write easily without inkstand by holding the shard of the left hand. One finds of all on these ostraca, since the school exercises or the small messages deprived to the receipts of tax or even of the drawings. It is not by chance only the first work which, in 1899, definitively posed papyrology like an autonomous discipline and drew the critical methodology and rules of them, is the collection and the comment of all the ostraca of Egypt and known Nubie at this time. This monument is due to Ulrich Wilcken who will be the large Master of papyrology until the beginning of the 2nd world war. Among the wood shelves, particularly let us note the labels of mummy, which gave the name of death, its origin and possibly the site where one wished that it rests. The inscriptions on stone and the innumerable graffiti on the walls or the rocks constitute a written source rich in the most varied data; those have the advantage of being complementary to the contents of the papyri and the ostraca, which answer other finalities and are intended for a communication more or less limited in time and the supposed users.

Papyrological types of documents

Once the acquisition of the papyri and ostraca in the large Western collections had reached a certain density, which struck the researchers is there that we could exploit a documentation which is almost completely absent from other areas of the East hellenistic, Roman Empire and old Byzantine Empire. These Greek witnesses of Egypt are divided approximately into documents concerned with the capacity and its administration and documents which concern the private activity. The border between these two categories is rather fuzzy besides.

“Official” documents

They can sometimes come from the more high ranking authorities. Thus imposing specifications of the tax forms left the offices of and the saving Minister for Finance in Ptolémée Philadelphe, or a letter of the Severe emperor Septime, or collation of privileges to a Roman adviser of Antoine where one can read the order to carry out written hand of Cléopâtre {{VII}}. But we almost always have business with documents much more modest: the copy-letters of a local senior official will be neighborly with the order to stop a poor delinquent, the certificate attesting that such obscure peasant is in rule of drudgery on the irrigation canals, or the declaration of a birth or a death. There are the orders to proceed to the censuses of the people, the pets or the properties, but especially the innumerable declarations which result and are each time an invaluable social card. The receipts of tax represent an abundant documentation, with the image even of a system where, under the Romans, for example, the lower classes paid the heaviest tax of capitation.

The conflicts between the men or with the administration caused an abundant documentation, laws and payments, complaints and verdicts, which caused, with the contracts which regulate the economic relations or social, a particular branch of papyrology, legal papyrology. Much among the documents of which this one is occupied, particularly the contracts, raises by certain aspects of private documentation since they are due on the initiative of individuals, even if these acts follow more or less constraining standards. Legal papyrology in the final analysis raises an main issue, that of the coexistence of rights different related more or less to the statute from the people concerned, the Egyptian right, the Greek right and, later, the Roman law.

“Private” documents

We find the same variety in the private documents, the hard copies most disparate of the daily life: the accounts of a great field or the inventory of a kitchen, the innumerable letters deprived with their waitings, their objections, their concerns or the compliments to be transmitted to the friends and knowledge, the invitations with a festival or a Marriage, the interrogation of a oracle or the recommendations of a superior of Monastery, etc It are as many samples which made it possible to develop a Sociologie of a biculturelle company, where Greek and hellenized, on the one hand, and Egyptians, on the other hand, live in two more or less impermeable mediums, but of the mediums where time, mixed marriages and certain aspirations, as the religious phenomenon (the Egyptian gods are simply for the Greeks of Egypt the local form their own gods) or the desire to make career, creates footbridges.

Documents and the Linguistic

The documents have as authors of people who profited from degrees extremely different of schooling or have a knowledge of the extremely variable Greek. These texts thus represent diversified samples of the living language practiced at a certain time in the nonhomogeneous whole of the social components. One can thus follow the evolution of the Greek language on the way into the modern Greek in the fields of phonetics, morphology and syntax during one millenium. But it is initially necessary to decipher which type of user is the author of the nontraditional shape of the Greek or the person in charge of an spelling error, signs often revealing of a linguistic phenomenon. Because the language evolves/moves differently according to the social classes. The notable one strongly provided education for, sometimes afterwards about the higher learning in Alexandria, speaks and especially written a rather preserving Greek, in any case another Greek who the Egyptian peasant who learned with the ear a hundred from it from words that it estropie while forgetting to decline them, because the variation does not exist as an Egyptian.

Literary papyrology

It is per hundreds that were torn off with the sand of Egypt of the specimens, or generally of the more or less reduced scraps, of Greek literary works, sometimes so Latin, demotic or Copte S. the most spectacular lucky finds were, of course, those which offered to us, in entirety or for a good portion, important works of the Greek literature which had been lost with the wire of the centuries. For example, one had nothing any more but formless bits of the comedy with happy end and opposed loves born to the IV E in Athens, whereas this Greek kind lost, represented initially by its Latin imitations and the mass of the Western comedy which followed those, is always also fertile in the cinematographic or televisual literature and the theater of the whole world. One found in Egypt several comedies of Ménandre, the first Master of this kind, and in fact works of quality still hold the scene. The discovery of a lost treaty of Aristote, its “Constitution of Athens” revolutionized the history of antiquated and traditional Athens. Thanks to the papyri of Egypt, one knows finally best the poets Sappho and Alcée, Bacchylide and Posidippe or a speaker like Hypéride; one discovers the poetry of kind with Mimiambes of Hérondas. The list could lengthen, especially with the more or less long fragments of lost works, sometimes of writers who were nothing any more but one name, sometimes also of some local rimaillor. One found rollers illustrated, initially of the treaties of geometry or ptolémaïque astronomy of time, more of the novels or collections of poetry. Thus, among nearly 250 fragments of treaties of medicine, one discovered fragments of two herbaria. In addition, papyrology delivered a great number of musical fragments, enriching largely our knowledge by the ancient Greek music, with passages of Euripide or Eschyle, but also of Mésomède of Crete ( Péan of Berlin ), or anonymities. The oldest known Christian anthem (4th century), dedicated to the Trinity, was transmitted to us on papyrus with an ancient Greek musical notation.

Many papyri literary Greeks belong to works which we have already because our Western libraries had inherited Byzance it since the Rebirth; they are of another interest. They are much older than the medieval manuscripts which preserved us these books and because they do not come from the Byzantine erudite mediums which are generally with the source of these manuscripts. They often enable us to correct deteriorations which damaged the medieval handwritten tradition later. The case of Homère is more astonishing still. The text of the two great epopees, the Iliade and the Odyssée, which we read under the reference symbol of old the aède, were fixed and commented on by the Greek philologists of the Museum (temple of the Muses) of Alexandria under Ptolémées. Boardings of mummy preserved us older scraps of these two epopees; they preserve alternatives, especially additions, which inform us on the anarchistic evolution of these poems epic before the moment when the philologists alexandrines solidified the text of it, that we still read in our classes. Sometimes the school papyri and ostraca preserve more or less abused bits of the classic authors; Homère often appears there.

The papyri literary Latin much fewer and are seldom well preserved; but their interest is of the same order: discovered unknown or pilot texts of known works, for example, Virgile.

The literary papyri inform also the papyrologist in the field of sociology. In the choice of the texts, he discovers that, throughout the millenium, the youth of the easy mediums is entitled to education of the Gymnase, kind of sanctuary of moral education and Greek physics. This education is the key of the social and economic privileges that the families wish to transmit to their descent. The choice of works is edifying. Homère, especially Iliade, remains the fundamental text as it was it in Athens and in the majority of the Greek cities; it represents by far the most harvest of papyri literary. Démosthène or Euripide is well represented, but one will seek a work of Egyptian inspiration in vain. The grouped discoveries make guess the libraries than honourable more notable buildings. The Greek upper middle classes of the small towns of province at the time imperial or Byzantine appears to us thus as the compost from which come some great writers like Nonnos de Panopolis at the 5th century. But, in full Egypt, even with more modest social statuses, the education of the young Greeks, more and more often resulting from hellenized mediums, rests on a purely Greek cultural bottom. Many the papyri and ostraca school testify some.

Testamentary papyrology

One will find in Egypt of the specimens of the Évangile S, Gospels apocryphal books like Protévangile of Jacques, and other Christian religious writings, which go back sometimes to the 2nd century. We have thus of witnesses older than the manuscripts which we have before the papyrological discoveries and even Christian sources which had been lost with the wire of time.

Other “Egyptian” papyrologies

Demotic papyrology

During the millenium of Egypt which concerns the papyrologists, the indigenous population continued to speak its language, a late Egyptian. The Pierre de Rosette, which will be one of the keys of the deciphering of the Hiéroglyphe S, carried a trilingual decree. He had been voted by a Synode (conclave) of the priests of the large Egyptian sanctuaries in -196, shortly after crowning following the Pharaonic rite of Ptolémée {{V}}. A version was written in hiéroglyphes in the crowned language, in fact a dead language, but prestigious; another version in the alive Egyptian language, that one called the Démotique, the “popular language”; finally a third version was written in Greek, the language of the royal management of the country. The alive Egyptian language also appears in writings of the everyday life, with a writing which existed already before the arrival of the Macedonians; it was called the demotic writing, i.e. “the popular writing”, whereas the Greek documents call it the “indigenous” writing. Thanks to Pierre of Rosette, this writing of the alphabetical type, was deciphered much more quickly than the hiéroglyphes. The accumulation of documents and small demotic literary works made it possible the démotisants to develop instruments of work and a methodology which one can call a “demotic papyrology”.

Papyrology copte

As it is known as higher, the Egyptian population found an alphabet which was clean for him, when christianization, arrival of Alexandria, accelerate in lowland as from the 3rd century and require the diffusion of the Gospels and other Christian writings for Coptes (deformation of the “Egyptian” word). The Copt alphabet supplements the Greek alphabet by some signs borrowed from demotic to make sounds unknown of the Greek. It transcribes the “copte”, the last state of the great Egyptian dialects that a broad section of the population continues to speak. The copte will remain a long time the language of the Church copte, before being replaced by Arabic. Our libraries of Occident had medieval manuscripts coptes, which had allowed the study of this late Egyptian. The knowledge of the copte is at the base of the success of Champollion when it could decipher the system complexes hiéroglyphes. Soon the Copt alphabet also will be used in the profane activities. The multiplication of the documents coptes resulting from the everyday life, particularly of that of the monasteries, caused the birth of a papyrology copte, with its specialists and its instruments of work, in spite of the recent date of this development of our documentary disciplines.

The interest of papyrologies demotic and copte makes that today the “pure” papyrologists tend more and more to take account of this documentation parallel with their of Greek language. That is all the more natural as the démotisants and the coptisants often had initially a training of papyrologists. Moreover, a part among those are familiarized with one or the other of these Egyptian papyrologies according to whether they are attracted by the ptolémaïque period for the first, or the Byzantine time for the second. For example, by studying the life of a monastery, that has direction to hardly question the papyri and ostraca Greek without using what the material copte brings corresponding. This is all the more happy as the sociological shutter of papyrology is mainly marked by the coexistence within the same framework politicogeographic of two extremely different alive cultures and, up to a certain point, not very permeable one compared to the other.

Of course, in Egypt, one used the papyrus extremely a long time front Alexandre Large the for crowned, funerary or profane texts; their study concerns Egyptology. In the same way, one found with Éléphantine, the first cataract, of the papyri araméens left by the Jewish garrison that the king of Persia had posted at the southernmost border of Egypt at the 5th century. These documents as well as the other more recent documents araméens found in Egypt concern the Semitic studies.

A batch of papyri in Pehlevi preserved at Berlin originates in the short occupation of Byzantine Egypt by Persians (616-627).

The progressive occupation of Egypt by the Arabs Islamized from 639 explains the discovery of documents on papyrus or paper written in the Arab language whose employment will spread with the wire of the centuries, even in the Christian mediums. The Greek gradually will disappear from the private documents, but he survives some time like language of chancellery, as in the file resulting from the offices of the governor Kurrah Ben Sharik in Fostat (Cairo) for pagarque (leader of a pagus or canton) of High-Egypt. The Arab papyri are treated by Arabists. But the coexistence of documents in the two languages requires the co-operation of the papyrologists hellenists specialized in the Middle East with the Early middle ages and of the specialists in the Arab Papyrologie which found a new rise these last years.

Papyri found out of Egypt

Apart from Egypt, particular circumstances allowed the fortuitous safeguard of papyri Greek. With Pétra and Nessana, the documents reveal some aspects of Christian Palestine, near to Byzantine Egypt. One found papyri Greek of Roman epoch in Syria, particularly in the Roman garrison of Doura-Europos.

Sometimes the slow carbonization of the papyrus in private medium of oxygen ensured the conservation of papyrus in the delta, but also apart from Egypt. Thus, in a tomb of Derveni in Macedonia, one found a roller orphic of the IV E (coming from an initiatory sect nun, the orphism). But one knows especially the discovery at the 18th century of the carbonized papyri Herculanum. They come from a library of Greek philosophy submerged by hot muds which descended the slopes of Vesuvius when torrential rains succeeded the eruption of 79. The papyri carbonized slowly, but, to their discovery, presented serious problems to unroll them and decipher them. Today, the reading is facilitated by it by infra-red photography and, very recently, the press mentioned that spectacular progress in the use of specific lines of the infra-red will make it possible to read with a considerable success the carbonized papyri of Herculanum, but also of the papyri to the unobtrusive writing coming from Egypt.

See too

Arab Papyrology
Zeitschrift für Papyrology und Epigraphik (ZPE) one of the most important scientific magazines in the field of the Greek and Latin epigraphy like in the field of Greek and Latin papyrology.

External bonds

Menestrel First orientation in the sites and papyrological resources on line;
List of all papyri literary Greeks and Latin found in Egypt;
Institute of Papyrology of the Sorbonne: To study papyrology in France.

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