Sikes' Catalogue of Early Greek Psalms Fragments

Ryan Sikes has uploaded an updated version of his catalogue of early Greek Psalms fragments here. This is a very helpful resource with links to images and editions, which I use regularly.

Update on the Virtual Unrolling of Herculaneum Papyri

The Economist gives a useful update on progress virtually unrolling the Herculaneum scrolls, which is one of the more exciting technological advances in manuscript studies today.

Virtual Unrolling of Herculaneum Papyri

 See an interesting, short documentary on the virtual unrolling of the Herculaneum papyri.

Lead Ruling on Herculaneum Papyri

A recent Nature article has observed lead ruling on several Herculaneum papyri, including three different patterns:

1. top, bottom, and left column borders;

2. top, bottom, and both left and right column borders;

3. top, bottom, left, and right column borders AND horizontal line ruling on each line.

This has long been suspected based on literary references, but here we have it demonstrated in ancient papyri. Scribes apparently had lead discs and rulers that they used to rule the lines in preparation of the layout. Interestingly, these lines are intentionally laid out to produce columns slightly slanting to the right, an aesthetic phenomenon commonly known as Maas's law.

We have a similar situation in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, where the lines are ruled with a light gray substance sometimes thought by editors to be "diluted ink." See, e.g., 11Q17:

https://www.deadseascrolls.org.il/explore-the-archive/image/B-365349

For someone with the time, interest, and technology, it would be interesting to check this and other scrolls noted in Tov's 2004 Scribal Practices book (section 4a) to see whether they are actually also ruled in lead.

Saqqara Book of the Dead

Owen Jarus republishes images of the new 16 meter-long Book of the Dead recently discovered intact in Saqqara.

A New First Temple Hebrew Papyrus

The Israel Antiquities Authority has announced the exciting recovery of a fragment of a Hebrew papyrus letter from the 7th-6th centuries BCE, that was presumably found in the Judea Desert. The backstory is quite intriguing and worth a read. The papyrus was supposedly also radiocarbon dated to around the same period, which lends strong support to its authenticity (there's not much blank papyrus from that period floating around in Israel). This is one of only a very small number of Hebrew papyri with a claim to come from that early, and those who helped bring it to light are to be congratulated.

HT Gary Rendsburg

Ariel Sabar on Dirk Obbink

Ariel Sabar has done another great exposé on the current controversies involving stolen papyri, Dirk Obbink, Scott Carroll, the Green and Stimer collections, and the Egypt Exploration Fund. It is a fascinating and revealing read in an ongoing saga.

HT ETC

MOTB Repatriations

Steve Green has released a Statement on Past Acquisitions on the Museum of the Bible webpage. In it he acknowledges past failures to verify the provenance of many artifacts and the appropriateness of criticisms leveled against the Museum on account of his mistakes, citing bad advice from previous consultants. The big news is that Green officially announced that approximately 5000 papyrus fragments will be voluntarily repatriated to Egypt, and 6500 clay objects to Iraq. These artifacts do not have reliably documented provenance, and likely originated in the respective countries. In other words, it is quite likely that many of them were looted and illicitly exported from their countries of origin.

This is a big and important step in the right direction. Mike Holmes told me already in 2018 that they were in conversation with the relevant authorities, and all publications of this material were on hold until proper ownership and publication rights have been sorted out. It is nice to see this announced publicly and that they are making progress on this front. This will go a long way towards establishing the credibility and legitimacy of both the Green collection and the Museum of the Bible, and they are to be commended for this decision.

UCL Greek Papyri Video

The University College London Department of Greek and Latin has posted an old video introducing Greek papyri that was both entertaining and informative.

Michael Langlois on the Jerusalem Papyrus

Michael Langlois weighs in on the Jerusalem papyrus in "How a 2,700-year-old piece of papyrus super-charged the debate over UNESCO and Jerusalem".

Christopher Rollston on the Jerusalem Papyrus

Christopher Rollston gets more specific on his concerns about the morphology of the text of the Jerusalem Papyrus in a recent blog post "The Jerusalem Papyrus: Complementary Notations".


HT Rick Bonnie

Interview with Shmuel Ahituv on the Jerusalem Papyrus

Eve Harrow has an interesting interview with Shmuel Ahituv on the Jerusalem Papyrus.


HT Agade

More on the New Hebrew Paprus from the Judean Desert

More news sources on the new Hebrew papyrus seized by the IAA. Eitan Klein is quoted in Live Science as saying that the papyrus is dated to the 7th century BCE, rather than the 8th. Christopher Rollston suspects it may be a modern forgery on ancient papyrus based on 1) "some palaeographic and orthographic anomalies and inconsistencies in this papyrus inscription"; 2) its "sensational" content (I assume he means the fact that it mentions a woman and/or Jerusalem?); and 3) its lack of a solid provenance (he casts some doubt on the IAA backstory, though I am not sure the accounts are contradictory). Jim Davila is optimistic about the authenticity of the papyrus, though noting Rollston's concerns.

HT Eibert Tichelaar


Update 27 Oct 2016
In the official IAA press release, Klein suggests it is from the second half of the 7th century.

New 8th Century Papyrus from Judah?

I have just heard of reports of a new papyrus from Judah mentioning Jerusalem that sound very exciting (NB the photo on the news article is not of this papyrus, but a much later semicursive document)! It was discovered in the Judean Desert and purchased on the antiquities market, placing it in a somewhat compromised position in the eyes of some. Supposedly it can reliably be dated to the 8th century BCE, which makes it a remarkably rare document from pre-exilic Judah on a perishable writing support. Apparently it will be presented in Jerusalem at the annual New Studies in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Region conference on Oct. 26-27, 2016. If anyone has the chance to see the presentation, I would greatly appreciate any important details about this interesting document!

HT Todd Bolen


Update - Årstein Justnes pointed out the following related links:


http://israelnewsonline.org/discovery-jerusalem-on-hebrew-papyrus/


Roberta Mazza


Jim Davila


Times of Israel - who provide the first picture of the papyrus and give the date of the 7th century or approximately 700 BCE

Review of "Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources"

Matthew J. Hama has posted a review of Lincoln H. Blumell and Thomas A. Wayments' Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources. It sounds like a great resource, though it is quite unfortunate that they excluded the LXX materials... :(


HT Agade

28th International Congress of Papyrology - Part 2

This is part 2 of a series. See also part 1.

Myriam Krutzsch gave some reflections on the material analysis of papyrus supports based on her years of experience as a conservator and recent collaboration on material analysis with Ira Rabin. She discussed important aspects of the material that should be documented by conservators, as well as how these can be important for locating the production of the papyrus in space and time.

Ira Rabin gave some of her thoughts and results on the study of ancient inks based on material analysis. Optically, carbon inks are black, those from plant extracts brown, and iron gall inks black. Carbon inks show clearly in the IR range, whereas plant inks disappear, and iron gall disappears at long wavelengths greater than 1200 nanometers (for cameras that can't use such long wavelengths, iron gall inks are only barely visible at somewhat shorter wavelengths). Nevertheless, inks were often mixtures (even in written recipes), and many different types of metals and other chemical traces can tell you about the composition and origin of the inks.

Bruce Griffin stressed the subjective nature of assigning dates to manuscripts paleographically and the need for quantitative controls on these dates. Statistics cannot replace expert judgment, but they can be tools for making better critical judgments. Bruce then showed some preliminary statistics showing the relative prominence of slanting hands, decorated scripts, and individual letters' violating bilinearity to show the potential gains. As one who works regularly on Greek manuscripts, I for one would love to have a nice database to make the comparison process a lot easier. :)

A helpful plenary session moderated by Alberto Nodar featured a lineup of scholars discussing the current state of papyrology in relation to other questions: Gianluca del Mastro (Papyrology and science); Mark Depauw (Papyrology and new digital technologies); Marie-Hélène Marganne (Papyrology and academia); Roberta Mazza (Papyrology and ethics); and Cornelia Römer (Papyrology and archaeology).

• Gianluca del Mastro surveyed recent developments in material analysis of papyri, carbon dating, and reconstructions of rolls.
• Mark DePauw discussed current digital papyrological resources and the complications of working with them (e.g., the need for continuous updating and technical development). He made several recommendations, such as to publish openly, assist free websites with volunteer help, give scholarly credit to websites, accommodate industry standards, don't expect perfection, and keep studying the papyri carefully.
• Marie-Hélène Marganne warned of the tenuous position of papyrology in academia in an era of budget cuts, institutional restructuring, and the loss of Greek and Latin training in schools. She suggested that papyrologists attempt to popularize the discipline (e.g., with exhibits and online presence) and to partner with other disciplines.
• Roberta Mazza reviewed current discussions on ethics in papyrology, the market for papyri, their legal and cultural heritage status, and the role of collectors, calling for transparency in terms of provenance information and censoring scholars who do not follow the primary ethics codes of the papyrological societies. Most of the discussion in the round table focused on these issues, and the water cooler conversation revealed quite an uneasiness in the ranks about what some fear are simplistic solutions to complex questions. General impression: the ethical questions are extremely complex and controversial, and professional standards for scholars remain an unresolved issue with no consensus immediately in sight.
• Cornelia Römer addressed prejudices from archaeologists against papyrologists and suggested that papyrologists should familiarize themselves with and participate in archaeological excavations to encourage cooperation and enrich research.

Brent Nongbri supported the theory that the technology of the codex developed from joining wooden tablets and making notebooks. One line of development constructed papyrus codices from multiple folded single sheets. Another line of development led to the construction of single-quire codices, subsequent experiments with codices of more than one quire, and then proper multi-quire codices with the important technological innovation of the link-stitch technique of binding the codices (certainly before the 4th century, but the early stages cannot be documented).

Lincoln Blumell and Thomas Wayment reported the results of their work on the Rendel Harris collection at the University of Birmingham, which were collected during Harris' two trips to Egypt in 1916 and 1922, mostly from Oxyrhynchus, but also some from elsewhere. Two volumes are already published, and a third is apparently in preparation by Nikolaos Gonis. Blumell and Wayment noted three early Christian papyri: 1) P. Birm. 317, which mentions an Oxyrhynchite bishop; 2) P. Birm. 300 (LXX Psalms 1:6b-2:1), an opisthograph from around the first half of the 4th century with a non-continuous text that they consider likely an amulet; and 3) P. Birm. 486 (Acts 9:1), a non-continuous NT text from the late 3rd or early 4th century, probably also an amulet.

Yanne Broux briefly summarized recent developments in the coverage of texts in Trismegistos: 1) including texts from Egypt from before 800 BCE; 2) covering texts from the entire ancient world, not just Egypt; 3) including Latin and Greek inscriptions; and 4) a new Networks feature. The TM Editors and TM People networks feature allows scholars to visualize social connections between modern editors collaborating on work and ancient people as various nodes connected by directed or undirected edges, which indicate the connections.

Nico Dogaer elaborated in more detail on Social Networking Analysis with the use of the Trismegistos database and illustrated its potential with a consideration of patterns of combinations of formulaic elements in Demotic letters.

Joanne Stolk illustrated the use of the TM Text Irregularities feature for studying ancient corrections and modern regularizations, using the iotacistic confusion of ει and ι as an example. The interchange is very frequent in the 1st-7th centuries, peaking in the 4th century. Then it declines in the 7th-8th centuries, despite the fact that they continued to be pronounced the same way. These iotacistic errors were also often corrected by scribes, but interestingly most corrections were from the 3rd-2nd century BCE. Thus, it appears that the phonetic equivalence/confusion was already beginning to occur in this period, but scribes recognized it and corrected it according to a standard. In later times, the confusion became so widespread that it became more widely acceptable.

Peter Arzt-Grabner addressed the bewildering array of diverse abbreviations for papyrological resources, offering several suggestions to help standardize the terminology for the aid of computer databases and nonspecialists.

And last... and maybe least... I hope my paper on two selective Greek texts of Exodus was interesting to someone... :) I suggested that Rahlfs 896 was an educational exercise and that Rahlfs 960 was a thematic collection focusing on passages pertaining to periods of rest. Thanks again to all those who gave helpful feedback during the session.

All in all, it was a great week in Barcelona, and I am very happy I went. As one who does not normally attend papyrological conferences, I had the chance to meet many new friends and found the papyrological community very warm and welcoming. A hearty thanks to the organizers and presenters. Perhaps I will see you all again in three years, if not sooner. :)

28th International Congress of Papyrology - Part 1

The 28th International Congress of Papyrology took place in Barcelona from 1-6 August, and it was a great success. While there were far too many papers to discuss them in any depth, I would like to highlight a few papers that were more relevant for OTTC.

The conference was opened with an interesting plenary session by Andrea Jördens on the assets and liabilities in trends towards globalization and digitization in papyrology, where she somewhat controversially recommended increasing the use of languages other than English within the field of papyrology, against the dominant trend towards presenting and publishing in English.

Roger Bagnall and Paola Davoli delivered a nuanced paper on balancing high standards in archaeological excavations with pragmatic necessities.

Jeff Fish presented an interesting paper demonstrating the process of reconstructing a fragmentarily preserved literary roll (Sappho fragments) by tracing continuations of fiber patterns across large lacunae (5-10 cm).

Raffaella Cribiore reviewed the question of school texts 20 years after her foundational volume Writing, Teachers, and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt. She stressed that there are very few times where we can identify purpose-built "schools," such that we are often on safer ground simply to speak more broadly of educational contexts.

Jennifer Cromwell traced the educational development of the 7th-century monk Pleine from novice to advanced writer and possibly (also teacher?) based on his writings from a Theban tomb. This is a rare example where you can actually see the development of a single writer's hand throughout the entirety of his career.

Julia Lougovaya suggested that ostraca could be used not only for practical documents and short excerpts of literary texts in educational contexts, but also as the support for short literary texts proper.

Gabriel Macedo discussed the two preserved papyri of the popular Latin playwright Terence, concluding that it is impossible to construct a stemma for the many manuscripts of Terence and especially to incorporate the papyri.

Ágnes Mihálykó studied the use of Greek and Coptic in Egyptian liturgy for clues about the transition from Greek to Coptic within church contexts. Liturgy has a tendency to be conservative, and we don't start seeing written evidence for Coptic prayers alongside Greek prayers until the 6th century. Coptic hymnography takes off in the 8th-9th centuries, and communal acclamations (e.g., the Lord's prayer) continue to be spoken in Greek in that period, even if the people often did not understand Greek anymore.

Aaltje Hidding examined the functions that martyr stories played in Oxyrhynchus, namely: 1) connecting the community with the persecuted church prior to Islamic rule; 2) instructing and exhorting the community to stand strong in the faith; and 3) to provide cult aetiologies to explain the origins of certain churches.

Gesa Schenke surveyed the origin of the cult of the saints, suggesting sites associated with burial were normally considered efficacious for healing. The cult typically expanded from the bones of the saint to any contact relic associated with the saint, though not all were necessarily considered equally efficacious. Many who were helped by the relics subsequently dedicated themselves to serve at that shrine.

Anastasia Maravela demonstrated that scripture was used for argumentative purposes in monastic letters. While scholars have been doing this type of scholarship for many years on the Pauline epistles and other ancient letters, this approach also promises to yield results (including potentially text-critical) for later periods.

Marco Stroppa brought attention to ongoing work on the PSI project, including one papyrus of Acts, one of the patristic text Apophthegmata Patrum, and three Christian amulets.

Benjamin Overcash proposed the application of social-semiotic theory to the question of the use of nomina sacra. The basic idea was that every instance of an abbreviated nomen sacrum implies a choice that had semiotic value. For instance, in P46 in 1 Cor 8:5-6, the unabbreviated form is used for pagan gods, but the abbreviated form for the true God (Rahlfs 960 has a similar example, which I discussed in my paper). In many cases, the meaning may be as simple as to identify the scribe with a particular scribal tradition, but there was a lot of (legitimate) pushback from the audience for fear of overreading default Christian scribal practices.

Meron Piotrkowski gave a helpful survey of the literary papyri from Oxyrhynchus relevant to Jewish history, including: 1) Jewish biblical manuscripts; 2) Jewish Hellenistic literature; 3) Jewish religious and liturgical texts; 4) Jewish magical texts; and 5) semiliterary Christian texts dealing with Jews in a largely polemical way. He suggested (on minimal evidence) that the literary papyri attest to a continuous Jewish presence in Oxyrhynchus from the 1st-6th centuries, but an increase due to an influx of Palestinian immigrants in the 3rd-4th centuries.

Tal Ilan presented an interesting paper equating Julia Crispina of Ein Gedi with a woman by the same name from the Fayum. Julia--the granddaughter of queen Berenice, daughter of Herod Agrippa I--is known from the Babatha archive and a papyrus registration document from Egypt, and Tal tried to piece together a possible scenario to explain her presence in documents from both locations based on her leaving Palestine during the Bar Kokhba revolt. After the session, she also gave a brief prospective of the future of the Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum project. Because of the growing amount of material, the volumes will have to be more selective in what they include, but there will be an appendix of inscriptions published since 1993. The new volumes will also include texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Demotic, as well as literary papyri, unlike previous volumes. This includes the early biblical fragments from Egypt, which will be of particular interest to readers of this blog.

Zsuzsanna Szántó suggested that the popular Jewish name Shabtai = שבתי = σαββαταιος/σαμβαταιος may also have referred to non-Jewish keepers of the Sabbath, even in the Ptolemaic period.

This is part 1 of a series. See also part 2.

Virtual Unrolling and Deciphering of Herculaneum Papyri by X-ray Phase-Contrast Tomography

Continuing on the theme of the day of X-ray technology, an article entitled "Virtual Unrolling and Deciphering of Herculaneum Papyri by X-ray Phase-Contrast Tomography" has recently been published online (thanks to Elvira Martin-Contreras for point it out). It is a very interesting case of the application of this technology to the deciphering of the carbonized Herculaneum papyri, which has been a quickly developing field of study. Michael Segal recently showed me in Helsinki some very impressive results of the digitally scanned and unrolled carbonized Leviticus scroll from the Ein Gedi synagogue. The potential for studying such scrolls with non-destructive methods is opening up a whole new world for modern textual scholarship, and those who are working in this field deserve our gratitude.

Papyri, Technology, and Armchair Archaeologists

The University of Oxford recently announced that it is calling on the general public for help with the Oxyrhynchus papyri here. Anyone with internet access can now help in cataloguing the many papyrus manuscripts by transcribing and measuring them with a simple user interface on ancientlives.org. I've been transcribing a few manuscripts myself and have been surprised at just how user-friendly the interface is. This collaborative effort between "Oxford University papyrologists, the Egypt Exploration Society, and a team in Oxford University’s Department of Physics" promises to be a great technological aid in analyzing the mass of manuscripts, and I for one am excited about the possibilities. Though undoubtedly there is no substitute for hands-on interaction with original manuscripts, the internet is opening a window of opportunity with ease of access and technological capabilities. If you haven't worked on any papyrus manuscripts yet, here is your chance!