Papyrologyis the study ofmanuscriptsof ancient literature, correspondence, legal archives, etc., preserved on portable media from antiquity, the most common form of which ispapyrus,the principal writing material in the ancient civilizations ofEgypt,Greece,andRome.Papyrology includes both the translation and interpretation of ancient documents in a variety of languages as well as the care and conservation of rare papyrus originals.
Papyrology as a systematic discipline dates from the 1880s and 1890s, when large caches of well-preserved papyri were discovered byarchaeologistsin several locations inEgypt,such as Arsinoe (Faiyum) andOxyrhynchus.Leading centres of papyrology includeOxford University,Heidelberg University,theÄgyptisches Museum und Papyrussamlungat the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,Columbia University,theUniversity of Michigan,Leiden University,theÖsterreichische Nationalbibliothek, University of California, Berkeleyand the Istituto Papirologico "G. Vitelli" connected to theUniversity of Florence.
Founders of papyrology were the Viennese orientalistJoseph von Karabacek(Arabic papyrology),[1]Wilhelm Schubart(Greek papyrology),[2]the Austrian antiquarianTheodor Grafwho acquired more than 100,000 Greek, Arabic, Coptic and Persian papyri in Egypt, which were bought by the AustrianArchduke Rainerto form theRainer collection,[3]G. F. Tsereteli,who published papyri of Russian and Georgian collections,[4]Frederic George Kenyon,[5]Otto Rubensohn,Ulrich Wilcken,Bernard Pyne Grenfell,Arthur Surridge Hunt[6]and other distinguished scientists.
See also
editReferences
edit- ^Jane Turner,The Dictionary of Art,Grove's Dictionaries, 1996, p.548
- ^The Harvard Theological Review,Harvard Divinity School 1941, p.220
- ^Glenn W. Most,Disciplining Classics: Altertumswissenschaft als Beruf,2002, p.192
- ^Bobodzhan Gafurovich Gafurov, Yuri Vladimirovich Gankovskiĭ,Fifty Years of Soviet Oriental Studies,Institut narodov Azii (Akademii︠a︡ nauk SSSR) 1968, p.11
- ^Leo Deuel,Testaments of Time: The Search for Lost Manuscripts and Records,Knopf, 1965, p. 335
- ^Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies,The Journal of Jewish Studies,Jewish Chronicle Publications, 1974, p.420
External links
edit- The Beginnings of Papirology (1788)
- papyri.info
- Trismegistos: an academic interdisciplinary portal of papyrological resources
- Places and discovery of papyri
- Introduction to Papyrology
- The University of Michigan Papyrus Collection
- John D. Muccigrosso's Papyrology Homepage
- Papyrology at Oxford
- Association Internationale de Papyrologues, Links page
- Arabic Papyrology Database
- Updates of papyrological publications, compiled from Papy-L et al.
- Papyrological Institute Leiden University
- Istituto Papirologico "Girolamo Vitelli"