Sappho, Papyrology and the Materiality of Texts
By Roberta Mazza (University of Manchester)
This paper will discuss the ‘finding’ of the new Sappho fragments and following events in the wider context of discovery narratives, which have been functional to the establishment of papyrology as a discipline and contributed to keep the audience engaged from the late 19th century onwards. I am going to analyse the P.Sapph.Obbink and P.GC. 105 case through a comparison with other recent and less recent findings of Sappho poems in order to show how some methodological misconceptions caused harm to people, texts and their interpretations too.
O Brothers, Where Art Thou? Scholarship on Papyri in Private Collections
By Mark de Kreij (Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen)
O Brothers, Where Art Thou? Scholarship on Papyri in Private Collections
Along with many published and unpublished papyri, the papyrus containing Sappho’s Brothers Poem is currently in (anonymous) private hands. This paper intends to contribute to the discussion about what this fact should mean for scholarship on the papyrus in question.
"Object Lessons" Lessons
By Andrew Hogan (The Center for the Tebtunis Papyri, University of California, Berkeley)
From Fall of 2019 through Spring of 2020, the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri (Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley) in conjunction with the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology collaborated on an exhibit comprising the papyrological documents housed in Bancroft together with physical artifacts from the site of Tebtunis, which currently reside in the Hearst Museum.
Archaeological Context and Purchased Papyri: Some Fragmentary Books from Karanis
By Mike Sampson (University of Manitoba)
In this paper, I consider two ancient books (TM 59973 and TM 60527) whose fragments were acquired by different collections in different circumstances, a common enough phenomenon during the heyday of papyrological acquisitions. Although one goal of papyrology is to reunite such ‘relatives’, I am more interested in exploring the individual objects’ discrete histories. The books’ fragmentation, I argue, contains important lessons for papyrological methodology in the present and a corrective to the discipline’s reconstructive tendency.
Imagining the Real: Constantine Simonides’ Fabrication of Papyrus Autographs
By Malcolm Choat (Macquarie University)
In this paper we explore the papyrus forgeries of Constantine Simonides, arguing that in making and publicizing them, he exploited the fantasy of the autograph. The illusive allure of the autograph papyrus manuscript beguiled scholars as papyri began to appear in the nineteenth century. Papyrus manuscripts promised to provide more immediate access to the ancient world in contrast to the indirect and compromised access delivered through the medieval manuscript tradition.
Pseudo-Scrolls, Amputated Hands, and Other Effects of Market-Motivated Destruction of Ancient Texts
By Erin L. Thompson (City University of New York)
When faced with excitement of seeing a new but unprovenanced Sappho fragment or the administrative archive of a Mesopotamian city whose location is unknown except to looters, it is easy to come up with justifications to explain why the advance to knowledge of publishing the find outweighs the harm done during the process of bringing it to market. These harms are often dismissed as exaggerated or having happened so long ago that refusing to study the text now would have no preventative effect.