Greek papyrology is the science that is concerned with deciphering and studying all texts written in Greek on papyrus. Papyrus was the writing material of antiquity and was made from strips of the papyrus plant stuck together.

Hundreds of thousands of papyri have been found, a large part of which has yet to be published. Greek texts on other materials, such as pottery sherds (ostraca), wax tablets, wooden tablets, lead plates, linen and sometimes small pieces of leather or parchment (not on stone or art objects, which belong to the field of the epigrapher and archaeologist) are, too, considered part of the domain of the papyrologist, since they are content-wise related to the texts on the papyri.

Location of papyri: Egypt

Nearly all papyri are found in the Egyptian desert, the only place where the climate was dry enough to preserve the perishable writing material. After the first papyrus from Egypt appeared by chance, more findings followed, and around 1890 work began on systematic excavations. Most papyri were found in ancient garbage dumps, in villages and cities abandoned due to the encroaching desert, and in cemeteries, where coffins and mummy wrappings often consisted of cartonnage, made from layers of old (and therefore usually inscribed) papyrus, whilst the mummies of sacred animals were also filled on the inside with old papyri. The place where the most valuable papyri could have been found — the capital of Egypt, the Hellenistic cultural centre Alexandria — has yielded very little as a result of the Nile Delta’s humid climate.

Greek in Egypt: 331 BC - 641 AD

The diverse texts on the papyri form a unique and straight source from antiquity for our knowledge of mainly Greek culture. In 331 BC, Greek rule was established in Egypt by Alexander the Great, who was succeeded the dynasty of Ptolemaic kings, also known as the Lagids.

Literary papyri

In Greek papyrology, two types of papyri can be clearly distinguished. The literary papyri (usually beautifully written with neat letters) not only provide a picture of what was read by the Greeks in Egypt in that time (especially Homer appears to have been very popular), but also grant us texts that are at times a thousand years closer to the time of the author than the earliest medieval manuscripts. Comparison has shown that the medieval manuscripts are generally much less corrupt than previously thought. Above all, the papyri have returned to us some literary works that did not reach us through the Middle Ages, e.g. the plays of Menander, the Athenaion Politeia of Aristotle, poems by Sappho and Bacchylides, a continuation of the historical work by Thucydides, known as the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, and all kinds of religious literature. Literary papyrology is closely related to the field of classical philology.

Documentary papyri

The documentary papyri in particular (written in cursive hands, ranging from the stylized chancery handwriting to very individual handwriting) form a unique source for the ancient world. They cover all aspects of daily life and provide details not mentioned in other sources, amongst others about ancient law, religion (pagan, Jewish, Christian), governance and administration, education and science - on the papyri every kind of text worth recording in writing can be found, and not through the coloured lens of a literary writer or historian, but straight from everyday life.

Koine Greek

The language in which the documentary papyri are written is not classical Greek, but the so-called Koine, in which, for example, the New Testament is also written. The most notable deviations from classical Greek are: many new words, simplification of difficult declensions and conjugations, simplification also of sentence structure, and changes in pronunciation that led to noteworthy mistakes in writing: the eventual equalization of the sounds of e and ai and of ei, è oi and u (iotacism). We can closely followi the beginning of the development of classical Greek into modern Greek in the papyri.

Papyrological signs and abbreviations

For the publication of a papyrus text, the following signs are used (the so-called “Leiden” system):

.      (dot)

A dot below a Greek letter indicates that the letter is read with uncertainty; isolated dots indicate the probable number of letters that have been damaged or lost

[	]	Lost letters
<	>	Letters, erroneously omitted by the author and supplemented by the editor
(	)	Abbreviations and symbols, fully written out by the editor
{	}	Letters written by the author that, according to the editor, should be removed from the text
[[	]]	Letters crossed out by the author himself
\	/	Letters added above the line by the author

To indicate official papyrus publications, abbreviations are used such as P.Enteuxeis (an entire volume full of petitions of a certain kind), P.Lond. (papyri located in London), P.L.Bat. (papyri published by the Leiden Papyrological Institute), P.Tebt. (papyri found in the Egyptian village of Tebtunis), P.Turner (papyri published in honour of the well-known papyrologist Turner) etc. An explanatory list of these abbreviations can be found in every papyrological handbook and on the page Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic, and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets.

Concise bibliography

Handbooks

R.S. Bagnall (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (2009) 
P.W. Pestman, The New Papyrological Primer. Second Edition Revised (1994)    
H.-A. Rupprecht, Kleine Einführung in die Papyruskunde (1994)    
O. Montevecchi, La papirologia (1988) 
E.G. Turner, Greek Papyri. An Introduction (1968) 

General

R.S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (1993)  
R.S. Bagnall, Reading Papyri, Writing Ancient History (1995)  
R.S. Bagnall (ed.), Egypt in the Byzantine World (2007)  
R.S. Bagnall, Roman Egypt. A History (2021)
A.K. Bowman, Egypt after the Pharaohs (1986)  
A.K. Bowman e.a., Oxyrhynchus. A City and its Texts (2007)  
R. Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind. Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (2001)  
D. Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt. Assimilation and Resistance (1998)  
W.A. Johnson, Bookrolls and scribes in Oxyrhynchus (2004)
N. Lewis, Greeks in Ptolemaic Egypt (1986)  
A.M. Luijendijk, “Greetings in the Lord”: Early Christians and the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (2008)
K. Vandorpe (ed.), A Companion to Greco-Roman and Late Antique Egypt (2019)

Dutch

Hermeneus 52,4 (1980) (special papyrological issue provided by Leiden Pap. Inst.) 
P.W. Pestman e.a., Vreemdelingen in het land van Pharao (1985)  
P.W. Pestman e.a., Familiearchieven uit het land van Pharao (1989)  
K.A. Worp, Griekse papyri: een wereld vol bewegingen, in Lampas 18,4 (1985) 267-278  
W. Clarysse - K. Vandorpe, Zenon, een Grieks manager in de schaduw van de piramiden (1990)  
W. Clarysse - K. Vandorpe, Boeken en Bibliotheken in de Oudheid (2004)  
F.A.J. Hoogendijk - B.P. Muhs, Handschrift op papyrus (2005) 

Anthologies of Greek papyri

P.W. Pestman, The New Papyrological Primer. Second Edition Revised (1994)    
J. Hengstl, Griechische Papyri aus Ägypten (1978) (with German translations)    
A.S. Hunt - C.C. Edgar, Select Papyri I-III (Loeb Classical Library, vol. 1: 1932, vol. 2: 1934, vol. 3: 1950) (with English translations)

Translated texts

R.S. Bagnall & R. Cribiore Women's Letters from Ancient Egypt, 300 BC-AD 800 (2006)
R.S. Bagnall - P. Derow, The Hellenistic period. Historical Sources in Translation (2004) 
J.E. Grubbs, Women and the Law in the Roman Empire. A sourcebook on marriage, divorce and widowhood (2002)
A.S. Hunt - CC. Edgar, Select Papyri with an English translation, Vol. I Private affairs; Vol. II Official documents (vol. 1: 1932, vol. 2: 1934) 
J.G. Keenan - J.G. Manning - U. Yiftach-Firanko, Law and Legal Practice in Egypt from Alexander to the Arab Conquest (2014) 
J.H. Oliver, Greek Constitutions of Early Roman Emperors from Inscriptions and Papyri (1989) 
J. Rowlandson, Women and society in Greek and Roman Egypt (1998) 
P. Schubert, Vivre en Égypte (2000)

For more papyrological literature consult the Bibliographie Papyrologique.