Papyri on the Internet

Since I first visited The Bancroft Library in 1993 to study its Tebtunis Papyri for my Ph.D. dissertation, much has changed. Not only is my dissertation finished and in press, but the papyri themselves have become media stars.

First, the Tebtunis Papyri (found at the town of Tebtunis in Egypt) have been included in the Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS)—a consortium of six American universities (Berkeley, Columbia, Duke, Michigan, Princeton, Yale) and the Free University of Brussels.

The goal of this consortium is to make available in digital format the members’ respective papyrus collections. In 1996, APIS received funding from the NEH for the first phase of this project, covering 1996-98. The largest portion of the NEH grant came to Berkeley, because here the work involves a great deal of conservation as well as digitizing papyri and making catalog records.

The Tebtunis Papyri were discovered by an 1899-1900 University of California archeological expedition funded by Phoebe Hearst. Found in houses, mummy cases, and crocodile mummies, the latter have captured special attention in the media. This is the largest papyrus collection in the U.S.—over 22,000 fragments—and in many respects the most prestigious. It contains many texts considered classics in the field of papyrology, including one of only two extant fragments of a play by Sophocles which was lost in the Middle Ages. The collection illustrates almost every aspect of day-to-day life in Greco-Roman Egypt, from roughly the third century B.C. to the third century A.D.

The main problem regarding conservation of the collection is that in 1940 papyri published in the first three decades of this century (about 1,100 texts) were sandwiched between panes of a newlyinvented transparent plastic material called vinylite. The material seemed to have nothing but advantages (light, easy to store, unbreakable), but it has become apparent that it also has severe disadvantages, which have harmed the papyrus mounted in it. Vinylite is indeed unbreakable, but it is also quite flexible, which causes fragments of the relatively rigid papyrus to break off.

Another disadvantage is the static electricity that builds up between panes of vinylite, which also causes fragments to break off. In the past months, more than 100 fragments have been taken from their damaging vinylite ‘sandwiches’ and placed between panes of glass—the traditional and still the best means of conservation.

In 1940 the published part of the collection was also cataloged, but the information provided was very basic—just the call number, title, and date of the document. APIS aims to give much more information, about both the physical appearance (margins, writing, etc.) and intellectual content (summary, persons named, etc.).

In the past months, catalog records for over 300 texts have been compiled. Eventually they will be available in a separate, searchable database, but for now, 200 records are available through UC Berkeley’s GLADIS and Pathfinder online catalogs.

On the imaging front, APIS has also been on the move: 100 papyri have been scanned at 600 dots-per-inch (dpi), although current Internet technology is not able to deal with the resulting enormous files. In the meantime, the images are made available at 150 dpi over the World Wide Web, but even this “low” resolution gives wonderful results.

In the immediate future, we will make available another 300 Tebtunis papyri and combine the various elements of the project into one database, which will allow searching and browsing through the collection both by image and by the accompanying catalog record. By June 1998, this should all be up and working on the internet.

After June 1998, everything is up in the air pending a grant proposal for the second phase of APIS, to cover the years 1998-2000.

For Berkeley, this would result in another 1,000 texts being rehoused in glass, cataloged, and imaged. Yet even with this progress, more than 20,000 fragments still remain, the precise contents of which have never been determined.

Arthur Verhoogt is a member of the
Papyrological Institute of the
University of Leiden, the Netherlands, and,
this year, Visiting Papyrologist at
The Bancroft Library.

Volume 112
Spring 1998

Table of Contents

DeFeo, Conner papers add to Bancroft’s Beat collection

From the Director: What does Bancroft collect?

New Acquisitions

Lizardi manuscript discovered

Papyri on the Internet

The Digital Scriptorium
Towards a Renaissance in medieval manuscript studies

Robert Frost Collection includes photos inscribed by the poet

Bancroft Fellows research images of the American West, history of Mexico’s Cora Indians

Freshmen discover the wonders of Bancroft

Bancroft staffer in the spotlight

An Oral History of Jack Stauffacher From letterpress to computer-designed fine printing

Where is the last portrait of Mark Twain?

Mark Twain Project Tonight!