Papyrology Room

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We are very fortunate to have at our disposal a dedicated Papyrology and Palaeography Room, which is located on the first floor of Perkins, Room 152, just opposite the main reading room. Registered users have access to the Pap/Pal room 24/7 to  by card swipe. I have asked the library to set up all the students in the course as registered users. This is strictly a non-circulating collection.

The books are catalogued by the Checklist abbreviation, and this is reflected in the main Perkins catalogue. You will come to know the Checklist well, which will facilitate the rapid checks of many editions so common in papyrological research, but at the beginning you may find useful for searches the rough shelf list whose link is here. You can also, of course, use the library catalogue search facility.

The general categories in the Papyrology Room are organized in this order, working from left to right around the room:
(1) papyrus editions (e.g. BKT, P.Oxy.), (2) ostraca editions (e.g. O.Kellis, O.Mich), (3) tablet editions (e.g. T.Vindol., T.Bloomberg), (4) Sammelbuch, (5) Berichtigungsliste, (6) corpora (e.g. Corp.Pap.Lat.), (7) series (e.g., Am.Stud.Pap., MPER), (8) instrumenta (e.g. lexica, grammars), (9) international congresses (proceedings), (10) Demotic, (11) journals. Within these general categories, volumes are ordered alphabetically.


Papyri @ Duke

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The Duke papyri are located in the Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscripts Library. Before using the Rubenstein Library, you must register here.

To look into what papyri we have, the best starting point remains the facility developed (22 years ago!) by Peter van Minnen that goes under the name, Duke Papyrus Archive. Call numbers for the papyri all start with “p.Duk.inv” (no spaces), and that can be used profitably with the main library catalogue. (Under Advanced Search for the main catalogue, you can limit results to the Rubenstein collection.)


​Books on Reserve

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Most of the books we will need for the course will be available on the Papyrology Room shelves or shared electronically via Box. I will accumulate in the Pap Room a small number of additional books on a reserve shelf for us to share. These books, like everything in the Papyrology Room, are strictly non-circulating. If you choose to make an electronic copy of an extensive part of the book, kindly share via our Box facility. 


​Dating Papyri

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For palaeographical dating of so-called book hands, the following list is essential (all located in the Papyrology room).
  • Eric G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World (second ed. rev. P. Parsons)
  • C. Roberts, Greek Literary Hands, 350 BC - A.D. 400
  • C. Cavallo and H. Maehler, Hellenistic Bookhands
  • Hermann Harrauer, Handbuch der griechischen Paläographie. 2 volumes
  • Richard Seider, Paläographie der Griechischen Papyri. 3 volumes
  • Wilhelm Schubart, Papyri Graecae Berolinenses.
  • R. Barbour, Greek Literary Hands, A.D. 400 - 1600 (for later papyri)
  • G. Cavallo, Greek Bookhands of the Byzantine Period (for later papyri)

Sometimes helpful also can be the web site pappal, which hosts a complete collection of the images of dated documents on papyrus; most of the examples are documentary hands, but some documents do contain book-hand scripts 


​Box.duke.edu

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Much of what we will be working on will be shared via a common Box folder named Papyrology2018. Research images for papyri tend to be large files, so be aware of your network environment before loading or downloading.


Digital Resources

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The list of terrific electronic resources that help with papyrological research is long, very long. Look at the Digital tab to find an annotated list of some select starting points.
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The papyrus pictured at top is P.CtYBR 5018, a literary papyrus from the Yale collection, published by Johnson in 2016.