Papyrology is the study ofmanuscripts of 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 byarchaeologists in several locations inEgypt, such as Arsinoe (Faiyum) andOxyrhynchus. Leading centres of papyrology includeOxford University,Heidelberg University, theÄgyptisches Museum und Papyrussamlung at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin,Columbia University, theUniversity of Michigan,Leiden University, theÖsterreichische Nationalbibliothek,University of California, Berkeley and the Istituto Papirologico "G. Vitelli" connected to theUniversity of Florence.
Founders of papyrology were the Viennese orientalistJoseph von Karabacek [de] (Arabic papyrology),[1]Wilhelm Schubart (Greek papyrology),[2] the Austrian antiquarianTheodor Graf [de] who acquired more than 100,000 Greek, Arabic, Coptic and Persian papyri in Egypt, which were bought by the AustrianArchduke Rainer to 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.
