From the Nile to the Caucasus

The Georgian National Centre of Manuscripts in Tbilisi holds a historical collection of papyri from Egypt, the most important writing material of antiquity. In what way and under what circumstances did these documents travel from the Nile to the Caucasus? To whom do we owe the existence of this small collection? Where and when were these papyri found and acquired? What significance do they have for modern research? Those questions are at the heart of an Austro-Russian research project: similar to a criminal investigation that follows clues and traces, those papyri will be deciphered and joined with fragments in other collections. Archival records of contemporaries will be consulted; content, provenance and dating of the papyri determined. All this information will add to the history of antiquity on the one hand, and the history of scholarship around 1900 on the other. The papyri are predominantly written in ancient Greek and come from a period in which Egypt was an integral part of the Graeco-Roman world, the millenium between its conquest by Alexander the Great and the Arabic-Islamic expansion (300 BCE-700 CE). They cover a broad thematic spectrum, from letters and contracts to administrative documents, accounts, literary texts and more. Those documents were originally chance discoveries of Egyptian farmers (fellahin) searching for fertile soil (sebbakh) in the desert at the edge of the Nile Valley around the middle of 19th century, but soon were actively sought after and retrieved in large amounts. They were found in the huge garbage heaps of ancient cities. Surprisingly, those documents had been preserved for millenia thanks to the climatic conditions of the Egyptian desert. The possibilities for a direct contact with antiquity, finding lost works of literature and insights into early christianity fascinated the scholars of that time and gave an incentive for further excavations. In contrast to medieval manuscripts, papyri are unbiased testimonies of a lost world which allow an unhindered view at the distant origins of our own modern civilisation. Hundred of thousands of documents were acquired and brought to Europe and North America. It is not uncommon for papyri that were found together or even fragments of one and the same papyrus to have been dispersed all over the world an end up in different collections. Founder of the collection was the Russo-Georgian scholar Grigol Zereteli who has to be counted among the pioneers of papyrology. He lived an eventful life under dramatic circumstances (born in Russia, he witnessed the collaps of the Tsarist Empire and left for Georgia during the countrys short lived indipendence where he fell victim to Stalins Great Purge after Georgias integration into the Soviet Union). The project also touches upon a subject matter that is crucial in the current debate: the physical and intellectual appropriation of the historical heritage of the African continent by the great empires and colonial powers of the time.

The particular relevance of the research project results from its location in the context of two overarching topics in the history of culture and science: 1.) the discovery of ancient texts on papyrus in the desert sands of Egypt, which began in the late 19th century, and the resulting emergence of a new research discipline of "papyrology"; 2.) the colonial appropriation of these written testimonies by the European great powers in the age of imperialism and the current debate about the reappraisal of this practice from a postcolonial perspective. At the heart of the project is the collection of ancient papyri by the Georgian-Russian scholar Grigol Zereteli (*St. Petersburg 1870, Tbilisi 1939), which are now housed in the Georgian National Centre of Manuscripts in Tbilisi. He worked as a professor of classical philology at the universities of Tartu (1905), St. Petersburg (1914) and Tbilisi (1920), where he fell victim to the state terror under Stalin. Zereteli recognized the outstanding scientific potential of papyrology at an early stage. His research was groundbreaking and made him one of the founding figures of the discipline. The aim of the project was, on the one hand, to edit the Zereteli Papyri according to the latest scientific standards, and on the other hand, to reconstruct the history of the collection and the scholar's working methods on the basis of the archival documents from his estate. The results are presented in three monographic volumes. The first two volumes contain the newly discovered Zereteli papyri. In the third volume, Zereteli's activity as a researcher and collector is discussed. The copies of the papyri and associated metadata are made available in the online database "Papyrological Navigator" (papyri.info). In accordance with the abovementioned location of the project, significant results have been achieved on several levels: 1.) The edition of a large number of previously unknown texts in ancient Greek, including above all official and private documents, but also remnants of ancient literature. These papyri are highly fragmentary and written in italics that are difficult to decipher; 2.) The systematic review of the papyri already edited by Zereteli by correcting or supplementing the previous readings; 3.) In addition, the analysis of the Zereteli papyri has repeatedly shown connections to papyri in Russian and European collections; this provides important clues to the channels of acquisition and division of early papyrus finds that were unearthed in Egypt before the onset of scientifically documented excavations around 1900 and form the basis of many papyrus collections in Europe and North America; 4.) The evaluation of Zereteli's personal notes gave valuable insights into the working methods and methodology of a papyrologist in the development phase of the discipline.