Papyrus Letters from Late Antique Egypt

The proposed research project aims at the edition of approximately forty hitherto unpublished late antique Greek papyrus letters preserved in the Papyrus Collection of the Austrian National Library. These written sources are of very high value, offering significant new material for the study of epistolography, every-day life and socio-economic conditions in late antique Egypt (4th to 7th century CE). Private and business letters served as vital means of personal communication over distances and important tools of late antique social and economic life. They were written by next-door people in mostly ordinary circumstances and for ordinary purposes. Most frequently, they are direct in their approach of their subject, and success-oriented. They present us with the way their authors thought, felt, evaluated and reacted to demanding situations, and tried to solve problems. They also provide clues as to the ways average people developed strategies of communication and rhetorical persuation. They make clear the evolution of the literary genre of epistolo- graphy and the forms it took in order to serve every-day needs realistically in contrast to fictional letter-writing by the literati. Last but not least, they offer valuable information on contemporary administration, economy, law, religion and state institutions. The approximately forty letters to be published will be well selected so as to highlight all these different aspects of the genre and the period concerned. The publication will appear as a monograph, comprising around 280 large- format pages, and will follow the well-established schema of papyrological editions in the Corpus Papyrorum Raineri series. The presentation of each text will include: a) Necessary basic information on the papyrus including diplomatic and codicological description, date, place of composition and provenance of the texts; b) Transcription and edition of the Greek text accompanied by an apparatus criticus; c) German translation; d) A full introduction to the contents of the papyrus, evaluation of the text, and placement of it in the broader historical context, and e) detailed line-to- line commentary. Vienna is the exclusive place where the proposed project can be carried out in the optimal way. First, the project concerns material preserved in the Austrian National Library and it is imperative to study the original documents and decipher the scripts in situ. Moreover, the University of Vienna is an internationally renowned institution, which meets all the necessary research requirements and offers the ideal working conditions for the realization of the project both in terms of library facilities and of academic climate of the highest standard. Based on research already done, the full edition of the texts substantially contributing to our knowledge of Greek epistolography in Late Antiquity will be completed within the two-year framework of the Fellowship.

The completed project aimed on the one hand at bringing to light hitherto unpublished papyrus letters written in Greek by editing them for the first time, and on the other hand at placing them in their broader epistolographic, literary and historical context. In the framework of the project, thirty late antique papyrus letters, both private and business ones, which are preserved in the Papyrus Collection of the Austrian National Library, were included in a single volume. The monograph contains transcription of the original Greek text, translation into German and historical and philological commentary also in German. Letters in antiquity were an important, if not the only one, means of long-distance communication. The selected letters are important witnesses from a linguistic as well as historical viewpoint, which enrich our knowledge of ancient epistolography and of multifarious aspects of life in late antiquity. They concern the problems of everyday life, the needs, wishes, hopes and ideology of ordinary people and present aspects of their economic life. They also shed light on the social activity of their authors and their communication strategies, which they developed with a view to the successful rhetorical composition of their letters. In addition, they inform us about the administration, law and religion of the period. The selection of the letters edited was guided to a large extent by the need to mirror this variety of content.The publication has taken on the form of a monograph of ca. 220 large-format pages, which conforms to the general presentation followed in papyrological editions. Accordingly, the edition of each papyrus contains: a) its formal description, including chronology, provenance, script, etc.; b) transcription and scholarly edition of the Greek text; c) German translation; d) study, reconstruction and placement of the text in its philological, literary, social, economic and historical context; and e) extensive and detailed commentary. Several of the edited papyri are preserved in their entirety, while most of them have come down to us in fragmentary form. In many cases the script has faded and is difficult to read; however, it was possible to decipher them successfully. Furthermore, it was possible to reconstruct a large percentage of the destroyed parts as a result of the application of modern scholarly methodology and of the parallel passages that were located in other, already edited papyri. Apart from the monograph, the project also resulted in the publication of twenty-five articles and other contributions in scholarly journals and collective volumes. These offer complementary material, focusing on side aspects of the main project and helping clarifying particular issues. A number of them are, like the monograph, centred around the first edition (or reedition) of another twenty Greek papyri, of which ten were also letters, while the rest represent other textual genres; other articles offer corrections to already edited texts, which contained errors; and others provide theoretical approaches to various issues related to papyri with an emphasis on epistolography.