196 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PAPYROLOGY

ment of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum, held on 1-4 December, ·
1993
Donald M. Bailey, 191-196. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Journal of Roman Archaeology. ' eel
Parker, R. A. 1950. The Calendars of Ancient Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Pre
Perernans, W., and E. van 't Dack. 1950-. Prosopographia Ptolemaica. 10 vols. to date ss.
CHAPTER 9
arranged systematically with a name index. Leuven: Bibliotheca Universitatis. h~tp://
prosptol.arts.kuleuven.ac.be/.
Pestrnan, P. W. 1967. Chronologie égyptienne d'après les textes démotiques (332 av. J -C
. .
ap. f.-C.). Leiden: Bnll.
-- . 1981. A Guide to the Zenon Archive. Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill.
. --453
EDITING A PAPYRUS
-- . 1994. The New Papyrological Primer, 2d ed. Leiden: Brill.
Preisigke, F. 1915. Fachwörter des öffentlichen Berwaitungsdienstes Ägyptens in der griechisch
Papyrusurkunden der ptoiemáisch-romisc . h en Zelf.
. Göttingen. ffl

-- . 1922. Namenbuch. Heidelberg.

-- , et al. 1925-. Wörterbuch der griechischen Papyrusurkunden, mit Einschluss der
griechischen Inschriften, Au/schriften, Ostraka, Mumienschilder, usw. aus Ägypten.
Berlin.
Pruneti, P. 1981. I centri abitati dell'Ossirinchite: Repertoria toponomastico. Florence.
Quaegebeur, J. 1975. Le dier, égyptien Shai dans la religion et l'onomasuque. Leuven.
Rathbone, D. W. 1983. "The Weight and Measurement of Egyptian Grains." ZPE 53: 265-275_
Samuel, A. E. 1962. Ptolemaic Chronology. Munich: Beck.
Scott, K. 1932. "Greek and Roman Honorific Months." Yale Classical Studies 2: 201-278.
Shelton, J. C. 1977. "Artabs and Choenices." ZPE 24: 55-67.
-- . 1981. "Two Notes on the Artab," ZPE 42: 99-106.
Skeat, T. C. 1969. The Reigns of the Ptolemies, 2d ed. Munich: Beck.
-- . 1993. The Reign of Augustus in Egypt: Conversion Tables for the Egyptian and Julian
Calendars, 30 B.c.-14 A.D. Munich: Beck.
Talbert, R., ed. 2000. Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press.
Till, W. 1954. Datierung und Prosopographie der koptischen Urkunden aus Theben. Vienna.
Vleerning, S. P. 1980. "Masse und Gewichte." Lexikon der Ägyptologie 3: 1209-1214.
-- . 1981. "The Artaba and Egyptian Grain-Measures." In Proceedings of the Sixteenth
International Congress of Papyrology, ed. R. S. Bagnall, 537-545. Chico, Calif.: Scholars
Press.
Von Reden, S. 2007. Money in Ptolemaic Egypt: From the Macedonian Conquest to the End of
the Third Century BC. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
West, L. C., and A. C. Johnson. 1944. Currency in Roman and Byzantine Egypt. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press.
PAUL SCHUBERT
INTRODUCTION: THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE
The process of editing a papyrus is undeniably a central aspect in the field of
papyrology. Starting often with little more help than the document itself, which is
seldom completely preserved, a papyrologist must tackle many forms of writing.
The edition of a papyrus should give readers from other fields of specialization
access to this material in its original language, offer a translation in a modern
language, and, most important, place the new text into its broader environment, be
it historical or literary.
Although papyri are an abundant source of information for our knowledge of
daily life in the ancient world, one could easily object that nobody needs yet
another contract for the sale of a donkey or another scrap from the first book of
the Iliad. On the other hand, one can argue that, when placed in the right setting,
very few papyri lack any new information for the reader. It is therefore all the more
desirable that the edition of a new papyrus not only provide readers with a sound
text and internal commentary but also inform them of the text's addition to our
knowledge about a particular topic.
As this chapter explains, the task of a scholar who undertakes the edition of a
papyrus resembles that of a detective. Following some basic methodological prin-
ciples, adding a certain amount of experience gained through contact with many
texts, and using state-of-the-art tools to find their way around an increasingly vast
corpus of primary sources, papyrologists must fit together various pieces of a
puzzle. The emerging picture then needs to be interpreted in the light of findings
made in related fields.
198 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PAPYROLOGY
Several excellent introductions to the process of editing papyri have b
written by some eminent specialists (Turner 1973, 1980; :outie 1963, 1966, 19;:~
In the last three decades, however, the advent of electronic tools has made po ."
SSt-
b]e-and necessary-the quick handling of a huge mass of data, thus changi
substantially many aspects of the way in which papyrologists edit their texts. ng
Until the last quarter of the twentieth century, scholars handling a litera
papyrus resorted primarily to their general knowledge of ancient literature, there:
following in the path of the pioneers of papyrology, such as Bernard Grenfell an~
Arthur Hunt. Many had started learning Latin and Greek at secondary school and b
the time they were confronted with the task of deciphering a papyrus, displayed a;
intimate familiarity with the masterpieces of classical civilization. Excellent diction-
aries were available, notably Liddell and Scott's (1940). Lexica and concordances
pertaining to the major authors contributed to the identification of known texts·
some had been produced by hand, while later the first computers helped to compil;
others. The now ubiquitous Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG) created at the Univer-
sity of California-Irvine did not exist, and when it first came into being, it required
the use of a computer dedicated almost exclusively to the task of reading Greek texts.
Papyrologists who were dealing with Greek documentary texts were better
equipped, thanks mostly to the foresight of a retired German post office official,
Friedrich Preisigke. He not only created the Wörterbuch, a specialized dictionary
devoted to Greek documentary papyri, but also started a number of other useful
tools (see chapter 3: the Namenbuch for personal names; the Sammelbuch for
papyri not published in an indexed volume; the Berichtigungsliste for corrections
to texts; and the Fachwörter for technical vocabulary).1 To the list should be added
Aristide Calderini's Dizionario dei nomi geografici (1935-2007), a dictionary of all
place names in Egypt. Scholars in related fields (e.g., epigraphy) have often envied
papyrologists for the diversity and thoroughness of their instruments. In Prei-
sigke's day, papyrology was a relatively young discipline, and the bulk of material
was of manageable proportion; thus, he could claim to have taken into account
nearly every papyrus that was available to him.
Such was the setting in which previous introductions to the process of editing
papyri were developed. Much of what was said then remains valid today. Never-
theless, it is now much easier for a papyrologist to sort through a vast number of
papyri-tens of thousands of texts-at high speed, thus making it possible to look
for parallels to a new item within a few minutes, where the same process would
have required several hours not long ago. On the literary side, the TLG can be easily
consulted either with a CD-ROM or on the Internet. Working on a small fragment,
a papyrologist can now compare readings of even a short series of characters with
nearly every text preserved from ancient Greek literature.
Another important aspect of the recent transition toward electronic tools is the
increasing integration of these tools: The Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri
( DDbDP), which contains the text of nearly every documentary text on papyrus in an
EDITING A PAPYRUS 199
. readable form, is now linked to the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der Papy-
easil\unden Ägyptens (HGV), where the user will find an exhaustive catalogue of
(IISU~ and Latin documentary papyri, including date, place, and contents. Similar
Greebases are now available for Coptic documents and for demotic texts. Texts in the
databDP also partially record corrections to the original edition. In the United States,
D~or papyrus collections are presently catalogued in a standardized form through
roaJ Advanced Papyrological Information System (APIS). Every papyrus can be
tbe rnïned from anywhere in the world through the Internet; once a papyrus has
3
eJC
1,een published, d'igrta
· l images
· are provi'd e d , as we il as a trans l ation
· an d commentary.
Since papyrus collections and archives tend to be scattered among many locations,
such catalogues enable scholars from every country to compare these fragments and
rnake sense of the apparent disorder.
Electronic tools will eventually supersede the main papyrological reference
books. Supplements to Preisigke's Wórterbuch are becoming redundant now that
scholars can search the same data on the Internet. The same can be said of R. A.
Pack's Greek and Latin Literary Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt, which can be
consulted in updated form as an online database from the Centre de Documentation
de Papyrologie Littéraire, along with the Leuven Database of Ancient Books.
DECIPHERMENT: To AND FRo
BETWEEN THE EYE AND THE MIND
The first phase in the process of editing a papyrus, however, does not require many
sophisticated tools but rather a pair of sharp eyes and a certain amount of common
sense. Before even starting to decipher a text, a papyrologist will look at the
papyrus from a distance. Its general state of preservation will offer a first idea of
the gaps that may have to be filJed in later. The format of the sheet is also of
importance: Obviously, there will be a difference between a tax receipt written on a
small slip and a register for a whole village, which would require a roll of some
length. In the case of literary papyri, the height of a roll or the layout of a codex
page will give the editor a first impression of what they may contain. Margins are
also worth taking into account; for instance, elaborate copies of books tend to have
more generous margins (cf. chapter 11).
Papyri display a great variety of hands in both literary and documentary texts.
Every level of proficiency appears, from the skilled professional scribe producing a
book or working at the higher levels of administration in Egypt, to poorly trained
individuals who can hardly write their own name (Youtie 1971). It can therefore be
of great help to assess the quality of a hand before deciphering even a single word:
200 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PAPYROLOGY E D l T l N G A P A PY R U S 201

Does the scribe know how to write fluently? Is his hand fast? How easy would it b ·me whereas in general one should concentrate on whole words. It is easier to
ptl ,
8
for his contemporary readers to reclaim the meaning of the written text? e d entire words than each letter sequentialJy. With modern languages, adults
. A first glance at the writing will also all~w a papyrologist to m~k~ a rough rea ·callY read in units of words, although this does not mean that we necessarily
1
estimate of the date of a papyrus before starting to look for the poss1b11ity of a tYP gnize a word only by its shape. According to Gibson and Levin (ibid., 197):
reco
explicit date to confirm it. Styles vary considerably throughout the Ptolemaic an~ Research on the effectiveness of global form or contour as a basis for recognition
Roman periods, and, on that basis alone, a trained reader should in most cases be of the word has consistently tended to refute the idea. Overall word shape is not
able to narrow the dating of a papyrus to within a century.2 a good enough differentiator, _and ch_ildren (as well _as adults) do not use it. Not
Decipherment does not necessarily follow a straight path: Instead of starting at only is different1at10n poor without internal analysis, but without such analysis
the upper left corner of a sheet, one may find it more helpful to look first for the there would be no basis for transfer to new words.
most easily readable sections. As in a puzzle, every piece added to the picture
In fact, many factors make a word recognizable. Graphic cues such as dominant
contributes to the reading of more difficult parts. In a documentary text, the
)etters (in modern languages, capital letters; in a papyrus, a rp, for instance) play an
heading often provides crucial information on the type of document under scrutiny.
irnportant role. The beginnings (and to a lesser degree the endings) of words seem
For instance, the mere presence of the word rrapá. (para) at the beginning of the
to be more helpful than the middle in rendering a word recognizable. [n reality, we
second line, followed by a name in the genitive (meaning "from X"), will suggest
seldom read single words but rather connected text, which implies that the
that this is a document that follows the form of a hypomnema, a memorandum,
meaning of the words affects our capacity to read the text as a whole.
most often a request submitted to a person of higher standing by an individual in a
When deciphering a papyrus, one is confronted not only with the straightfor-
subordinate position. In other cases, the presence of a telltale xa[pELv (chairein), or
ward process of reading but also with the additional difficulty of having to restore
only the abbreviated form x- in the first lines of a document may signal the format
the text where the papyrus has been damaged. In this, the psychology of modern
of a letter or perhaps a contract drafted in the form of a letter. Again, the presence of
reading allows us to draw a parallel with the decipherment of ancient texts. For
a date, accompanied by a titulature and a place name at the beginning of a
historical reasons, the Latin alphabet used in many European languages bears a
document, may mean that a contract was written by a scribe working for an official
resemblance with Greek cursive script. Gibson and Levin (ibid., 170) state that "if
notary, while private contracts usually show a date at the end of the document.
the text is mutilated so that only the top half or the bottom half is visible, it is
The same first quick assessment applies also to literary papyri. For instance, the
reasonably easy to read the top and very difficult to read the bottom. The prepon-
presence of short horizontal strokes between the beginnings of two consecutive lines
derance of distinctive features exists on the top of the letters."
(paragraphos) may indicate that the text is a dialogue, possibly a drama, or a
Coming back to the decipherment of papyri, if we leave aside very neat capital
lemmatized commentary. Nomina sacra, the abbreviated forms of names like
letters (where each letter is separated from the next and has an easily recognizable
BE= 0Eós, or IE= 'I.,,aoûs, with a horizontal stroke above the letters, immediately
shape), it makes little sense to try to decipher words one letter at a time. Words are
indicate a Christian context (Paap 1959). When the whole width of a column is
most often barely separated, and scribes use punctuation only rarely. Typically, in
preserved, the length of lines may suggest a metrical unit: Hexameters are longer than
some documents from the end of the Ptolemaic period, a scribe often lifted his pen
iambic trimeters, and elegiacs alternate between longer and shorter lines. No single
not between two letters but within a letter itself. He then linked it to the next
rule applies to each individual case, so common sense clearly plays a crucial role.
without lifting his pen.4
Much research has been done on the process of reading modem languages,
The shape ofletters, however, does matter. Although the same letter may have two
notably English. Although not every result from such studies can indiscriminately
different shapes in the same papyrus, one should look for the distinctive features of
be applied to the technique of deciphering ancient cursive scripts, certain findings
the most typical letters. For instance, if the scribe systematicalJy ends the descending
can serve as useful guidelines to papyrologists. I therefore summarize the most
stroke of p with a hook but does not do so when writing a ef>, this will become useful
relevant elements here and compare them with the technique of decipherment,
information when only the lower end of a descending stroke is preserved.
which involves mostly trial and error.3
Moving away from the individual letters, a reader of papyri will try to grasp
Starting with the shape of the letters, the "absolute legibility of a single letter is
whole words, sometimes sequences of words. The process of deciphering then
not what matters; it is relative confusability with other letters that is important"
depends heavily on a movement from the eye to the mind and back again:
(Gibson and Levin 1975, 195). This is an experience that every papyrologist has had
Papyrologists incessantly check their readings against their prior knowledge of
many times. In cursive scripts, confusion between Hand N, Band K, or N and Tl,
Greek (or whatever ancient language is involved) to match the signal caught by
for example, is very frequent. Beginners often start deciphering a papyrus one letter
 202 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PAPYROLOGY E D r T r N G A P A P Y R U S 203

1 their eyes in a sequence of letters that makes sense in their memories, at least at
~..,Ie 9·1•
Editorial Conventions of the Leiden System
basic level of vocabulary and morphology. In ancient as in modern langu the
" bout the reading of which there is a genuine q/Mi
"only certain combinations of letters or words can be a word. Knowledge of t:ges, J.
terters a
b or that are so mutilated that without the context
rules even in the skilled reader is tacit rather than explicit" (Gibson and Levin ese (!oU t
might be read in more than one way
7 theY ·bie ]etters, th e approximate
·
224). A sequence of strokes and curves will suggest to a papyrologist perhaps ~: 5, nom b er o f wh.1c I 1 1s
. or -10- or± 10
,_ Ulegt
full word but a root or an ending. One then compares this first result Witht a 1cnown .
number of possibilities and reverts to the papyrus, testing those hypotheses it a . ·ng ]etters, the approximate number of which is r ... l or l-10-j or [ ± 20]
era. • 1111ss1
3
tively against the written material. 1cnowi1
4- roissing letters, the number of which is unknown ] or [ I or [
Because isolated words are seldom of much use, the next step obviously letters restored by the editor of the text [a/3yö]
consists of trying to link several words into a sentence. Documentary pap)'ri S· lacunae in the text (omissions of the scribe) < >or***
tend to use standard expressions that recur in many instances. A basic experience (i. dditions made by the editor in order to fill such lacu- <a{3yo>
7· a
of the usual phraseology is therefore a great help to a papyrologist while readin nae
_ resolutions of abbreviations (e.g., yp- = yp( aµµaT<v,)) (a{3yo)
new texts. Beginners will improve their deciphering skills by getting acquainte: 8
interpolations ( i.e., letters or words wrongly added by {a/3y8j or L..l or (q~y~}
with a generous selection of texts in one of several available sourcebooks.s Even 9·
the scribe and canceled by the editor of the text)
in the case of a perfectly preserved papyrus, a seasoned scholar may at first fail _ erasures by the scribe [a/3yli]
10
to comprehend certain passages because the cursive writing of particular scribes _ interlinear additions that would be impractical to print 'a{3yö'
11
can be very confusing. For instance, imperial titulatures are often written in a between the lines
fast scribble in which the individual letters are hardly recognizable. The most
extreme cases show little more than a sharply undulating wave for words such
as EvTVxoûs-, EvaE{3oûs-, or aE{3aaToû (corresponding to Latin Felix, Pius, and Augus- breathings and accents are added, and capital letters used for proper names. Accents,
tus). With a basic knowledge of the expressions that frequently appear in such diaereses, or punctuation found in the papyrus are indicated in the apparatus.
passages, the reader can hope to identify some words from the shape of one or With a literary papyrus, if this is a new text, it is advisable to produce two
two letters. For instance, the x of EvTvxoûs- usually stands out from the illegible transcripts. The first ("diplomatic transcript") will provide the reader with the text
scribble. precisely as it is read on the papyrus; it should retain the scribe's spelling, including
Deciphering a papyrus is of course only part of the process of editing; the next errors. The second ("full transcript") will correct these errors and supply the reader
step is to transcribe the text into a form that other scholars will understand. For with word breaks, punctuation, breathings, and accents. In the case of a well-
this purpose, papyrologists have agreed on a system of dots and brackets that known literary text (e.g., a fragment from the Odyssey), however, one transcript is
indicate the state of the original papyrus and the level of confidence with regard to enough; the spelling found on the papyrus is usually given in the text, with a note
a particular word or phrase. Those rules were adopted in 1931 and are widely known in the apparatus where necessary.
as the "Leiden system" (table 9.1).6
Arguably the single most important item in this list is the dot, the purpose
of which is to warn the reader of an uncertain reading. "Van Groningen [ originator
of the Leiden system] used to say with regard to the rule that uncertain letters RESTORATION: THE SEARCH
should be dotted: 'The dot is a papyrologist's conscience'. "7 Papyrologists, as well
as nonspecialists, who use papyrological editions must therefore tread carefully FOR p ARALLELS
when using a passage that has been heavily dotted-or bracketed. Simultaneous
use of different types of brackets is also to be considered with caution. Cursive writing in which the shape of every letter is not self-evident can by itself be
When a text is badly corrupted, this is indicated in the apparatus, a section below cause for trouble, but it can also be aggravated by another frequent problem: holes of
the text where the reader will find relevant information on the state of the original various sizes in the papyrus. Therefore, in deciphering a new text, a papyrologist often
papyrus. In the case of documentary papyri, editors do not correct spelling mistakes cannot rely solely on shape recognition and approximate feeling of the language to
in the edited text but give the standard spelling in the apparatus. A single transcript is produce a decent transcript but must use para!Jels from previously published texts.
sufficient for most practical purposes. Words are separated, punctuation is supplied,
 204 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PAPYROLOGY EDITING A PAPYRUS 205

Looking for parallels has always been a tedious task that requires access t
well-furnished library. Until recently, references to possible parallels had to oba
located in standard dictionaries; after this, the papyrologist would go on to ch e
the edition of the texts. Few university libraries possess a nearly complete seteck
classical Greek literature, let alone a generous selection of editions of docurnenta of
papyri. New electronic tools, however, have opened the field of papyrology (
scholars working in universities of more modest means, where they now hav:
access to texts from around the world. Electronic databases enable one to search
not only for a specific word but also for a few letters in a word or for several words

I in the same context. A search can be further refined by specifying a time span (this
is when a rough palaeographical estimate is most useful) or, in the case of Graeco-
Roman Egypt, a particular village or nome. With literary fragments, one can also
search by genre, date, or place. Recourse to those new tools, however, does not
obviate the need to check the original editions later on, when the time comes to
add some flesh to the skeleton: Reliance on electronic media alone too often
proves treacherous and can lead to serious mistakes. Moreover, sound scholarship
always relies on extensive reading of the original sources, regardless of technica]
progress. Figure 9.1. P.Gen. inv. 500.
At this point in the process of editing a papyrus, a scholar may follow different
paths depending on the type of text under study. Literary and documentary papyri
can present the editor with various situations, where the text under scrutiny either
conforms to a previously known model or displays no immediate parallel. a potentially interesting literary fragment (PGen. inv. 500) that still awaits a full
A literary papyrus consisting of a fragment from a major work that was interpretation.
independently copied down to the Renaissance is probably the easiest case to Since PGen. inv. 500 is a previously unknown text, both a "diplomatic" and a
handle. A search for parallels might show, for example, that a small scrap of "full" transcript are provided:
papyrus dating from the second century CE contains a few broken lines from
one of the speeches of Demosthenes, the orator most commonly found in Greek 1 (1st hand) l .. [.llfT7)/? [ l .. [.]. JfT1JP.[
papyri. The papyrologist's task would then consist of restoring (with the help of a 2 l.[.l. (!-1TOT .[ ].L].q.7TOT_[
modern edition of Demosthenes) the appearance of the original papyrus roll; the 3 ]. ywKarncn-d ].yw KaTà en,[
reading of the papyrus is compared with the modern edition (i.e., with the 4 ]EpovEpfLOVEf. [ [jEpov 'Epf.lOÛ Ef.[
testimony of Byzantine manuscripts); and variations in the transmitted text are 5 ]. a0ELvatço [ à]~a0Ei'val çó[avov
identified. This is quite often a relatively straightforward process, which helps us 6 ]. V1TO. [ ].v1ro. [
mainly to evaluate the state of the textual transmission at a given period in relation 7 ]c;,>lEP..[ ]c;,>lEP..[
to our Byzantine manuscripts. 8 ]ov011aEOT1)UK[ Ê1T1JKOÀ]ov01)UE Ó T'rj<; K[
Matters can become more difficult when a search for parallels with a literary 9 ]ovaVOlKOÖOf.l1J[ ] OV (lVOlKOÖOf.l 1) [
fragment yields no suitable match. Complete rolls or codices were a rarity even 10 (2nd hand) ].EfWf.lE~[ l. E{lfJ f.lEM
when papyrology was in its infancy. Nowadays the typical unpublished literary n (1st hand) ]c;.,v_[ ]c;.,v. [
fragment rarely contains a whole column of text. Faced with a previously unknown
source, the editor focuses on smaller details in the search for parallels, even
though this does not always lead to a complete text. Figure 9.1 is an example of The restorations made in the full transcript suggest that we are dealing with a
shrine of Hermes (line 4: ,]Epov 'Epf.lou). It seems that someone has been instructed
 206 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PAPYROLOGY
to set up a statue (line 5: à]!,,a0EZvai çó[avov). There is also a mention of .
building or rebuilding (line 9: à11oiKoöoµ:I)[). Those elements point to a IllYth et\
cal narrative, perhaps explaining the erecting of a statue. The most pro 0 .~81-
parallel appears in the story of Hermes Perpheraios.8 [n a prose summary rnisin., of --.,
of Callirnachus's Iambi, we learn that some fishermen from Ai nos in Thracia fo 01\t
a statue in their net. Recognizing this as an image of a god, they set it up int~ .
city. This is an interesting parallel, which could help a papyrologist in interpreti;:'
the new papyrus fragment, although the argument in favor of linking it g
the Callimachean narrative remains rather weak. A firm conclusion can so to
times elude a papyrologist for many years until another clue shows up in a rne.
new
papyrus.
Let us now return to documentary papyri. Not all texts are equally likely to
conform to a given model. Scribes producing property returns, for instance
usually stick to a standardized phraseology that allows papyrologists to fill ~
considerable gaps in badly damaged papyri; the same can be said of petitions and
many other types of documents. Contracts from the Ptolemaic period often
begin with a long list of so-called eponymous priests who had charge of various
dynastic cults in honor of the ruling family. These lists follow a standard form,
and it is a relatively straightforward process to restore them to the full breadth of
a column even when much is actually missing. Once a few lines are confidently
filled in and one can estimate the width of the sheet, it is easier to work on the
rest of the text, where the formulation may vary depending on the object of the
contract.
The contents of mutilated private letters, on the other hand, are notoriously
difficult to restore because of several factors that conspire to make a papyrologist's
task more arduous: After the usual greetings that the sender shares with the
addressee, the sender often continues by alluding to matters familiar to both
parties but of which we have no direct knowledge. Because the contents of private
letters frequently revolve around the daily life of Egypt's rural population, a
myriad of scenarios may confront the modern reader, and a writer's inadequate
knowledge of morphology and syntax can contribute to making the text still less
intelligible.
Whatever the document's level of standardization and regardless of the quan-
tity of parallels found in other documents, a few simple rules can help one avoid
editorial errors:
• The scribes were no fools. When faced with phrasing that makes no
sense, a papyrologist should consider what he has not understood before
assuming that the scribe was under the influence of strong beer while
writing the document. One must also remember that, at the receiving
end, scribes expected their readers to be able to understand what they
were writing. This general principle should, however, be mitigated by the
EDITING A PAPYRUS 207
that the level of instruction among scribes varied considerably.
fact articular sen·b e mig
. h t h ave b een incompetent,
. b ut a papyro 1 ogist
.
~iuld resort to such an explanation only after exhausting other
r:
~ otheses more respectful of the scribe's skills.
closer an editor is to a gap in the papyrus, the more careful he should
• b The so-called Lex Youtie was formalized by Reinhold Merkelbach and
e.
neatly summarized by the Latin motto iuxta lacunam ne mutaveris ("next
to a gap, thou shalt not alter [the text]").9 In other words, assuming
scribal error is most perilous when one does not know what was written
next.
• A sheet of papyrus had its cost, and one can therefore expect scribes to use
the full width of their page. Left and right margins in a document are not
necessarily perfectly vertical, but one should nevertheless aim for a relatively
even line length in the process of restoring a partially mutilated column. If,
in a sequence of four lines, the text produces lines of 23, 25, 13, and 24
characters, the odds are good that the missing part of the text in line 3 has
not been properly restored. This last rule should, of course, not be followed
with excessive rigidity since exceptions are not infrequent."? For example,
the layout of a heading sometimes requires that an element start on a new
line, thus causing an indentation or a different spacing of the letters in the
preceding line.
ÎRANSLATION: WHEN IT ALL MAKES SENSE
The early editors of many papyri did not bother to translate the texts they had
deciphered, assuming that any decent scholar would know Greek (or any other
ancient language) well enough to make this step unnecessary. It is all the more
remarkable that Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt, the founders of the Oxy-
rhynchus Papyri series, decided to include a translation of all of the texts they
were editing. Did they believe that British readers had less command of the classical
languages than their continental counterparts? It would seem that they had in fact
two excellent reasons for translating their texts into English.
First, Grenfell and Hunt depended heavily on funding from the Egypt Explo-
ration Fund (now known as the Egypt Exploration Society) for their excavations at
Oxyrhynchus. Therefore, they had to appeal to a wide readership so as to convince
their benefactors of the relevance of their work in Egypt. One can see how, in
the first volumes of the series, they carefully included some new Christian texts,
presumably in order to attract the interest of the British clergy. Numerous
subscribers of the Graeco-Roman Memoirs, as the series (including the Oxyrhynchus
 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PAPYROLOGY
208
Papyri) was called, would have known some Greek and Latin without h :
av1n
pursued an academic career. Translations thus served the general purpose g
making the highly specialized contents of the papyri available to a wide pubt· of
IC Of
enlightened amateurs. It was a shrewd move on the part of the two Oxford schol
ars
and one that classical scholars should not forget.
The second good reason was that a translation could be considered as the fir
step towar d a commentary. Some papyro I ogists, . cons,"d enng
. t h e translation tobSt
the ultimate result of editing a papyrus, place it at the end of the edition, after th:
commentary. No clear consensus has emerged on this practice. Things have not
changed since the days of the pioneers: While editing a papyrus, one frequentJ
finds that serious problems arise just as one starts translating the text into one~
own language. What seemed obvious suddenly becomes more obscure, and one's
brilliant conjectures for filling in a gap turn out to make little sense or even to
contradict the rules of ordinary grammar. A translation thus serves a double
purpose: to make the editor verify that the text makes proper sense and to convey
the meaning to readers in a way that they can understand.
A good translation should fulfill several criteria that are not easily reconciled. Given
the fact that we are most often dealing with an editio princeps, precision should take
precedence over literary elegance. As much as possible, the translator should endeavor
to keep the structure of the original sentence, although this is not always possible.
Greek particles are very important for this purpose since they play the role of our
modern punctuation and can quite often be interpreted as such in a modern language.
Technical terms provide the translator with a difficult challenge. What should
we do with words like epikrisis, dioikêtês, or embadikon? A specialist will no doubt
understand them in many cases without a proper translation, and some will claim
that translating them can only obscure their meaning. Having sometimes made
what I now believe to be the wrong choices, I would argue in favor of an
appropriate translation and not a mere transliteration. Thus, for those who have
not been initiated into the intricacies of papyrology, epikrisis will be more under-
standable if it is called "examination of civic status," and dioikêtês can be translated
as "finance minister" or "financial manager," depending on the context. As for
embadikon, which literally means "tax for moving in," one might consider using
"real estate purchase tax." 11
COMMENTARY: THE DETAILS THAT MATTER
Editors of papyri can differ greatly in the way in which they write a commentary,
although they will likely agree on the basic purpose of the task: It should first provide
justification for the choices made in the edition of the original text, especially when
EDITING A PAPYRUS 209
rest upon conjecture; it should also explain to readers what is new in the papyrus
~!then give thei:r1 informa~ion on certain technical matters._ One "" assu~e that the
3 ad outline of interpretation has already been dealt with m an introduction.
bfO pating a papyrus is of course of the utmost importance. Documentary papyri
ften contain a date accurate to the day, and tables provide papyrologists with
0 nvenient means of translating various systems into our Julian calendar. 12 Geog-
co hy also significantly affects the practice of scribes. The origin of a papyrus can be
~~ntified through not only the explicit mention of place names but also the
1
resence of a specific personal name, a turn of phrase in an administrative docu-
P ent, or some phonological peculiarity. For instance, when a man bearing the name
;otoetis shows up in a papyrus, there is a high probability that the document comes
from the village of Soknopaiou Nesos, on the northwestern shore of Lake Moeris,
where this name is very common; again, the names Antiochos and Theon for a
father and a son suggest Oxyrhynchus (PLouvre II 100). Confusion between the
sounds /r/ and/\/ (e.g., cpÓt\ETpov written for cpÓpETpov) is typical of the Egyptian
dialect spoken in the Arsinoite nome and can therefore be taken as a clue that the
scribe is a native Egyptian who lives in that particular area (Gignac 1976, 102-107).
When stumbling upon a technical term (i.e., a poorly attested office or a rare verb
denoting a specific action in a procedure), readers expect to find some explanation in
the commentary. The electronic version of the Brussels Bibliographie papyrologique
(on CD-ROM only), now containing material for years starting in 1932, has made it
much easier to locate the relevant information on many topics, although by using this
method one will also miss much specific information lurking, for instance, within the
commentary to previously published papyri.
The search for parallels has already been described. In the commentary, they
are useful for explaining an unusual wording or for justifying the reconstruction of
the text in a damaged section of the papyrus. Some editors choose to leave no stone
unturned and offer exhaustive lists of parallels to their readers, who thus know
that, in the work under consideration, no evidence has been overlooked; on the
other hand, abundance of material can distract one's attention from substantive
discussion or the most useful parallels.
ILLUSTRATIONS: UNLESS I SEE,
I SHALL NOT BELIEVE
Because the image of a papyrus enables readers to check the decipherment for
themselves, it can be considered an indispensable part of any papyrus edition.
Unfortunately, plates are also the most expensive part of a book, which explains
 210 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PAPYROLOGY
why some editors choose to display only the most important papyri in a vol urn
1
the case of small scraps of little interest, this attitude is justifiable on the gro:dn
that the cost of producing a plate exceeds its usefulness; such bits usually end us
being only described rather than receiving a full edition. p In the vast field of papyrology, the hard core is made up of Greek-and to a
The way in which papyri are illustrated has changed dramatically in the past two
decades. For about a century, the standard illustration was a printed image in black
and white. For most practical purposes, color mattered little because carbon ink
which is most widespread in papyri, contrasts well with the background of th;
papyrus sheet. Only recently has color been introduced on a regular basis in sorne
papyrus editions.
The biggest change, however, lies not so much in the advent of color as in
illustrations supplied by means other than paper. A short-lived attempt to provide
readers with images on microfiche (e.g., BGU XV) met with limited success.
Microforms are not always easy to handle, and reading them requires machines
that libraries are becoming reluctant to maintain and that few individuals own.
The revolution in image-display technology was thus triggered by the advent of
databases available on the Internet. Papyrus collections around the world are
gradually being scanned and catalogued in such a way that external users can
access the images and display them on their screens wherever they are working.
Images can be produced in many different formats, depending on the intended use,
and-with the proper software-can be treated so as to enhance contrast or move
fragments around. This recent development will influence the working methods of
papyrologists in several ways.
First, in the not-too-distant future, costly plates in papyrus editions will tend
to be replaced by links to images accessible on the Internet. This will certainly make
sense from a financial point of view, although one may worry about the long-term
stability of such images and their references. This question, however, belongs to a
debate that far exceeds the scope of the present discussion. Second, it will become
increasingly easy to check almost instantly a reading on a papyrus stored anywhere
in the world. Third, papyrologists will be able to browse through whole collec-
tions-in some cases also unpublished texts-and look for stray parts of a docu-
ment or for papyri belonging to an archive.
MAJOR EDITIONS: ÜF DWARVES STANDING
ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
The image of "dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants" was originally applied
by Bernard de Chartres in the twelfth century to describe the debt that scholars of
EDITING A PAPYRUS 211
. day owed to the great minds of antiquity. The same image can be applied-
hl:tatis mutandis-to present-day scholars in relation to the pioneers who pro-
:uced the first editions of papyri more than a century ago.
sser extent Latin-documentary texts, and not surprisingly it is around such texts
1
hat the process of editing papyri is most coherently organized. If one moves away
~orn this center of gravity toward literary papyri (and especially toward other
languages such as demotic, Coptic or Arabic), the editorial process has until
recently been conducted in a less orderly and standardized manner. This situation,
however, is evolving rapidly, as any user of the Checklist of Editions (Oates et al.
2001
) will have noticed: In its latest printed version, it includes demotic and Coptic
papyri; Arabic papyri are also registered in a separate checklist. The following
survey therefore inevitably reflects the disproportionate amount of attention that
was devoted to Greek documentary papyri for a little more than a century. The
reader should nevertheless bear in mind that many things said about this particular
category of papyri also apply to areas considered peripheral until quite recently.
With the exception of a few items, the publication of papyri on a systematic
scale began only in the late nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, the institutions
holding the largest collections started the most prestigious series, among which the
0xyrhynchus Papyri is probably the best known. Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt
edited both literary and documentary texts from the city of Oxyrhynchus in middle
Egypt at the impressive rate of one volume a year without compromising on quality.
Their very high standard of scholarship has been kept alive for more than a century,
and many papyrologists from around the world contribute to keeping up with the
yearly installments. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri have also served as a model for other
papyrus editions with regard to general layout, translation, commentary, and
indexes. This has led to the adoption of a number of editorial guidelines, together
with the Leiden system of conventional signs (Bell 1932; Hunt 1932).
With less speed but comparable regularity and quality, the National Library in
Vienna has edited the Corpus Papyrorum Raineri for more than a century. Other
major series have met various destinies, following the fate of the institutions where
the papyri were preserved. Thus the Berliner Klassikertexte (BKT) and Berliner
griechische Urkunden (BGU) both had remarkable beginnings, but the Second
World War and the Cold War took their toll in spite of the publication of several
BGU volumes in recent years. The Strasbourg collection was established at the time
when Alsace was German, and the first two volumes were produced by Friedrich
Preisigke, the founder of most of the major papyrological instruments. After the
Second World War, the output resumed under French authority. In Egypt, publi-
cation of papyri was in the hands of scholars from the former colonial powers-
especially Britain and France-and virtually ceased after that time. In Italy, the
Papiri della Società ltaliana also stalled shortly after the Second World War.
212 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PAPYROLOGY
On the whole, one can argue that today the liveliest series are those where th
papyri are integrated in a center of higher learning. Whereas superb collections ar
the British Library in London and at the Louvre Museum in Paris receive on] t
sporadic attention from scholars, some of the best papyrus editions are bei/
produced at a steady rate by universities that possess large collections, as, fo!
instance, those in Ann Arbor (Michigan Papyri), Cologne, and Heidelberg.
There has never been a successful attempt to produce in print a unified corpus
of all papyri. At an early period, Ulrich Wilcken gathered and reedited in his
monumental Urkunden der Ptolemäerzeit many important Greek documentary
papyri from the Ptolemaic period that were published in the nineteenth century.
Although the material from that period has increased enormously since Wilcken's
time, his edition remains one of the greatest achievements in papyrology. On an
even more ambitious scale, a Corpus Papyrorum Graecarum started with two
volumes in which the editors had assembled every text of a given type (in this
case, notifications of death and contracts for wet nurses), but the project was then
discontinued. The closest thing to a unified corpus of papyri is the electronic Duke
Databank of Documentary Papyri. In the not-too-distant future, a complete net-
work of digital tools should make it possible for any scholar to create a custom-
made corpus on virtually any selection principles by drawing metadata from
various sources and texts extracted from the Duke Databank.
One area where near exhaustiveness has been achieved is in the collecting of
Greek documentary papyri scattered in various journals or more generally outside
of standard text editions. We owe the so-called Sammelbuch to the initiative of
Friedrich Preisigke; this instrument has been continued up to the present time in
installments that cover several years.
The relative rarity of Latin papyri enabled Robert Cavenaile to cover the
material in his Corpus Papyrorum Latinarum, a volume of fairly modest size. This
book has, however, become in part obsolete as many more Latin papyri have been
published in the half-century since its publication. A comprehensive survey of all
Latin papyri and parchments that predate 800 CE has resulted in the publication of
the magnificent Chartae Latinae Antiquiores, a series that will include (when
completed) an edition and a plate of every single text.
TEXTUAL CRITICISM: No TEXT Is PERFECT
A first edition of a papyrus is seldom flawless, as one can see from consulting
the-as yet-eleven volumes of the Berichtigungsliste, where (in principle) all
corrections to papyri are recorded. The editing of papyri is therefore an
evolving process. A practical example taken from the revision of the fi.rst
EDITING A PAPYRUS 213
lurne of the Geneva papyri illustrates how one can first spot a misreading,
vo correct the text, and finally draw some conclusions from the newly
then
lished interpretation. It also shows how the confrontation of two wrong
esta b
readings can produce a better text and contribute to refining the prosopography
0
f Roman Egypt.
Dating from ca. 87 CE, PGen. I 4 is a complaint sent to a high official, the
·aridicus Alexandreae, by a man who claims that he was registered in the wrong
:ivic category. He suggests that the iuridicus (judicial official) write to the strategos
( overnor) of the division of Herakleides in the Arsinoite nome to clear up the
;atter. The name of the strategos (lines 17-18) was first read as ... TJA[<,> \ ,.~,, and
soon corrected to ... YJÀtq> \ 'l[1r]1ro1<páTEi (Wilcken 1906, 380 ); Wilcken excluded
A,(!ff')A.[qi. A century later, closer examination of the original produced the nomen
'[ouMw,. It is, however, the reading of the cognomen that offers the most interest-
~~ insight into the process of correcting the text.
After WiJcken's time, this Hippocrates was found to have a near homonymous
colleague, also a strategos of the same division, in a papyrus from Vienna ( P Vind.
Bosw. 1.35), dated shortly after 87: I;w1<P.efTTJ>· The occurrence of two strategoi in the
same division at virtually the same time, and bearing the names Socrates and
Hippocrates, could only raise the suspicion that at least one of the two was misread.
This is where the dots used to mark uncertain letters are most useful, despite the
fact that their use often reflects an individual papyrologist's subjectivity. How can
we reconcile '/[1r]rro1<pÛTEl with I;w1<P.efTYJ,? A close examination of the Geneva
papyrus shows that the gap at the beginning of the word is too narrow for '/[1r]1ro-
but that another name will fit: 'I[u]q1<pá-i:~[,]. An examination of the Vienna
papyrus has confirmed that Isocrates is also to be read there. Having been given
a false identity for more than a century, the strategos Iulius Isocrates is at last saved
from oblivion.
In more general terms, documents on papyrus display a regularity that
makes papyrologists beware of exceptions. If these occur, they should be
justified as far as possible. Unparalleled personal names, grammatical oddities,
and geographical or chronological inconsistencies should alert a reader to the
possibility of an erroneous reading. The process of editing a papyrus therefore
never ends.
NOTES
1.Reference to all of those standard reference books appears in Oates et al. 2001.
2.Useful sets of plates are listed in ibid. (74-75). The two first volumes of P.Mert.
also offer numerous plates presented mostly in chronological order.
214 THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF PAPYROLOGY ED[T!NG A PAPYRUS 215

3. Gibson and Levin (1975). Although not the most recent work on the subject,
Gibson and Levin's book focuses on many aspects that can-at least remotely-be
connected with the practice of reading papyri.
4. See, for example, P.Ryl. II 73.8 (pl. 3; 32-31 BCE): xa,pELv. a1rixoµ.Ev 1rap[d. uov KT,\.
Notice the vof xa,pEw, which is written in three distinct strokes; the last is directly linked
to the following a of a1rÉxoµ.Ev. Again, at the end of a1rÉxoµ.Ev, the v is written in three
strokes, the last of which is linked to the following rrap[á.
5. Hunt and Edgar (1932-1934) with English translation; Pestman (1990) with no
translation but a good commentary for beginners; Hengst! (1978) with German translation.
6. Van Groningen (1932). The English version presented here is from Turner (1980,
187-188).
7. Pestman (1990, 15). To avoid confusion with punctuation, the dot should always
be set below line level, even when there is no letter above it.
8. Callimachus fr. 197; Rossurn-Steenbeek (1998, 268).
9. Merkelbach (1980, 2003); for criticism of the principle underlying the Lex Youtie,
see Fassino (1998).
10. See, for instance, P.Hamb. I 15, a contract from the early third century CE, where
the width of the column varies considerably from one line to another. This can probably
be explained by the fact that the papyrus is twice as wide as it is high (43 x 21 cm).
ll. On ʵ./3aoóv = ʵ./3ao,KÓv, see Kramer (1997, 325).
12. For the Ptolemaic period, where leap years were not taken into account and the
calendar therefore drifted by one day every four years, see Skeat (1954). The precise
dating of documents during the reign of Augustus is also notoriously difficult.
r,1erkelbach, R. 1980. "Lex Youtie." ZPE 38: 29.
-----· 2003. "Iuxta lacunam ne mutaveris," ZPE 142: 34.
paap, A.H. R. E. 1959. Nomina sacra in the Greek Papyri of the First Five Centuries A.D.
Leiden: Bnll.
esunan, P. W. 1990. The New Papyrological Primer. Leiden: Brill.
~ossum-Steenbe_ek, M. van. _1998. Greek Readers' Digests?: Studies on a Selection of Sublit-
erary Papyn. Leiden: Brill.
Skeat, T. C. 1954. The Reigns of the Ptolemies. Munich: Beck.
Turner, E. G. 1973. The Papyrologist at Work. Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Monographs
6. Durham, N.C.: Duke University.
-· 1980. Greek Papyri: An Introduction, 2d ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Van Groningen, B. A. 1932. "Projet d'unification des systèmes de signes critiques." CdÉ 7:
262-269.
Wikken, U. 1906. "Zu den Genfer Papyri." APP 3: 369-404.
Youtie, H. C. 1963. "The Papyrologist: Artificer of Fact." GRBS 4: 19-32 l = Scriptiuncuiae,
vol. 1, 9-23 J.
__ 1966. "Text and Context in Transcribing Papyri." GRBS 7: 251-258 l = Scriptiunculae,
vol. 1, 25-33].
__ 1971. "Bpobécos ypácpwv: Between Literacy and Illiteracy." GRBS 12: 239-261
[= Scriptiunculae, vol. 2, 629-651].
-- . 1974. The Textual Criticism of Documentary Papyri: Prolegomena, 2d ed. London:
Institute of Classical Studies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bell, H. I. 1932. "Notes on Methods of Publication." CdÉ T 270-271.

Calderini, A., and S. Daris. 1935-2007. Dizionario dei nomi geografici e topografici
dell'Egitto greco-romano. Cairo: Società Reale di Geografia d'Egitto: Madrid: Con-
sejo superior de investigaciones cientificas; Bonn: R. Habelt; Milano: Fabrizio Serra.
Fassino, M. 1998. "Sulla cosiddetta 'lex You tie.' " Rivista di filologia 126: 72-75.
Gibson, E. J., and H. Levin. 1975. The Psychology of Reading. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press.
Gignac, F. T. 1976. A Grammar of the Greek Papyri of the Roman and Byzantine Periods.
Vol. 1. Milan: Istituto editoriale Cisalpino-La Goliardica.
Hengstl, J., ed. 1978. Griechische Papyri aus Ägypten als Zeugnisse des öffentlichen und
privaten Lebens. Munich: Heimeran.
Hunt, A. S. 1932. "A Note on the Transliteration of Papyri." CdÉ 7: 272-274.
-- , and C. C. Edgar, eds. 1932-1934. Select Papyri. Vols. 1-2. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Kramer, B. 1997. "Der K,Îu,71s Boethos, und die Einrichtung einer neuen Stadt I." APF 4J:
315-339.
Liddell, H. G., and R. Scott (eds.), H.S. Jones. (rev.). 1940. A Greek-English Lexicon, çth
edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.