Macquarie Papyri
Macquarie Papyri
The Museum of Ancient Cultures at Macquarie University, Sydney holds some
900 ancient papyri and related items. The core of the collection, now the largest
in Australia, was built from an initiative of Edwin Judge (the inaugural Professor
of Ancient History at Macquarie) in 1972 and was assembled over the following
decade. A number of scholars have since worked on these papyri, and it is a pleasure
to acknowledge the special contribution of Stuart Pickering. The
Macquarie Papyri Research and Development Committee
was established in January 2008 to oversee (among other objectives) the systematic
publication of the collection, of which only a few pieces had previously appeared.
This website aims to facilitate access to and understanding of the collection, both
for professional researchers and those with a general interest in the ancient world.
It provides metadata and (at least) thumbnail images for all items in the collection.
Registered researchers can apply for access to high resolution images of texts to assist
analysis aimed at publication.
Most of our papyri are written in Greek, but there are also a number in other
languages and scripts, including Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, Demotic, and Coptic
(Egyptian), and Hebrew, Latin, and Old Nubian. Some are obvious treasures, such as
those glimpsed in the slideshow on the front page of the site—a fragment of the New
Testament book of Acts, a Coptic codex of ritual power (on vellum), a beautifully
preserved Demotic letter, and a fragment of a Sibylline oracle. Many others are
fragments. One of our goals in publishing details of the material online is to support
the identification of direct matches or indirect links with items in other collections
around the world. Brilliant detective work by Willy Clarysse and Mark Depauw (from
Leuven) and by Stuart Pickering has already established links with various externally-
held papyri. We are aware of relationships with at least the collections in Cologne,
Duke, and Milan. It is hoped that the imaging of our collection will lead to further
exciting finds and improved readings of texts.
The website is funded by the
Australian National Data Service
and Macquarie University and has arisen from the work of members of the Papyri Committee,
especially Malcolm Choat, Rosalie Cook, Trevor Evans, and Karl Van Dyke. The
metadata platform and web application has been constructed by Intersect. The source code has been made open source and it is available
here
in github.
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