Papyrus 1

Papyrus 2

Papyrus 3

Papyrus 4

Papyrus 5

Papyrus 6

I have divided you into groups and assigned each group a particular papyrus.

-Using the photograph of the papyrus, do your best to decipher it. Click on the image of the papyrus to zoom in, or download the picture into an image browser with zoom feature.

-First write down a diplomatic transcription (this essentially means writing down the letters you see, using sub-linear dots to indicate letters you are not certain of, or simply placing a dot without any letter to indicate the fact that there is a letter there, but that you cannot read it. Try to look for common words (e.g. kai) to get an idea of what the letter style of the scribe is like. If you get stuck, move on to another part of the papyrus: work on all parts simultaneously. It sometimes helps to establish the letters at the beginning and end of each line as you work your way down the papyrus.

-Use square brackets to indicate any holes or gaps in the papyrus or if the beginning or ends of lines are incomplete.

-Next, try to come up with an edition of the text and to make (some) sense of what you have written down.

-Start with word division: put in spaces before and after words you recognize and accent them.

If you are able to make some sense of the text, write down what you think its genre is and what it is about, giving reasons and references to the text.

-Attempt a translation of those parts you can understand. If you have an idea of what letters may have appeared in parts of the text that have holes in them or have incomplete line beginnings or endings, suggest supplements.

-Use the TLG (available on-line through the UW Libraries site) to run searches on strings of words to see if your text corresponds to any known literary texts. You can also use the TLG to run searches on incomplete words to get ideas for supplementing lacunae.

-Note down separately in an apparatus any grammatical "mistakes" or "misspellings" the scribe may have made. If your text is a known literary text, note down any variations from the other versions of the text we have and evaluate these differences.

-Use information in readings to classify what type and period the letter forms belong to and thus to hazard a guess about what century the text belongs to. What features in the letter forms lead you to this conclusion?

-Be prepared to present your findings in our session. Make copies for others of your transcription and edited version of your text.

Readings

These will be placed on the revolving bookcase in the seminar room some time on Friday, Oct. 10

Turner, Greek Papyri. Read Ch. V on editing a papyrus.

Kenyon, Palaeography of Greek Papyri. Read Ch. IV and V on writing styles on literary papyri. Consult Appendix I for a chart of letter forms.

I may place a third book on the shelf on Friday. I will update this description if I do so.

What we'll do in class

I will give a brief overview of the field and resources and methods, categories of papyri, and some famous papyri. Then each group will make a presentation of its papyri, giving a handout with their findings to the rest of the class. The relevant papyrus will be projected on a screen.

These will be placed on the revolving bookcase in the seminar room some time on Friday, Oct. 10

Turner, Greek Papyri. Read Ch. V on editing a papyrus.

Kenyon, Palaeography of Greek Papyri. Read Ch. IV and V on writing styles on literary papyri. Consult Appendix I for a chart of letter forms.

I may place a third book on the shelf on Friday. I will update this description if I do so.