PAPYROLOGY. — This is the science that studies papyri (v.), both from the palaeographical point of view and from that of their content; leaving medieval papyri aside, it deals with ancient papyri
written in various languages: ancient Egyptian (hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic and Coptic scripts), Aramaic, Persian, Greek, Latin and Arabic; Greek papyri predominate.
Most come from Egypt; others from Dura Eŭropos (v.) on the right bank of the Euphrates, or from Palestine or Sinai; a notable group, carbonized, was discovered at Ercolano. This is a science that may be called recent, since the papyri of Ercolano were found in 1752 and the first papyrus from Egypt reached Europe in 1778. Only after Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt in 1798 did interest in these discoveries arise, and numerous texts began to flow into museums and libraries in Torino, Parigi, Berlino, Leida and Roma (Vaticano); systematic excavations in Egypt for the purpose of finding papyri were begun in 1883 by Flinders Petrie and from then on were continued and intensified not only by Englishmen, but also by Germans, Frenchmen, Italians and, most recently, Americans, while several scholarly bodies in Europe and America acquired collections of papyri and published numerous important series. From 1921, Greek and Latin papyri also appeared from the excavations at Dura Eŭropos, and at 'Awğā al-Hāfir in Palestine the Colt collection was discovered.
Since the papyri, numbering several tens of thousands, concern almost every act of the life lived by the ancients, especially in Egypt and particularly from the fourth century B.C. to the tenth century A.D., it is evident that they make a contribution of the greatest importance to philology and to the history of antiquity, and above all to the history of law, given that documentary papyri far outnumber literary ones.
In particular, since Egypt was one of the countries most directly connected with Palestine at all times, before, during and after the birth of Christ, papyrus documents (and together with them the ostraca, the parchments and the wax tablets preserved alongside them) provide important material for study, both because of the analogy between the countries and because the Christian communities in Egypt multiplied and flourished very early, taking advantage of the same Jewish expansion in the Nile valley; Egypt, in fact, was the refuge of Jesus with the Virgin and s. Giuseppe during the persecution of Herod and certainly received the first reflections of Christian preaching, while later the deserts of Nitria, Middle Egypt and the Thebaid welcomed the first monastic communities of the followers of s. Antonio abate and s. Pacomio. It should also be borne in mind that Alessandria, between the second and third centuries A.D., was a center of Christian studies, and one should recall the didashaleion associated there above all with the name of Clemente Alessandrino; it should also be observed how important heretical struggles were in Egypt, recalling the names of s. Atanasio and Teofilo Alessandrino.
A considerable quantity of Greek papyri, a few Latin papyri and the totality of the Coptic papyri (sometimes bilingual, Greek-Coptic) bring us into contact with Egyptian Christian society from its origins and, directly as well, with the Egyptian Church, which subsequently adopted Coptic as its liturgical language and still preserves it today, even after the Monophysite schism.