PAPYROLOGY. - It is the science that studies papyri (v.) both from the paleographic point of view and from the point of view of their content; leaving aside medieval papyri, it deals with ancient papyri written in various languages, ancient Egyptian (hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic and Coptic characters), Aramaic, Persian, Greek, Latin, Arabic; Greek papyri predominate.
Most come from Egypt; others from Dura Europos (v.) on the right bank of the Euphrates, or from Palestine or from Sinai; a notable group, carbonized, was discovered at Herculaneum. It is a science that can be called recent, inasmuch as the papyri of Herculaneum were found in 1752 and the first papyrus coming from Egypt reached Europe in 1778. Only after Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, in 1798, did interest in these discoveries manifest itself, and numerous texts began to flow into the museums and libraries of Turin, Paris, Berlin, Leiden, and Rome (Vatican); systematic excavations in Egypt for the search of papyri were begun in 1883 by Flinders Petrie and from then on were continued and intensified through the work not only of Englishmen, but of Germans, Frenchmen, Italians and lately also Americans, while several scientific bodies in Europe and America procured collections of papyri and published numerous and important series of them. From 1921 Greek and Latin papyri also appeared from the excavations of Dura Europos, and in Palestine at 'Awja al-Hafir the Colt collection was discovered.
Since the papyri, numbering several tens of thousands, relate to almost every act of the life lived by the ancients, especially in Egypt and especially from the 4th century B.C. to the 10th 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 in every age with Palestine, before, during and after the birth of Christ, the papyrus documents (and with them the ostraca, the parchments and the wax tablets preserved together with them) provide important materials for study, both because of the analogy of country and because the Christian communities in Egypt multiplied very early and flourished, taking advantage of the same Jewish expansion in the Nile valley; Egypt in fact was the refuge of Jesus with the Virgin and St. Joseph during the persecution of Herod and certainly had the first reflections of Christian preaching, while later the deserts of Nitria, of Middle Egypt and of the Thebaid welcomed the first monastic communities of the followers of St. Anthony Abbot and St. Pachomius. One should furthermore bear in mind that Alexandria, between the 2nd and 3rd centuries A.D., was a seat of Christian studies, and one should remember the didaskaleion linked here above all to the name of Clement of Alexandria; it should also be observed how important the heretical struggles in Egypt were, which evoke the names of St. Athanasius and of Theophilus of Alexandria.
A notable quantity of Greek papyri, some Latin papyri and the totality of Coptic papyri (sometimes bilingual, Greek-Coptic) bring one into contact with Christian society in Egypt from its very origin and directly also with the Egyptian Church, which later adopted Coptic as its liturgical language, and still preserves it, even after the Monophysite schism.
Bibliography9 works
Aristide Calderini