ERC-Project ELEPHANTINE
Localizing 4000 Years of Cultural History.
Texts and Scripts from Elephantine Island in Egypt

Summary

Elephantine was a militarily and strategically very important island in the river Nile on the southern border of Egypt. No other settlement in Egypt is so well attested through texts over such a long period of time of 4000 years. Its inhabitants form a multi-ethnic, multicultural and multi-religious community that left us vast amounts of written sources detailing their everyday lives from the Old Kingdom to beyond the Arab Conquest. Today, several thousand papyri and other manuscripts from Elephantine are scattered in more than 60 institutions in 24 different countries across Europe and beyond. Their texts are written in ten different languages and scripts, including Hieroglyphs, Hieratic, Demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Coptic and Arabic. 80% of these manuscripts were unpublished or unstudied before.

Thus, access was gained to these texts, making them publicly available in an open access online research database. Links could be identified between papyrus fragments from different collections and an international 'papyrus puzzle' undertaken, incorporating cutting-edge methods from digital humanities, physics and mathematics (e.g. for the virtual unfolding of papyri). For the first time in the history of papyrology papyrus packages can now be read virtually, without physically opening them. Using this database with medical, religious, legal, administrative, even literary texts, the micro-history of the everyday life of the local and global (i.e. 'glocal') community of Elephantine can be studied within its socio-cultural setting in Egypt and beyond. It can be linked back to macro-historical questions - including multiculturalism, the role of females and the development of religions (Polytheism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam) - and benefit from newly-introduced methodologies of global history: Elephantine can thus be used as a case study and a model for the past, present and future.

 

ÄMP Ph 6634. Historic photograph of the German excavations on Elephantine Island lead by Otto Rubensohn and Friedrich Zucker at the beginning of the 20th century. Copyright: Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, SPK.

 

Description

More than 10.000 objects (papyri, ostraca, parchment, paper etc.) could be studied and included into the newly created database in accordance with the XML-Standard of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). More than 120 questions were asked for each object. These fields are included per object concerning materiality (joins), contents and the relevance to the key questions (genres, multiculturalism, family, religions). We were the first Egyptological project using the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) for the encoding of texts. Due to the enormous size of the database and the respective number of special cases for editing texts in TEI format, we could contribute to the development of new standards within the international epidoc-Community. For the encoding of the texts the XML-Editor oXygen was developed and changed for our concrete project needs. We implemented a special grid system how best to handle and document the many papyrus fragments in the collections. This system was also used by our colleagues in Paris and New York. The challenge how to handle smaller fragments for a database was additionally solved. This database with metadata and transcriptions and translations of the texts (where possible) is now presented. More than 4000 new objects could be isolated, restored and catalogued from the Elephantine excavation boxes in Berlin, Paris and New York. The languages and scripts include: Hieroglyphs, Hieratic, Demotic, Coptic, Carian, Meroitic, Phoenician, Aramaic, Syriac, Greek, Latin and Arabic.

The cooperation with the natural scientists was highly productive, searching for ways to virtually unfold papyri with metal containing ink. As the ERC supports "high risk – high gain" projects, we had our break through with papyrus packages. Thanks to the joined international efforts of Egyptologists, Physics experts and Mathematicians for the first time in the history of Egyptology and Papyrology a folded papyrus package could be read virtually.

Perspective

The research database and its amount of data, including the deciphering of the texts in the new TEI format can serve as an international open-access information 'treasure house'. New horizons and opportunities can be opened for scholars and the general public using methods of distant reading, digital humanities, linguistics, Egyptology, Coptology, classics, papyrology, as well as theology, cultural, social and global history. They are able to use this material to ask and answer further questions for their comparison. Classical text editions of the material (based on the database) can also be produced by generations of future students, as these are not intended in this project. Here Elephantine Island is a brilliant microcosm and resource for questions of the cultural history of humankind.

Details

European Research Council
ERC-Grant: Verena M. Lepper
Project Number: 637692 (2015-2022)
Project Acronym: ELEPHANTINE
Project title: Localizing 4000 Years of Cultural History. Texts and Scripts from Elephantine Island in Egypt

 

 

   

Historic excavation box from the German excavations on Elephantine Island lead by Otto Rubensohn and Friedrich Zucker at the beginning of the 20th century.
© Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, SPK / Verena Lepper

 

Process of opening the Elephantine boxes and re-organizing, restoring and conserving the papyri in the Archaeological Center in Berlin.
© Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, SPK / Verena Lepper

 

Papyrus box at the Brooklyn Museum in New York with papyri from Elephantine Island bought by Charles Edwin Wilbour at the end of the 19th Century.
© Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, SPK / Verena Lepper

 

We would like to thank the team and all collaboration partners and collections for their support.

Team

 

Several international interns (including):

 

Cooperation Partners and Advisors:

 

ERC-Project Team Members on Elephantine Island with Felix Arnold, German Archaeological Institute..
© Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, SPK.

 

Contact

Prof. Dr. Verena Lepper
Principal Investigator, Projektleitung

Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz
Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 6
10117 Berlin

EMail: v.lepper@smb.spk-berlin.de

 

Further Information

Resources

  • https://tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/index.html
  • Propylaeum-DOK: ERC-Project ELEPHANTINE
  • edoc-Server. Open-Access-Publikationsserver der Humboldt-Universität: ERC-ELEPHANTINE
  • Further References

  • ARD. W wie Wissen: Rätselhafte Papyri. Die Entzifferung verborgener Hieroglyphen
  • European Commission: Solving the papyrus puzzle
  • Europäische Kommission: "Dem Papyrus-Rätsel auf der Spur"
  • Piecing together Egyptian knowledge
  • ERC Project ELEPHANTINE Exhibition at the Harvard University: Pots as Post-Its: Daily Life Captured on Ancient Egyptian Ostraca
  • Beitrag "Ägyptische Papyri: Der Schatz von Elephantine" in Spektrum der Wissenschaften
  • Museum and the City: "Papyri von Elephantine - Wie Ägyptologen die Antike decodieren" im Blog der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin
  • Verena Lepper receives the prestigious Golden Plate Award from the Egyptian Academy of Sciences
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    Film: Localising 4,000 years of cultural history in ancient Egypt