Podcast

11 June to 17 August 2007 Special Collections Library, 7th floor Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library University of Michigan

Hours: Monday-Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, 10 a.m. to noon

What would it be like to look over the shoulders of people who lived two thousand years ago? What did they read? What did they write? More importantly, who could read and write, and in what language? Questions like these are illustrated in this exhibit that opened June 11, 2007, in the Special Collections Library of the University of Michigan. Meet the person who was appointed village secretary in the second century A.D., although he could not write, and see him practice his handwriting. See a wonderful papyrus roll with a passage from Homer's Iliad that once formed part of somebody's library. Read private letters from a son who just enlisted in the Roman army to his mother, and from a pregnant woman to another woman, asking her to become her wet-nurse.

This exhibit brings together 26 original papyri, three wooden tablets, and one potsherd with writing, all from the Papyrus Collection of the University of Michigan. The texts date from the second century B.C.E. to the eighth century C.E. and were written in Greek, Latin, Demotic Egyptian and Coptic. All texts have explanatory labels describing their content, and numerous texts have English translations allowing the visitor look over the shoulders of the ancients herself.

In addition the exhibit gives information about the history of the Papyrus Collection of the University of Michigan, and about the conservation of these fragile documents. Numerous examples from the actual conservation process here at the University of Michigan show the great difference conservation makes for the readability and accessibility of papyri.

For more information about the UM Papyrus Collection, see our website. For more information about the exhibit please contact: Prof. Arthur Verhoogt, verhoogt@umich.edu (tel. 734 936 6101).