The old world is making news
August 20, 2026
With the summer release of Christopher Nolan's film adaptation of "The Odyssey" — which dominated the box office and the discourse — coinciding with our biennial Papyrus Conservation Summer Seminar, the library's world-renowned collection of ancient papyri has lately been in the news.
The Associated Press visited the seminar and published a story, Inside one of the world’s few crash courses in conserving and caring for ancient papyrus manuscripts, as well as a video, Global scholars learn finer points of papyri conservation at rare University of Michigan seminar, featuring interviews with library experts and seminar participants, and a close look at some of the items they worked on.
A visitor from Michigan Today was dazzled by an excerpt from Book 18 of Homer’s “The Iliad.”
Michigan News offered a preview of the conservation seminar in Preserving the world's oldest paper trail.
And an exhibit at the University of Manitoba, on display until September 30, features 20 papyri from the university's collection.
Crop from a page of the Epistles of Paul, Romans 16:23 – Hebrews 1:7 (P.Mich.inv. 6238, P46), Egypt, written on papyrus around 200 C.E.