The following is a guest post by Gwenanne Edwards, Senior Paper Conservator in the Conservation Division. Gwenanne discusses the training undertaken and given to conserve papyri at the Library of Congress.
In the vast collections of the Library of Congress, papyrus is a unique material. The majority of the physical collections, of course, are on paper. But before paper was invented in China and introduced globally, papyrus dominated as the writing surface of the Mediterranean world. Made from a freshwater sedge from the Egyptian Nile valley, papyrus was used as a writing surface from as early as 3000 BCE. The earliest text on papyrus in the Library of Congress is from around 2000 BCE, in the Seymour de Ricci Collection of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Other notable papyrus holdings in the Library of Congress include fragments from Homer’s Iliad and the biblical Book of Isaiah, from the first and fourth centuries CE and in the same collection. For more information about those papyri, you can read the blog post Fragments of History.
Learning how to conserve papyrus is as rare as the material itself. Despite extensive academic and lab training in the conservation of specific materials (such as paper and books), most conservators with related specialties do not have experience with papyrus. To learn conservation approaches specific to papyrus to better serve our collections, I turned to the University of Michigan Library which holds the largest collection of papyri in North America with over 18,000 texts. In 2024, I attended their Papyrus Conservation Seminar. With a select group of papyrologists and other conservators from around the world, we learned the materials and techniques of papyrus conservation from conservator Marieka Kaye.
I took what I learned in Michigan back to the Library of Congress, intent on using the experience to conserve our collections and sharing what I learned with others. Recently, I prepared and taught a workshop on papyrus conservation to my colleagues in the Conservation Division. The workshop included lectures on papyrus history, papyrus conservation, and papyri in Library of Congress collections.
The main focus of the workshop was conservation treatment of a collection of papyrus texts from the African and Middle Eastern Division. The texts are in Arabic primarily, with a few that include Greek and Coptic, and are from Egypt around the 7th-11th centuries CE. They were recovered archaeologically from a midden in Fustat; an area now part of Cairo. The texts are administrative, documenting practical or legal accounts, such as decrees, contracts, and other records. Because of their condition prior to conservation, the exact contents of the papyri have not been studied fully yet, except for one. This entagion— an official announcement related to taxes or levies—is bilingual, containing both Arabic and Greek, and is the oldest known bilingual entagion from Egypt dating from either 670 or 680 CE.
Based on their archaeological history, before conservation treatment many of the Fustat papyri were covered in dirt and debris, fragmentary, and crumpled and folded with fibers askew obscuring the text. We cleaned and stabilized the papyrus by unfolding and aligning fibers and fragments, and reattaching delaminating fibers and loose or detached fragments. Papyrus becomes extremely fragile and brittle over time, so we have to introduce humidity to make it more flexible so that we can unfold and align the fibers safely.
During the workshop, we treated about half of the collection of over 50 papyri. With the new skills learned and shared, we will continue to treat the rest of the collection. After conservation, the papyri will be digitized so that they can be studied by researchers.
Conservation of the Fustat papyri is meticulous work, but its rewards are immensely satisfying. By removing debris and opening creases and folds, we are revealing text that was previously lost. Fragmentary as they are, these texts give us glimpses into social, economic, and political history, adding to our knowledge and understanding of late antiquity and the post-ancient world.
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Comments (4)
This is extremely cool! Thanks for sharing this information.
Fascinating to learn about past generations customs and processes.
Great work as always.
Great research. Many thanks for posting. Can I ask if there is any similar historical documentation/preservation efforts for the early palm-leaf manuscripts of SE Asia & environs?
Thanks, Marilyn