There are only four letters, “pjoe”. But those who know what they’re talking about can put the context into perspective: This is Coptic and means “The Lord” or in the vocative “Oh Lord”, which of course means Jesus Christ. What’s special is that the letters, which were written at the end of the 4th century, can be found on an ancient papyrus packet from the Louvre, which has not been stripped of its leaves but is still tied up – otherwise it would have fallen apart into individual pieces.
The writing was read digitally, using a process that could revolutionize archaeology and was developed here in Berlin. This research project is also presented in the exhibition “Elephantine – Island of the Millennia” in the James Simon Gallery and the Neues Museum.
Metall oder Carbon?
Verena M. Lepper is the curator of the exhibition and head of the seven-year project, which was funded by the European Science Council. “We first had to clarify whether the papyrus was written on with metal-based or carbon-based ink,” she explains. If it is metal, this can be determined using X-rays.
© FATHER
In cooperation with the Helmholtz Center in Berlin, computer tomography images are then created and evaluated at the Zuse Institute – using an algorithm that knows how a papyrus might have been folded.
If you feed the data into this algorithm, it is possible to virtually unfold and read the document. It is then provided with numerous metadata and made available worldwide via open access. The ARD was also interested in this, and their film can be seen in the exhibition.
Elephantine – the island in the Nile from which the papyrus mentioned comes – is so important because it is the only place in the world where a continuous written tradition can be proven over 4000 years (from the 3rd millennium BC to the year 1000 AD). “You won’t find that even in Mesopotamia or China,” says Lepper. No coincidence: Elephantine was of great strategic importance. The island lies on the first of the six cataracts (rapids) into which the course of the Nile has been divided since ancient times, and therefore also formed the southern border of Egypt. Trade, languages, cultures and religions repeatedly crossed here.
© Imago
The exhibition focuses on “traditionally” defoliated papyri, which are presented in glass panes. Around 10,000 objects are known from Elephantine, and are now in 60 collections, most of them in the Brooklyn Museum, the Louvre – and in Berlin. The local Royal Museums were involved in the archaeological research of the island from an early stage.
Many exhibits lay unopened in storage for over a century. “We have opened up 35 boxes with 1,000 exhibits in Berlin,” says Lepper. She herself is able to read most of the languages in which these texts are written.
It is a truly Babylonian variety: in addition to Egyptian hieroglyphs, the texts are written in hieratic (a hieroglyphic shorthand), demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Coptic, Latin and Arabic. They report on medical and healing topics, trade issues, the position of women, legal disputes, religion and faith, in short: everything that was important. Anyone who visits the exhibition delves deeply into the history of mankind – and suddenly the millennia seem to be very present.