Papyrus Rescued From the Ravages

Papyrus

Rescued from the ravages of time, speaking the language of lost generations, evoking mystery and magic, the ancient papyrus records of Egypt and the Near East are embedded indelibly in the human consciousness just as their semantic meanings are etched permanently there and preserved for posterity. In 1902, Alfred Butler published a book entitled the Arab Conquest of Egypt and the Last Thirty Years of Roman Dominion, and this early historiography during the formative years of the twentieth century illustrated some of the challenges, problems, and potencies of studying the historical record of yonder years of papyrus printing. The "first fruits of spectacular recent papyrus finds were only just then becoming available to historians," according to the authors Sijpesteijn & Sundelin (2004) in Papyrology and the History of Early Islamic Egypt (1). Digs during the late nineteenth century unraveled a treasure trove, truly veritable, that were rich in papyrus rewards. Yet these were a diverse grouping of texts and included other forms of documentation, and not just papyrus, such as leather, wood, cloth, bone, pottery, and parchment cloth (Sijpestejin & Sundelin, 2004). Gradually, historical documentation amassed catalog upon catalog, canon upon canon, and tome upon tome of documentary evidence related to the vast gulf of human history in which the dreams of civilization were born and laid to rest. There remains, though, some serious problems with regards to the analysis, deciphering, and categorization of papyruses, and the veracity of their authenticity and what the embedded semantics were at the time they were codified by scribes as well as unearthed by archaeologists. Perhaps one of the most elementary problems in working with papyri is the subject of what chronological authenticity the papyri refer to.

Chronological authenticity and academic integrity go hand in hand securely like lovers down the lane of life, which is why it is critical for scholars and archaeologists to understand the record as it was written and inscribed for the enormity of the human experience it was chronicling in the name of both people and ruler, layperson and clergy. As the Society of Biblical Literature (2010) points out, there were even New Testament papyri, which boasted a documentary context, and comprised an early Christian writing exercise and kept in the archive of Leonides. There were papyrus, recently translated into English, telling of tales from the hinterlands and frontiers of Egyptian provinces, such as Aswan, which used to be Syene, and the fortress of Elephantine. For more than three thousand odd years, the papyrus records have flourished, swelled, and then waned as interest in their needs and purposes also waned and as the social, political, and economic realities of the time shifted and morphed. The problem with the record of papyrus is not that there is too little to go on, but too much, as the papyrus bears inscriptions in a babel the likes of which could create a new Tower of Babel on the footsteps of the Ivory Tower in which scholasticism now dwells. There are papyri in hieratic, Demotic, Aramaic, Greek, Latin, Arabic and Coptic, according to Porten, portending the demise of ancient civilizations and heralding the rise of the new world orders that would characterize more than just the Near East.

The elementary problem in working with papyri is related to the subject of chronological authenticity no matter what ancient text or tongue is being addressed, referred to, or dealt with systematically within the sequential axis of time. Linear time, ravager of document and disease, decay and devastation wrought from climate and people, does not totally eclipse the relevance or application to academia the notion that New Testament papyrus might convey ideas, concepts, and historical evidence heretofore unaddressed or unacknowledged. There was indeed, the identification and examination of a papyrus that is well-known and embraced for its analytical capabilities, "the proemium of the apostle Paul's Letter to the Romans," (Luijendijk, 2010). The difficulties of approaching papyri on an academic pedestal are clear, related to the need for context and interpretation. There are the "overt biases" that are used to inscribe and decode, and there are notions that the text "must be controlled by knowledge of the intellectual traditions from which they spring," (Crawford, Gabba, Millar, & Snodgrass, 1983, p. x). The linguistic properties of the papyritic record can be surmounted and even so, "the problem remains of how to mitigate the effect of the limited range of interest " this documentary evidence presents (Crawford et al., 1983, x). The dry, arid, and perfectly preserving climate of the Egyptian landscape enabled the preservation of the papyri as well as bodies of other documentary evidence from tombs to temples. It is explicit and implicit what the papyri have to say, and what they offer in terms of placement on the linear trajectory of time, that woe-begotten sequential axis of which permanence and transformation can be contemplated.

Ptolemaic, Roman, and Greek papyri present similar but tangential problems that are unrelated, as their placement in the human chronological record that stems back millennia is well-known and addressed fully in other types of recordings, as it is known the trajectory the sequential axis of permanence and transformation takes via the northward migration of the papyritic records. There are Arabic documentary texts penned and published, which lends credence to the remarkable testimony that papyri present a paradox to the postmodern viewer related to their authenticity and recording ability (Sijpesteijn & Sundelin, 2004). Real contributions to the record, note Sijpesteijn & Sundelin (2004) come later, as the catalogs open and from them emerge a Pandora's box of evidence, testimony, and trustworthy notations in Arabic, Greek, Coptic, Syriac, and even Middle Persian (Sijpesteijn & Sundelin, 2004). The true archaeologist and historian taking context into account and accounting for the passage of time into the historical past to plant seeds for the uncertain future unfolding on papyri. There are literary manifestations, narratives unraveling, unfolding, and embracing the cultures in which they sprung. Moreover, the papyri themselves contain documentary evidence related to numerical quantifications of market values, days, months, and evidence of measures used for construction and fortification. The indispensible nature of the papyri for historicians makes them immovable and their worth immeasurable, which is why the elementary problem of how to include them in the record in spite of their presenting peculiarities remains poignant.