Papyrus Anastylosis and Paleography: Case Studies from Deir el-Medina

Online lecture as part of the series "Egypt, Land of Writing(s)" organized by Gaëlle Chantrain (Université de Liège). Thousands of papyri fragments dating back to the Ramesside Period (ca. 1295-1069 BE) were discovered in the village of Deir el-Medina, on the West Bank of the Nile, near the ancient capital of Thebes. A large part of those fragments were collected at the beginning of the XIXth century by Bernardino Drovetti, and are now kept in the collection of the Museo Egizio, in Turin. Two centuries later, in the framework of the ‘Crossing Boundaries’ Project, it has been possible to propose new reconstructions for some of those documents, based notably on the identification of individual handwritings. In this talk, several examples are discussed, together with the role of paleography used as a tool for “papyrus anastylosis”.