Sic Parvis Magna: Reconstructing papyri from Deir el-Medina kept in the Museo Egizio

Around 12 000 fragments of papyri, likely discovered in the village of Deir el-Medina, near the ancient city of Thebes, and dating back to the Ramesside Period (ca. 1295-1069 BC), are kept in the Museo Egizio. Those fragments belong to larger documents, that are often partially lost and therefore can be described as “lacunary puzzles”, for which a long and patient work of reconstruction is needed. In the framework of the international project “Crossing Boundaries: Understanding Complex Scribal Practices in Ancient Egypt”, it has been possible to find new joins among those fragments, and hence to improve the reconstruction of several already known documents, or to identify new ones. This conference presents some results of this reconstruction work through several case studies.