Catalogue of the papyri at the Gothenburg University Library - final report (In 10-0655:1)

The purpose of the project has been to make the papyrus collection of Gothenburg University Library accessible on the Internet and this has now been accomplished. According to plans, the work has been carried out at Gothenburg University Library, in collaboration with APIS (Advanced Papyrological Information System), an international organization for making papyri accessible on the web.
In the aspiration for accessibility of and attention to the papyrus collections in Sweden this project constitutes a natural continuation of the corresponding project in Lund (cf In2005-0682:1-IK).2

BACKGROUND
The university library in Gothenburg holds a collection of 129 papyri, Papyri Gothoburgenses, all from Egypt. When it comes to the acquisition of the collection the immediate circumstances are not clear, but apparently the papyrus researcher professor Wilhelm Schubart bought the papyri on behalf of the library in the 1920's, on two occasions, in Germany and in Egypt.
The majority of the papyri in the collection are written in Greek although there are also nine Arabic and eight Coptic fragments.

Greek was an official language in Egypt for almost a thousand years, and consequently a great part of preserved papyri are in Greek. Through papyrus research we gain knowledge about the Greek language, writing and literature as well as about the society in which these papyri were written. We get rich information about economy, medicin, astronomy, law and education in Egypt under a long period of time and under different political and social circumstances.

21 of the Greek papyri in the Gothenburg collection have been described in detail by Hjalmar Frisk in his publication "Papyrus grecs de la bibliothèque municipale de Gothembourg, Göteborg 1929". The remaining ones he mentions briefly, the Arabic and Coptic ones with inventory numbers only. Just two of the fragments are represented by photographs.
Altogether this means that there has been a scholarly need of better accessibility to the collection.

Neither in regard to time nor to content this collection is uniform. The oldest fragment is from 140 A.D., the youngest from the 7th or 8th century A.D. Only one text is of literary type, viz. a piece of an unidentified epic text. All other papyri are of documentary character, with varying content. Here are e.g. an agreement on wages for glass workers, a personal guarantee, notes on deliveries of wine and oil as well as inventory lists of wine and oil, fragments of accounts and some letters. Nor geographically is this collection uniform; the fragments apparently originate from several different places in Egypt, often even uncertain from which ones.

INVENTORY, REGLAZING AND STORAGE
The collection has been inventoried and found complete, with the fragments in good condition between glass plates. Only few of the glass plates were broken and thus exchanged. For the rest reglazing has been considered inappropriate since the work with glass plates and tapes has been very carefully done, most probably in the 1920's. This goes for the papyri on cardboard, too, since apparently the fragments are glued to the cardboard. Detaching the papyri demands a papyrus conservator and special equipment, and consequently fragments on cardboard in broken glasses were accompanied by the cardboard into the new glass plates. Everything concerning the practical handling of the papyri has followed the recommendations issued by the APIS papyrus conservator Leila Lau-Lamb (lau-lamb@umich.edu) at the University of Michigan.
The collection is stored in the rare book room of the library, with constant temperature and atmospheric humidity, 18 °C and 50% relative humidity respectively, conditions close to those ideal for papyrus storage.

DIGITAL IMAGES AND ELECTRONIC CATALOGUE CARDS
Digital images of 600 ppi (TIFF-images) have been taken with the library's scanner of all the papyri. Naturally enough only one side of the fragments on cardboard has been scanned, otherwise both sides, whether any text is to be seen or not.
For each papyrus fragment an electronic catalogue entry has been created, the template of which was provided by APIS. Here has been entered information on inventory number, dimensions, number of lines, acquisition, and, as far as possible, on provenance, date, type of content and possible publications or references. In several cases translations into English are given.
Images and catalogue cards have been sent to APIS (Rodney Ast (ast@uni-heidelberg.de) and Hugh Cayless (hugh.cayless@nyu.edu)) and are also stored in a secure server at the university library.

ACCESSIBILITY IN COLLABORATION WITH APIS
The complete Gothenburg papyrus collection, digital images and electronic catalogue cards, is now incorporated with APIS and will very soon be freely accessible on the Internet; only images of the highest resolution have to be ordered from the library.
Through APIS it is possible to search for papyri e.g. with a certain kind of content, from a certain place or with certain personal names in it. Searches can be done (www.papyri.info) in one collection only or simultaneously in all collections connected to APIS. The database can also be reached through the homepage of the Gothenburg papyrus collection (Swedish and English versions), www.ub.gu.se/samlingar/handskrift/papyrus.
Anders Larsson (anders.larsson@ub.gu.se), manuscript librarian at the library, is responsible for the collection and matters related to it.

ACTIVITIES WITH REFERENCE TO THE COLLECTION
January 2011, spoke about papyrus to the staff of Gothenburg University Library
February 2011, spoke about papyrus at seminar at Gothenburg University (Classical archaeology and ancient history; Greek)
May 2011, spoke about the papyrus projects in Lund and Gothenburg at "Workshop in papyrology" arranged by Denis Searby, guest professor at Uppsala University
October 2011, spoke about papyrus to staff at Lund University Libraries
October 2011, spoke about papyrus to students in Book history at Lund University
May 2012, showed papyri from the Gothenburg collection to Karin Hult, prof. in Greek, Mikael Johansson, researcher in Greek, Gunhild Vidén, prof. in Latin, all at Gothenburg University, and prof. Robert Penella, Fordham University, New York
June 2012, arranged a small scale exhibition at Gothenburg University Library about its collection of papyri

Rodney Ast, Heidelberg University (ast@uni-heidelberg.de) will use some of the Gothenburg papyri in his teaching.
Åke Engsheden, Coptologist at Uppsala University, has stated his intention to work with and publish the Coptic fragments of the Gothenburg collection. All that has been known till now about these texts is that they are Coptic.
The professor in Arabic at Gothenburg University, Jan Retsö, has shown interest for the Arabic fragments and will perhaps work with them in some way.


2 Due to this project another two articles now have been published (by Todd Hickey, University of California, Berkeley) on papyri in the Lund collection:
Hickey, Todd, "A penth?meros certificate from the reign of Caracalla" (P. Lund. inv. 12), Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 178 (2011), p. 240-242.
Hickey, Todd, "A private extract from a weaver's census return" (P. Lund. inv. 77), Comunicazioni dell'Istituto Papirologico 'G. Vitelli', 2011:9, p. 57-60.