Digital archive of Coptic ostraca in Sweden
Our project aims at making available the large collection of Coptic ostraca, shorter texts written on potsherds or limestone flakes, kept by Museum Gustavianum in Uppsala. Coptic is the language of Christian Egypt and these texts, primarily administrative documents of various kinds (including letters, receipts and accounts), can be dated to the sixth and eight century AD and, as a rule, stem from Thebes in Upper Egypt. They are therefore a precious historical source for various aspects of daily life in Late Antique Egypt. The period spans the time from Byzantine Egypt until the country became a part of the Islamic Caliphate.
We will make this important collection digitally available through the three main databases for this kind of material, APIS (Advanced Papyrological Information System), Papyri.info, a fully searchable text database, and Trismegistos.org, a database containing metadata of ancient texts. Consequently, we will therefore photograph the texts digitally and in infrared, a technique that enables reading signs that no longer can be seen with the bare eye. These images will be available through APIS. Since the texts are difficult to decipher and only a handful of specialists master Coptic, we will provide a transcription and translation into English. This information will become accessible through the mentioned databases and, additionally, an open-access book will be put online.
We will make this important collection digitally available through the three main databases for this kind of material, APIS (Advanced Papyrological Information System), Papyri.info, a fully searchable text database, and Trismegistos.org, a database containing metadata of ancient texts. Consequently, we will therefore photograph the texts digitally and in infrared, a technique that enables reading signs that no longer can be seen with the bare eye. These images will be available through APIS. Since the texts are difficult to decipher and only a handful of specialists master Coptic, we will provide a transcription and translation into English. This information will become accessible through the mentioned databases and, additionally, an open-access book will be put online.
Final report
This project has been concerned with Coptic ostraca held by public collections in Sweden. The aim of the project has been to make the Coptic ostraca, i.e. pottery sherds or limestone flakes carrying text in Coptic, the language of Christian Egypt, accessible to a larger public. The work consisted of identification, photography, producing a transcript, study of the texts for their content and making the infrastructure available. Two people have been employed in the project: Åke Engsheden as principal investigator and Andreas Winkler as collaborator. In total, the work involved 206 ostraca found in three collections: Gustavianum, Uppsala University Museum (199 pieces), Museum of Mediterranean Antiquities in Stockholm (6 pieces) and Kulturen (museum for cultural history) in Lund (1 piece). The extensive collection in Uppsala which has claimed most of our attention has been almost totally ignored (only 4 % published). Among the Uppsala ostraca 196 pieces date from between 600 and 800 AD during which time Coptic was still the dominant language for everyday communication. 80% of these are made of pottery, 20% are made of limestone. The remaining three items in Uppsala are modern. Unfortunately, nine additional Coptic ostraca whose existence is known through the old card catalogue are missing. The formation of the collection has been reconstructed from sparse notations in the central archive at Uppsala University as well as from material in Gustavianum’s own archive. Out of the genuine Coptic ostraca only 11 have a text which is completely preserved whereas the rest are more or less fragmentary; sometimes only a few signs are missing from a line, at other times only a few signs subsist from the original text. One ostracon has been set aside for conservation. We had one case in the museum in Stockholm where the text has started to flake off only in recent years. This can be seen by comparing the original to older photographs. This case shows the importance of infrastructural projects for a long-term transmission of knowledge.
It has been difficult to determine the exact number of Coptic ostraca found in the museum in Uppsala. According to the museum records 102 out of a total of 1258 numbers assigned to ostraca represent Coptic. It is unknown who arrived at this figure and at what time. Another list mentions 286 Coptic ostraca. The ostraca are stored in 75 trays and are not sorted according to language or script (next to Coptic there are many Demotic and Greek ostraca). We have gone through and examined all the trays. As expected, we found out during this work that many Coptic texts have been registered as being in a different language and, inversely, some allegedly Greek ostraca turned out to be Coptic. Thus, we have reached the conclusion that only 213 of the current pieces represent Coptic. This number has, however, been further reduced as we managed to make several joins between fragments registered under different inventory numbers. Our verification of the language in which the texts are written and the joins between fragments represent lasting contributions to the museum inventory.
All the ostraca in Uppsala have been made public in ALVIN, a Swedish open-access database for national heritage. Since 43 ostraca—primarily limestone ostraca—are inscribed on both faces, the number of images in ALVIN amounts to 252. In addition, measurements, material and short abstracts of their content are provided in English. As the museum requires that photographs of the objects should be published in ALVIN before on any other platform, we chose to prioritise the work with ALVIN. Unfortunately, data cannot be transferred directly from ALVIN to other online platforms, such as papyri.info, an international repository for papyrology drawing materials from different databases. Although ALVIN does not reach the international research community to the same extent, it offers a more reliable long-term storage than papyri.info, which now may become a subscription–only site.
Among technical issues during the project the work to produce infrared photographs should be mentioned. The camera we have used in the project is capable of both normal and infrared photography thanks to having a removable IR-blocking filter. It was only after several tests that we obtained positive results with some of the pottery sherds. In some cases, it was decisive for the recognition of names and words, but it is no miracle solution. Infrared photography works only when there are still traces of ink left on the surface of the ceramic. At the outset we had planned a step-based workflow: first photography, reading, translation, and then database work before making the final edition text by text. In reality, there has been a greater need of parallel operations than anticipated since we had to return several times to the most difficult pieces. As we gained more experience our own demands on the photo quality increased and many pieces were photographed more than once before being made public through ALVIN.
We feel confident that the infrastructure will be maintained as ALVIN is financed through member institutions and attached to Uppsala University library, a state agency. There is also an interest at the museum in Uppsala in preserving the infrastructure to complement their own records. One problem that will arise is that it is unclear who is in a position to add to the bibliography regarding the objects in the future. There is an additional problem with image rights being set in ALVIN to “Public Domain Mark”. Open access is in principle beneficial to the research community, but there is no guarantee that any research building on this infrastructure will be published in its turn with open access. It is possible that researchers in need of images or other information may not consider contacting the curators. As a consequence this might lead, paradoxically, to less knowledge within the organisation about current research done on the collection.
Within the project the texts have been noted in transcript and translated. We have made a rough classification of the texts (figures for all three collections together) following which we have 9 literary texts, 83 letters, 7 tax receipts, 24 other types of documentary texts, 10 lists, 6 exercises, 2 magical texts, 1 oath, 1 owner's mark and as many as 60 fragments too fragmentary to be able to determine their content. Among the letters one should retain especially the correspondence relating to Bishop Abraham of Hermonthis. The Uppsala collection has four texts written by his scribe, called “Hand E”, which is little known, since examples of his hand have not been reproduced in print. Datings have been made in case people mentioned are known, e.g. the aforesaid bishop in the early 7th c. and tax receipts (early 8th c.). The manuscript containing the text editions with transcripts and translations is now under external review and it is our hope that it can be published as soon as possible. It goes without saying that it will be as an open access publication.
It has been difficult to determine the exact number of Coptic ostraca found in the museum in Uppsala. According to the museum records 102 out of a total of 1258 numbers assigned to ostraca represent Coptic. It is unknown who arrived at this figure and at what time. Another list mentions 286 Coptic ostraca. The ostraca are stored in 75 trays and are not sorted according to language or script (next to Coptic there are many Demotic and Greek ostraca). We have gone through and examined all the trays. As expected, we found out during this work that many Coptic texts have been registered as being in a different language and, inversely, some allegedly Greek ostraca turned out to be Coptic. Thus, we have reached the conclusion that only 213 of the current pieces represent Coptic. This number has, however, been further reduced as we managed to make several joins between fragments registered under different inventory numbers. Our verification of the language in which the texts are written and the joins between fragments represent lasting contributions to the museum inventory.
All the ostraca in Uppsala have been made public in ALVIN, a Swedish open-access database for national heritage. Since 43 ostraca—primarily limestone ostraca—are inscribed on both faces, the number of images in ALVIN amounts to 252. In addition, measurements, material and short abstracts of their content are provided in English. As the museum requires that photographs of the objects should be published in ALVIN before on any other platform, we chose to prioritise the work with ALVIN. Unfortunately, data cannot be transferred directly from ALVIN to other online platforms, such as papyri.info, an international repository for papyrology drawing materials from different databases. Although ALVIN does not reach the international research community to the same extent, it offers a more reliable long-term storage than papyri.info, which now may become a subscription–only site.
Among technical issues during the project the work to produce infrared photographs should be mentioned. The camera we have used in the project is capable of both normal and infrared photography thanks to having a removable IR-blocking filter. It was only after several tests that we obtained positive results with some of the pottery sherds. In some cases, it was decisive for the recognition of names and words, but it is no miracle solution. Infrared photography works only when there are still traces of ink left on the surface of the ceramic. At the outset we had planned a step-based workflow: first photography, reading, translation, and then database work before making the final edition text by text. In reality, there has been a greater need of parallel operations than anticipated since we had to return several times to the most difficult pieces. As we gained more experience our own demands on the photo quality increased and many pieces were photographed more than once before being made public through ALVIN.
We feel confident that the infrastructure will be maintained as ALVIN is financed through member institutions and attached to Uppsala University library, a state agency. There is also an interest at the museum in Uppsala in preserving the infrastructure to complement their own records. One problem that will arise is that it is unclear who is in a position to add to the bibliography regarding the objects in the future. There is an additional problem with image rights being set in ALVIN to “Public Domain Mark”. Open access is in principle beneficial to the research community, but there is no guarantee that any research building on this infrastructure will be published in its turn with open access. It is possible that researchers in need of images or other information may not consider contacting the curators. As a consequence this might lead, paradoxically, to less knowledge within the organisation about current research done on the collection.
Within the project the texts have been noted in transcript and translated. We have made a rough classification of the texts (figures for all three collections together) following which we have 9 literary texts, 83 letters, 7 tax receipts, 24 other types of documentary texts, 10 lists, 6 exercises, 2 magical texts, 1 oath, 1 owner's mark and as many as 60 fragments too fragmentary to be able to determine their content. Among the letters one should retain especially the correspondence relating to Bishop Abraham of Hermonthis. The Uppsala collection has four texts written by his scribe, called “Hand E”, which is little known, since examples of his hand have not been reproduced in print. Datings have been made in case people mentioned are known, e.g. the aforesaid bishop in the early 7th c. and tax receipts (early 8th c.). The manuscript containing the text editions with transcripts and translations is now under external review and it is our hope that it can be published as soon as possible. It goes without saying that it will be as an open access publication.