“Tracking Papyrus and Parchment Paths”: A New International Project on Coptic Literature

The purpose of the new project presented in these pages is to offer an innovative approach to the study of the evolution of Coptic literature and, more specifically, to the corpus of writings produced in Egypt between the third and the late eleventh centuries, and expressed in the different dialects of the Coptic language. Its aim is to provide a new perspective on the cultural landscape of Christian Egypt by interweaving literary, historical, codicological and archaeological data, and producing a series of scholarly tools, till now unavailable, in a digital environment, including an archaeological Atlas of late antique and early mediaeval Coptic literature that will be searchable at different chronological, regional and thematic levels. As part of the above-described research activities and goals, a complete catalogue of the Coptic papyrus codices preserved in the Museo Egizio will be produced, as well as an edition of their titles and scribal subscriptions. The fragmentary codices in question, purchased in Egypt by Bernardino Drovetti in the 1820s, are a unique example of an entire well-preserved late antique institutional library – very likely originally belonging to the cathedral of This/Thinis – reflecting the literary tastes and dogmatic orientations before what can be defined as the ninth-century Coptic book revolution, which significantly changed bookmaking in Christian Egypt. The library of Thi(ni)s is a crucial and transitional instance in the history of Coptic books, which saw on the one hand the creation of new codicological and palaeographical features and on the other the progressive emergence of multiple-text codices.