Corpus of Greek Papyrus Documents pertaining to Egyptian Priests from Augustus to Constantine

• Applicant: Dr. Carmen Messerer
• Subject Area: Ancient History ; Greek and Latin Philology
• Term: from 2015 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 282640839

This proposal concerns the continuation of the project, which was accepted by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in 2015 (duration: 24 months). The project stems from my doctoral disser-tation which deals with the official relations between the Egyptian priests and the Roman administration. The thesis, which results from the framework of a cotutorial between the Universities of Strasbourg and Cologne, was completed in 2013. The aim of the project is a new edition, in corpus form, of all the Greek documentary papyri which illuminate the official relations between the Egyptian priests und the Roman authorities. 185 papyri should be published in three volumes. Now that a first year of work has been devoted to the project, the first of these volumes, containing 63 texts (X + 250 pages), is completed. A copy is appended to the present proposal. The two next volumes should be published successively in the following two years. Since the financing of a third year of work on the third volume is needed, I request the continuation of the project. All the papyri should have an exhaustive commentary, each new edition conforming to the standards of modern papyrology. New work on these texts is needed since they were published at different times and many of them were edited in an obsolete fashion. The corpus will unite all of the relevant documents for the first time, each re-edited text having been collated with the original papyrus or with a digital image of it. The text, which will be confirmed in this way, will be accompanied by an introduction and a line-by-line commentary. Each edition will also include a translation into French (about a third of the documents have never been translated at all). Thus all the relevant texts, including the many that were published, nearly without commentary, in the early days of Papyrology, will be made available in an equally coherent form. The papyri are presented in chapters, each devoted to a type of text or to a type of content. Each text is to be presented in such a way that it explains itself. A general introduction is planned for each chapter. The collection of the texts should make it possible for the reader to form an over-view of the official relations between the Egyptian priests und the Roman administration. Cross-references link the texts with each other and explain them. The corpus should have indices. The explanation of the content of the material is based on my dissertation. New literature will be taken into account and included in the corpus. The work is to be conducted at the Institut für Altertumskunde of the University of Cologne, which provides optimal research facilities for this project. The papyrologists Charikleia Armoni and Klaus Maresch support my work on this project.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Professorin Dr. Charikleia Armoni; Privatdozent Dr. Klaus Maresch