From a Coptic monastic library Edition, paleographical, codicological, linguistic and material analysis and historical contextualization of Coptic literary texts from the Fayyum, kept in the Papyrus and Ostraca Collection of the Leipzig University Library

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Tonio Sebastian Richter
• Subject Area: Egyptology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 544813831

The Papyrus and Ostraca Collection of Leipzig University Library owns an until recently still uninventoried assemblage of more than 750 Coptic papyrus fragments, which were catalogued, digitized, and inventoried by a DFG-funded project from 2020 to 2022. In the course of the work on this project, the full scientific significance of these fragments became apparent: In all probability, they are the remains of a single Coptic monastic library from the Fayyum region (Middle Egypt). Editing this library in its significant parts and exploring it as a whole is the aim of the proposed project "Aus einer koptischen Klosterbibliothek". A selection of the thirty-eight most significant text fragments will be presented in a scholarly edition in accordance with Coptological and papyrological standards. The edited fragments will be analysed palaeographically, codicologically, linguistically and in terms of materiality. The entire collection will be contextualized historically as an original late ancient assemblage. The investigation will be rounded off by a systematic study of the codicology and palaeography of Fayyumic papyrus manuscripts from the 6th to 8th centuries. The individual texts as well as the late antique text assemblage as a whole are of great value for the history of early Christian literature, for the still unwritten history of Coptic literature, for the study of monastic written culture in late antique Egypt and, last but not least, for the significance of the Fajjum region and its regional standard of the Coptic language, the so-called Fayyumic dialect.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants