Amount Awarded: $25,000
By reuniting papyrus texts from the ancient Graeco-Egyptian village of Tebtunis that were dispersed throughout Europe and America as a result of colonial processes of excavation and acquisition, this project will: (a) offer new papyrological editions with introductions, translations and commentaries in a high-impact open-access publication; (b) accompany the editions with synthetic studies that contextualize the manuscripts; (c) integrate the Tebtunis papyri with other pertinent evidence (e.g., archaeological data, museum and acquisition records); and (d) advance our understanding of social relations in Tebtunis by fostering the existing collaboration between Berkeley and Oslo papyrologists. We will use papyri to address anthropological, economic, historical, linguistic and sociological questions such as: How do the papyri illuminate the agency of the "subaltern"? How do local elites shape and reshape their identities? How do temples of the indigenous cults engage with the cultures of Greek and then Roman conquerors? Why do villages like Tebtunis "decline" in the Roman period? What can documents reveal about language use, at a time when Egyptian transitions from one graphic system (Demotic) to another (Coptic) under the influence of Greek? And what is the linguistic "profile" of Tebtunis and the role of bilinguals (Egyptian - Greek or Greek - Latin)?