Tom Elliottmy unweighted but unabashedly filtered word/phrase cloud from the #MATW2026 commentators' remarks: power - visibility - legibility - context - "beyond semantic meaning of words" - "human engagement" - "textual object" - expertise - tactile - kinetic - aural - oral - networks - connections - multiplicity - unheard - reconstruction
Rounding out the #MATW2026 papers is Younes Köhler (LMU) with "Cross meets Crescent: The materiality of Early Islamic documentary papyri and the pagarchs under Arab rule (641 – 750 CE)" https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#koehler
#ancientHistory #archaeology #papyri #classics #middleAges #IslamicHistory #ByzantineHistory #lateAntiquity
First case study in Grossi's talk is the papyrus archive of Aurelius Isidorus, from Karanis in Egypt.
Karanis in the #PleiadesGazetteer https://pleiades.stoa.org/places/736932
#MATW2026 is back from lunch with Giulia Grossi (LMU) on "Materiality of ancient papyrus petitions: A case study from 4th century Egypt" https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#grossi
Alexander Free (LMU -> Freiburg) now presents "Hearing the holy voice of Memnon, I missed you …”. The Memnon Colossi and Material culture" https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#free
He will treat "... some of [the Roman-era] inscriptions [related to the oracular use of the statues] and raise the question of how the objects themselves influenced the texts left on them. ... how the Colossi of Memnon “speak” and how their visitors engage in dialogue with them."
Now, after the day's first #MATW2026 coffee pause, we have Moritz Hinsch (LMU): "Letters to the Gods? The Materiality of Writing Oracles" https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#hinsch In which he considers the materiality of the lead oracle tablets from Dodona for what they reveal about literacy, writing, and religious belief
#ancientGeography #ancientReligion #archaeology #classics #epigraphy
Michael Hahn (LMU) takes the podium at #MATW2026 with "Empire and individual on sherds of clay": https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#hahn
> The paper investigates the eastern desert between the Nile and the Red Sea in the Roman Imperial era as a laboratory for examining the relationship between empire and individual through the materiality of writing. Its central evidence consists of inscribed ostraca, mostly recovered from Roman military forts, quarries, and desert waystations.
#ancientHistory #ancientGeography #archaeology #classics #RomanEmpire #ancientWriting #ostraka #epigraphy #papyrology
MS cites first work on a collection of ~26,000 sealings on ~16,000 lost (burned) documents from a single building complex on the island of Delos, first analyzed in Boussac, Marie-Françoise. “Archives personnelles à Délos.” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 137, no. 3 (1993): 677–93. https://doi.org/10.3406/crai.1993.15248.
Kicking off today's program at #MATW2026 is Matthias Stern (LMU): "The Things We Leave Behind: Papyri, Materiality, and Documentary Practice Across the Greco-Roman World" https://dmratzan.github.io/2026-nyu-lmu-materialities/papers.html#stern
> Papyrus is widely regarded as a key writing medium across the Greco-Roman world, yet its archaeological survival is strikingly uneven. While Egypt has yielded vast quantities of papyri, evidence from other parts of the Mediterranean is comparatively sparse. Without denying the importance of environmental factors, this paper reconsiders whether climate alone offers in fact a satisfactory explanation for these patterns of transmission.
One aspect: Drawing on evidence of clay sealings and their relationship to papyri in Egypt to assess patterns of surviving sealings elsewhere as indirect evidence for papyri elsewhere.
#ancientGeography #ancientHistory #papyrology #classics #archaeology