The Papyrus Collection of the Museo Egizio

On the website of the Museo Egizio in the section "Collection and research"  a new page is available. The title is "The Papyrus Collection of the Museum".

The Museo Egizio holds one of the world’s most significant papyrus collections.
It comprises nearly 700 whole or reassembled manuscripts and over 17,000 papyrus fragments. About half of these texts are written in Egyptian (in the cursive-hieroglyphic or hieratic script), while the rest are written in Demotic, Greek, Coptic, or Arabic.

Their content is also very varied: administrative, legal, literary, ritual, religious, magical and funerary texts (such as the Book of the Dead).


The Egyptian Museum is currently developing a web site where users can learn about the history and content of the Papyrus Collection, ongoing restoration work, research conducted by scholars on our papyri, but also collaborative research projects such as "Crossing Boundaries: Understanding complex scribal practices in Ancient Egypt", which sees the Egyptian Museum collaborate with the Universities of Basel and Liege.



This project aims to study the heterogeneous Ramesside papyri from Deir el-Medina held in the Turin collection with a particular focus on the specific scribal practices of the individual agents producing the texts. The results of the project (information about material aspects, edition and reconstruction of texts, etc.) will be incorporated in the Turin Papyrus Online Platform (soon on-line!).

Also inherent to the project is also available a PhD position in Egyptology at the University of Basel (from March 1, 2020).

For more information and to stay up to date click HERE.