Dafoe Library unveiled The Ancient Inbox on Aug. 17, an exhibit showcasing 19 papyri from Roman Egypt. This is the first public display of papyri in Winnipeg, according to U of M classics professor Mike Sampson.

The documents date from a period when Egypt was under Roman rule, which lasted from 31 BCE to the seventh century CE. The sheets include contracts, receipts and letters written in Ancient Greek, the administrative language at the time. 

One notable piece on display records the sale of an enslaved person, complete with the buyer and seller’s identities and the individual’s price. While startling, Sampson said it was part of life in Roman Egypt, which he described as a complicated and multicultural society.

“For modern sensibilities, the prospect of dealing with ancient slavery as a practice, as an institution, is uncomfortable and unpleasant. But it’s a reality of the ancient world,” he said. “We have other documents on papyrus and other collections that discuss transactions involving people as property.”

Papyrus is a flexible, “two-ply writing surface” made from the Egyptian plant of the same name. 

“It’s the everyday writing surface of the ancient world. It’s like modern paper,” Sampson stated.

However, literacy rates in antiquity were low, and writing, especially drafting legal documents, was a specialized skill. 

“The papyri that are on display here are all things that were important enough in antiquity that they had to be written down, and they were important enough […] that somebody kept them and preserved them,” Sampson said.

“These are records that you would keep on file in a filing cabinet in your house, and hence the title of the exhibit, The Ancient Inbox.”

The documents are loaned from the University of Michigan for a five-week summer research institute that Sampson hosted on campus from June to July. Sponsored by the American Society of Papyrologists, the program trains students and researchers to read, edit and publish papyrus texts. Opportunities like these are scarce, according to Sampson.

“Training in papyrology is very hard to come by,” he stated. “Even in prestigious elite PhD programs in classics, it is very rare to have more than one course offered on papyri.”

The institute welcomed 12 students, some from as far away as Egypt and Australia. Sampson also hired two U of M students to create the exhibit. One of them is Mithu Vasanthakumar, an incoming master’s student in classics.

Reading the documents is far from straightforward, both Sampson and Vasanthakumar expressed. In addition to requiring an advanced knowledge of Ancient Greek, the texts are fragmentary, written in cursive, and even contain spelling and grammatical mistakes.

Nevertheless, Vasanthakumar found gratification in uncovering the daily lives of Roman Egyptians. 

“One of the things I really learned is how […] ordinary everyday life was,” she said.

“In history courses, you learn about Alexander the Great or Cleopatra or Demosthenes, and they’re interesting, don’t get me wrong, but it’s also really important to learn how the average person lived and how these great men influenced not only their own lives, but the average person.”

Vasanthakumar also highlighted the diverse ways in which papyrus can be used to piece together the classical world. Researchers may use tax records to reconstruct ancient economies or gauge a writer’s level of education based on the register of the words used, for example. 

“Studying the past requires evidence,” Sampson added. “And the best kinds of evidence lead to the best kinds of studies.”

“If you want to piece together a picture of what life was like in Roman Egypt, the papyri are an essential source because here you have the writings of individuals living in that reality who are articulating their livelihoods and their experiences in print.”

Sampson hopes the exhibit will ignite students’ curiosity and breathe life into the distant past.

“Studying the past is important. If we don’t understand the past, we don’t understand where we came from,” he said.

“If you can bring students into touching distance of the material remains of antiquity, they begin to appreciate the fact that the ancient world isn’t just something we talk about, but it was a real place, and real people lived there.”

The Ancient Inbox is on display in Dafoe Library’s Archives and Special Collections until Sept. 30.