The Language of the Papyri

by T.V. Evans (Editor), D. D. Obbink (Editor)

The modern rediscovery of the Greek and Latin papyri from Egypt has transformed our knowledge of the ancient world. We cannot, however, make the same claim in the specific area of language study. Although important studies of the language of the papyri have appeared sporadically over the past century, we are still dealing today with a linguistic resource of extraordinary richness which has hardly begun to be explored. Every scrap of papyrus and every ostracon (potsherd) or tablet unearthed has the potential to change some aspect of the way we think about the Greek and Latin languages. This book demonstrate that potential, by gathering together essays from seventeen scholars who present a variety of perspectives and methodological approaches. The Language of the Papyri charts current directions of international research, and will also provide a stimulus for future work.

Genres: Linguistics

386 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2009

Reviews

[Christopher]

It has been a long time coming, but the hordes of papyri discovered in Egypt are finally being rigorously mined for linguistics. This collection of papers is the result of a 2006 conference at Oxford titled "Buried Linguistic Treasure: the Potential of Papyri and Related Sources for the Study of Greek and Latin"

The book is divided into two main parts. The first "Linguistic Change and Diversity" deals mainly with what the papyri tell of the evolution of Greek in its evolution through the Koine to the Byzantine era. There are a few papers here dealing with the stylistics of letters. John A. L. Lee contributes a paper on auxiliary thélô which will be of great interest to anyone interested in how Classical Greek turned into the Balkan Sprachbund language it is today. One paper in this section, Peter Kurschwitz's, deals not with papyri as such but another group of texts surviving from the same era, namely Pompeian wall inscriptions.

The second part of the book contains papers on what the papyri say about language contact. I was most interested here in Egyptian-Greek bilingualism, because these two languages are very different from each other in phonology and other aspects of grammar, so Greek must have undergone some adaptation to local speech. However, there are just as many papers about Greek-Latin bilingualism.

Due to the limitation of the source material, this collection will appeal most, I think, to those fond of the ancient genre of letters. However, anyone interested in the historical evolution of Greek and Latin will find some interesting tidbits here.