R E S E A R C H U P D AT E
ANCIENT DOCUMENTS in the HAROLD B. LEE LIBRARY BY LINCOLN H. BLUMELL LINcoLN h. BLuMELL (lincoln_blumell@byu.edu) haS a oNE-yEaR vISITINg facuLTy appoINTMENT IN aNcIENT ScRIpTuRE aT Byu.
W
hen I arrived at BYU this past summer, it came to
letters, receipts, petitions, orders, registers, and various
my attention that the Harold B. Lee Library had
literary fragments. As a papyrologist by training—that
in its possession a modest collection of ancient docu-
is, one who has been trained in the decipherment of
ments. Much to my pleasant surprise, I discovered that the
ancient languages (primarily Greek but also Coptic) writ-
collection included about one hundred documents written
ten principally on papyrus, as well as other mediums—I
in either Greek or Coptic. Upon further examination, I
was excited to examine this material and became even
determined that most of the texts dated between the first
more excited when I found out that none of these texts
century BC and the ninth century AD. These documents
had ever been published.
are written on various sorts of mediums—papyri, parch-
For much of the summer, I spent many hours in the
ments (animal skins), lamella (metal plates), and ostraca
library poring over these documents making identifications
(potsherds)—and include a wide array of ancient texts:
and working on transcriptions and translations. Though
6 B yu R EL I g I ou S EducaTIo N REv IEW