Papyrology

thumb|220px|Papyrus (P. British Museum|BM EA 10591 [[recto column IX, beginning of lines 13–17)]]

thumb|upright=1.3|right|Shakespeare's will|William Shakespeare's will, written in [[secretary hand]]

branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism

writing system for Greek and Latin

Oxyrhynchus ( ; , ; ; ), also known by its modern name Al-Bahnasa (), is a city in Middle Egypt located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo in Minya Governorate. It is also an important archaeological site. Since the late 19th century, the area around Oxyrhynchus has been excavated almost continually, yielding an enormous collection of papyrus texts dating from the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Roman Egypt. They also include a few vellum manuscripts, and more recent Arabic manuscripts on paper (for example, the medieval P. Oxy. VI 1006).

[[Image:AGMA Ostrakon Cimon.jpg|right|thumb|Ostrakon inscribed with "Kimon [son] of Miltiades", for Cimon, an Athenian statesman.]] thumb|Ostrakon of Megacles, son of Hippocrates (inscription: ΜΕΓΑΚΛΕΣ ΗΙΠΠΟΚΡΑΤΟΣ), 487 BC. On display in the Ancient Agora Museum in Athens, housed in the [[Stoa of Attalus]] right|thumb|Ancient Greek ostraca voting for the ostracism|ostracization of [[Themistocles in 472/471 BC.]]

thumb|upright|Joseph von Karabacek (1845–1918), a leading authority in the field of papyrology (circa 1910) Papyrology is the study of manuscripts of ancient literature, correspondence, legal archives, etc., preserved on portable media from antiquity, the most common form of which is papyrus, the principal writing material in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Papyrology includes both the translation and interpretation of ancient documents in a variety of languages as well as the care and conservation of rare papyrus originals.

majuscule Latin book hand with prominent serifs

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special paper for watercolors