Editing papyrus texts from the collection of the Oslo University Library

This is a project in the field of Greek papyrology. The project falls into two parts: The first part aims to carry out the research work necessary for the publication of a volume with editions of 35 texts in ancient Greek from the papyrus collection of t he Oslo University Library. The texts to be edited - some literary, some subliterary and some documentary - will offer fresh knowledge to classical philologists on already transmitted or hitherto unknown texts of the ancient Greek literary corpus and to a ncient historians on the life, economy and society in Egypt during the Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine periods (3rd cent. BC to 7th cent. AD). The editorial method (decipherment and transcription of text, compilation of commentary, compilation of descrip tion) is well established within the field. The second part aims to shed further light on a group of papyrus texts - medical texts in which the exposition of the medical content is structured by questions and answers, commonly known as medical catechisms - to which the Oslo collection has contributed the most recent sample (POslo inv. 1576v). The workshop - organised jointly with scholars with expertise in medical texts on papyrus, Prof. I. Andorlini (Univ. of Parma) and Dr. D. Leith (The Wellcome Centre , University College London) - will raise questions concerning the generic identity and origins of medical catechistic texts as well as their relation to extant medical literature, other medical texts on papyrus and other technical literature in question and answer format (rhetoric, grammar, literary exegesis etc). The workshop will draw attention to the contribution of the unpublished material from the Oslo collection to papyrological research and knowledge. In addition, it will be a step towards a long- term collaboration of academic teams working on ancient medicine (in Parma, Vienna, London, Yale and Oslo) in the frame of a project on the history of medicine, disease and medical education in antiquity.