The papyri code.
Text: Angelika Jacobs
Using digital methods, Isabelle Marthot-Santaniello and her team are trying to reassemble fragments of ancient papyri.
When she was just 10 years old, Dr. Isabelle Marthot-Santaniello first travelled to Egypt, where she discovered her life’s passion: She wanted to decode hieroglyphs and read what they had to report back about the ancient world. Today, at the University of Basel, she studies digital methods of identifying the handwriting on Greek and Coptic papyri from Antiquity.
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Cardboard and Plexiglas envelopes protect the invaluable papyrus fragments in the collection at the University Library Basel. Normally, such fragments are carefully stored deep within the archive, where they only see the light of day for research purposes. (Photo: University of Basel, Christian Flierl)link.zoom -
Many fragments contain only a few lines of one or two words each. Today alone, researchers were able to use text searches in digitalized collections to match individual fragments of the same document. Of course, that method is ineffective when the same text is found on thousands of fragments or if the text originates from a document that has not yet been identified. (Photo: University of Basel, Christian Flierl)link.zoom -
Marthot-Santaniello and her team study fragments of papyrus containing passages from Homer’s Iliad, among other texts. Since this particular work was copied by hand over and over again, they are able to investigate how writing styles changed over the course of Antiquity. These findings are helping them to develop their handwriting search platform. (Photo: University of Basel, Christian Flierl)link.zoom -
Comparing the written text visually is a laborious process. In order to help sharpen their eye for essential details, Marthot-Santaniello and her co-worker Johannes Nussbaum play a kind of memory game in which they each attempt to identify two papyri from the same writer. (Photo: University of Basel, Christian Flierl)link.zoom -
The software the team has developed is able, among others, to visualize passages written by different authors on a single papyrus. Comments, corrections and alternative formulations written in different handwriting often appear on papyri, revealing information about literary trends and the development of texts over time. (Photo: University of Basel, Christian Flierl)link.zoom -
If the team can match up text fragments from well-known works such as the Iliad, they may also be able to apply the same methods on unidentified texts. Fragments could be pieced together so that these long-lost writings can finally be read once again. (Photo: University of Basel, Christian Flierl)link.zoom
As part of the D-Scribes project, she and her team are working to develop an analysis platform for ancient manuscripts based on the unique properties of the scribes’ handwriting. Their goal is to create a digital tool to date papyrus fragments in collections around the world, join contiguous fragments and pinpoint the authors of writing samples that continue to defy all attempts at identification.
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