Small fragments talk, small fragments matter

What can small papyrus fragments tell us about the multiple lives of ancient textual artifacts?

The Allard Pierson houses a fairly rich collection of ancient papyri mainly purchased for the University of Amsterdam by Professor Pieter Sijpesteijn (1934–1996) since the late 1960s. Among them are around four hundred small to tiny papyrus fragments that came into the collection in 2006 mainly as two tangled masses of papyrus pieces.

Papyrus biographies 

At first glance, these scraps may seem unimportant. Many of them preserve little or next to no readable text. Yet, even the humblest fragments have stories to tell. Papyrus began as a plant growing in the swamps alongside the Nile before being transformed into, by far, the most widely used writing material in Egypt. Papyrus documents could have been repaired when needed, by the ancient users who kept them, reused them, or discarded them in dumps. Centuries later, many are unearthed during excavations, removed from their archaeological context and deposited in cultural and academic institutions. However, until a few decades ago, papyri were also extracted from their archaeological context to be sold by dealers to collectors, scholars, and institutions across the world.

The small fragments in the Allard Pierson collection preserve traces of many of these stages, offering a glimpse into how ancient and modern users handled the papyri. Some show signs of ancient repairs or reuse, others reveal how people wrote, handled and stored documents. A number of fragments, however, provide evidence of modern interventions by dealers, who frequently altered the preservation state of papyri to transform them into more commercial commodities.

Forgeries of Composite Fragments

In one example (fig. 1), two unrelated fragments were carefully joined together, with one piece placed the other way up. The papyrus plant fibres were aligned to give the impression of a single piece, while strips from other papyri were attached to the reverse to conceal the joins.
Another artificial papyrus document (fig. 2) combines four fragments whose fibres run in multiple different directions, thus making it clear that they originally belonged to different documents. On the reverse, overlapping edges of fragments, spare fibres and strips from other papyri were glued together to hold the different parts in place.
A third example (fig. 3) appears to involve non-joining fragments from the same document. The parts were rearranged in a way that the preserved edges which could have been brought together and overlapped join one another, and produce an as seamless as possible effect.

These are just some of the examples of artificial papyrus fragments that can be found among the previously mentioned group of 400 fragments in the Allard Pierson. But why were such composite fragments made?

Since a quarter of this group of 400 fragments consists of extremely small fragments with little or no text, it seems less likely that the purpose of these forgeries was to create pieces that were commercially attractive, especially since these forgeries are no more substantial in size than other pieces in the group of 400. These artificial compositions of papyri may have been intended to meet the exact number of pieces that had been agreed upon, as part of the purchase transaction. Correspondence related to purchases of papyrus documents made elsewhere shows that the exact number of types of pieces agreed by the parties had been known since early phases of the transaction process.

Commodification

Current research into the Allard Pierson’s papyrus collection generally points to the acquisition of the papyri on the antiquities market. Many dealers were known to sell papyri as portfolios that mixed substantial documents with smaller scraps, thus helping them get rid of non-profitable ‘junk’, while inflating the price and the perceived value of the purchase.

What these cases highlight is the utmost commodification of papyrus documents, even as recently as the late 1960s–1990s. In the case of a large part of the Allard Pierson papyrus collection, the buyer was not a private collector or just an institution that sought to expand its collections; Professor Pieter Sijpesteijn was an eminent papyrologist. The existence of forgeries should therefore have been easily detected during the transaction(s). So, either these went unnoticed because the smaller fragments were considered by scholars as a minor addition to the more substantial texts, or they were tolerated as part of a larger acquisition whose main value might lay elsewhere. Documentation like the report of the College van Bestuur (October 1971) shows that mentors and colleagues praised Sijpesteijn’s initiative to have started purchasing papyri as a career pivot but also a service to the University of Amsterdam.

Whatever the explanation, these fragments remind us that even the humblest remains, including the forgeries, which should be considered historical artefacts in their own right, deserve careful study. Archaeology is not only about antiquity; it is also about the past-present and shaping memory. A memory that helps us understand and contemplate collecting practices, academic mentalities, and their interconnections with the antiquities trade.