LAST CHANCE TO APPLY FOR THE FANTASTIC JUNE 2015 SUMMER SCHOOL IN POMPEII & HERCULANEUM !!

VESUVIAN ARCHAEOLOGY STUDY PROGRAMME 2015

Discover the ancient Romans in the shadow of 

Vesuvius

The Herculaneum Society is pleased to announce two outstanding summer schools at Herculaneum for university students and adult learners. The schools will be operated by Dr Christian Biggi, Director of BIG Heritage Consultancy, with the assistance of by Dr Joanne Berry, author of The Complete Pompeii. You will be taught by a team with many years' experience in operating schools, and who have been closely involved in major initiatives in Vesuvian archaeology. You will stay in a luxurious 4* hotel in Ercolano, with easy access to the Herculaneum excavations. Appearances by guest specialists in archaeology and  history add an extra dimension. On this year's courses, provisional guests include Dr Dirk Obbink of Oxford University, world-renowned papyrologist and trustee of the Herculaneum Society, and Professor Christopher Smith, Director of the British School at Rome. 

The Society can offer up to four scholarships of £500 (€650) each to deserving students currently registered on an undergraduate or postgraduate programme. In addition, there are two free places on each course (numbers permitting) for accompanying staff to help with oversight of students. Please enquire with the Society if you are interested in taking this task on (herculaneum@classics.ox.ac.uk).

For full details of programme and registration procedures, please click here. You can register as an individual, or a group. In the latter case, please contact the Society as soon as possible (herculaneum@classics.ox.ac.uk) . 

Review: Papyri from Herculaneum

The Classical Review 62.1:

Papyri from Herculaneum 
(A.) Antoni, (G.) Arrighetti, (M.I.) Bertagna, (D.) Delattre (edd.) Miscellanea Papyrologica Herculanensia. Volumen I. (Biblioteca di Studi Antichi 93.) Pp. 335, ills. Pisa and Rome: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2010. Paper, €145 (Cased, €290). ISBN: 978-88-6227-185-1 (978-88-6227-212-4 hbk).

Reviewed by Simon Trépanier

Online publication of the Thesaurus Herculanensium Voluminum

This via AWOL (Ancient World Online):

Online publication of the Thesaurus Herculanensium Voluminum (www.thvproject.it)

The International Centre for the Study of the Herculaneum Papyri "Marcello Gigante" and the Chair of Classical Philology I of the University of Würzburg announce the online publication of the Thesaurus Herculanensium Voluminum (www.thvproject.it), edited by Gianluca Del Mastro. The Thesaurus is a free search engine of the texts of the Herculaneum Papyri collection; currently there are 15 texts available for consultation, but many others are in preparation and will be included soon. users who wish to contribute new readings of the texts already available in the database, should request a password from info@cispe.org.

ll Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi “Marcello Gigante” e la Cattedra di Filologia Classica I dell’Università di Würzburg annunciano la pubblicazione on line del Thesaurus Herculanensium Voluminum (www. thvproject.it), curato da Gianluca Del Mastro, attraverso il quale è possibile effettuare ricerche sui testi contenuti nei Papiri Ercolanesi. Attualmente è consultabile il testo di circa 15 papiri e molti altri saranno presto inseriti. Tutti gli utenti che desiderano ottenere una password per inserire nuove letture ai testi già consultabili, possono richiederla all’indirizzo info@cispe. org.

In Zusammenarbeit mit dem Lehrstuhl für Klassische Philologie I der Universität Würzburg hat das Centro Internazionale per lo Studio dei Papiri Ercolanesi den Thesaurus Herculanensium Voluminum (THV) erstellt (www.thvproject.it). Der Plan dafür stammt von Gianluca Del Mastro. Der Thesaurus stellt eine Reihe von Suchmöglichkeiten über den Texten der herkulanischen Papyri zur Verfügung. Im Moment stehen rund 15 Papyri zur Verfügung; die Eingabe der Texte von Philodems Rhetorik und weiterer kleinerer Texte ist in Arbeit. Mittels eines Passwortes können registrierte Benutzer direkt eigene Neulesungen und Ergänzungsvorschläge eintragen. Registrierung und Passwort können unter der Adresse info@cispe.org beantragt werden.

Chapter: The Special Case of Herculaneum

Nice summary of the excavations of the Villa of the Papyri, discussion of the early attempts to read the papyri, and a useful bibliography:
David Sider, 'The Special Case of Herculaneum', in Roger S. Bagnall (ed), The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (Oxford: OUP, 2009), 303 - 319.

First scans of the Herculaneum papyri

The EDUCE team from the University of Kentucky are currently in Paris at the Institut de France where they are scanning unopened papyri from Herculaneum. See their blog for a full description of what they're doing, with regular updates, and the images they've posted on Flickr. In their own words, they aim:

'to use cutting-edge technology in an attempt to create readable images of text from ancient papyrus scrolls without opening them. Using minimally invasive scanning and virtual unwrapping, the team will seek to examine the interior structure of carbonized scrolls buried by the 79AD eruption of the volcano Vesuvius that also covered the city of Pompeii.'

UK to 'unroll' papyrus scrolls buried by Vesuvius

An article about a new technique to unroll Herculaneum's papyri.

Visiting the papyri

It seems that not many people know where to go to find the Herculaneum papyri, but as I recently went on a visit myself to see them I thought I'd share my information about how easy it is.

The papyri are currently housed in the National Library of Naples (note, they are no longer in the National Museum) - in a section called the "Officina dei Papiri Ercolanesi Marcello Gigante".

The papyri themselves can be consulted, along with a specialist section of the library - or you can simply book a guided tour. Tours need to be booked in advance, but can be arranged in either English or Italian. They include a short presentation on the history of the papyri from discovery to recent scholarship, and then a visit to see the items themselves: you get to see both intact scrolls and unrolled ones, and the famous unrolling machine made by Father Antonio Piaggio.

Congratualtions to the library on offering access even to those of us who aren't specialist scholars!

For more information: bn-na.papiri[at]beniculturali.it
http://www.bnnonline.it/sezioni/papiri.htm