Bookrolls and scribes in Oxyrhynchus / William A. Johnson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Johnson, William A. (William Allen), 1956-

Series:

Studies in book and print culture.

Studies in book and print culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Manuscripts, Greek (Papyri)--Egypt--Bahnasā.

Manuscripts, Greek (Papyri).

Transmission of texts--Egypt--Bahnasa.

Transmission of texts.

Books and reading--History--To 1500.

Books and reading.

Greek literature--Manuscripts.

Greek literature.

Scriptoria--Egypt--Bahnasa.

Scriptoria.

Scribes--Egypt--Bahnasa.

Scribes.

Bahnasā (Egypt)--Antiquities.

Bahnasā (Egypt).

Oxyrhynchus papyri.

Physical Description:

xiv, 371 p., [24] p. of plates : ill. (some col.).

Place of Publication:

Toronto ; Buffalo : University of Toronto Press, c2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Lying now under the sand 300 kilometres south of the coastal metropolis of Alexandria, the town of Oxyrhynchus rose to prominence under Egypt's Hellenistic and Roman rulers. The 1895 British-led excavation revealed little in the way of buildings and other cultural artefacts, but instead yielded a huge random mass of everyday papyri, piled thirty feet deep, including private letters and shopping lists, government circulars, and copies of ancient literature.The surviving bookrolls ? the papyrus rolls with literary texts ? have provided a great deal of information on ancient books, ancient readers, and ancient reading. Examining only those texts that survive in full form in medieval manuscripts, William Johnson has analysed over 400 bookrolls to understand the production, use, and aesthetics of the ancient book. His close analysis of formal and conventional features of the bookrolls not only provides detailed information on the bookroll industry ? manufacture, design, and format ? but also, in turn, suggests some intriguing questions and provisional answers about the ways in which the use and function of the bookroll among ancient readers may differ from modern or medieval practice. Meticulously erudite, this work will be of great importance to all papyrologists, classicists, and literary scholars.

Contents:

Contents

Terminology, Conventions, and Sigla

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction

1.0 Voluminology

1.1 Gathering the Evidence: The Necessity for Autopsy

1.2 Definition of the Project

1.3 Reconstruction of the Bookroll

2 Scribes in Oxyrhynchus: Scribal Habits, Paradosis, and the Uniformity of the Literary Roll

2.0 Prologue: The Importance of Case Studies

2.1 A Survey of Scribes with Multiple Surviving Rolls

2.1.1 Scribe #A1

2.1.2 Scribe #A2

2.1.3 Scribe #A3

2.1.4 Scribe #A5

2.1.5 Scribe #A6

2.1.6 Scribe #A7

2.1.7 Scribe #A172.1.8 Scribe #A19

2.1.9 Scribe #A20

2.1.10 Scribe #A24

2.1.11 Scribe #A25

2.1.12 Scribe #A28

2.1.13 Scribe #A30

2.1.14 Scribe #A31

2.1.15 Scribe #A33

2.1.16 Scribe #B1

2.1.17 Scribe #B2

2.1.18 Scribe #B3

2.1.19 Scribe #B4

2.1.20 Scribe #B5

2.1.21 Scribe #B6

2.2 Scribes with Multiple Surviving Rolls: Summary and Evaluation

2.2.1 Excursus: Format changes in mid-roll

2.3 How Did the Scribe Copy the Text? Implicit examples for and against line-by-line copying

2.3.1 Copying the Text: Examples of scribal error that imply an exemplar of same or similar line length2.3.2 Copying the Text: Examples of scribal error that imply an exemplar of different line length

2.3.3 Copying the Text: A remarkable example where different papyri of the same text coincide in line division

2.3.4 Copying the Text: Summary and conclusion

2.4 Uniformity and Variation in Bookrolls

2.4.1 Uniformity and Variation: Width of column, intercolumn, and width from column to column

2.4.2 Uniformity and Variation: Height of column, margins, and height of roll2.5 Conclusions

Tables

3 Formal Characteristics of the Bookroll

3.0 Prologue: A Different Aesthetic

3.1 Construction of the Bookroll

3.1.1 Kollesis and Kollema: The constitution of the roll

3.1.2 Laying out the Columns: Maas's Law, ruling and alignment dots

3.1.3 Excursus: The laying out of columns in the Arden Hyperides papyrus (MP 1233)

3.2 Dimensions of the Column: Widths

3.2.1 Column Width in Prose Texts

3.2.2 Intercolumn and Column-to-column Width in Prose Texts3.2.3 Letter Counts in Prose Texts

3.2.4 Column and Intercolumn Widths in Verse Texts

3.3 Dimensions of the Column: Height

3.4 Dimensions of the Column: Width X Height

3.4.1 Width X Height: Prose texts

3.4.2 Width X Height:Verse texts

3.5 Upper and Lower Margins

3.6 Roll Height

3.7 Roll Length

3.8 Roll Format and Literary Genre

3.9 Editions de luxe

3.10 Private versus Professional Book Production

Appendix 1 Papyri Included in the Sample

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

Includes bibliographical references (p. [345]-355) and indexes.

ISBN:

1-282-02330-6

1-4426-7151-3

9786612023309

OCLC:

1013950771