NO.69
SPRING 2006
BENE LEGERE
NEWSLETTER
OF THE
LIBRARY ASSOCIATES
The Library Associates
Join more than 6,000 other friends, book lovers, alumni, and faculty who recognize that the influence of a great research library reaches beyond the university it serves to the many communities of which it is a part.
Library Associates receive complimentary copies of the quarterly newsletter Bene Legere, as well as invitations to special occasions at the Library. For more information on the Library Associates program, please write or telephone: The Library Development Office, Room 131 Doe Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; telephone (510) 642-9377. Or, check our website.
Additions to the Tebtunis Papyri Collection
The Bancroft Library
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In the winter of 1899-1900, Phoebe Apperson Hearst funded an excavation of the ancient Egyptian village of Tebtunis on behalf of the University of California. More than 35,000 fragments of papyri, including priceless pieces of ancient Greek and Egyptian literature and documents illuminating the daily life of the village’s inhabitants over 1,700 years ago, were uncovered. The boxes include fragments of Euripides’ "Phoenician Women" and Homer’s "Odyssey," an ancient medical handbook, and the papers of an influential prophetess of the local crocodile god.
Literature from antiquity usually tells us about elites. The papyri give us evidence about other strata of society, a much wider range of people than we'd know about if we only had the classical authors to go on. There's a fundamental humanity here. When we read these, we encounter shared hopes and fears, joys and disappointments, even though there are 2000 years separating us.
--Todd Hickey, Curator at the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri
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