An unedited codex of tablets with Greek and Coptic documents, the most ancient tax receipts in Coptic. Courtesy of Musée du Louvre / Christian Larrieu.
Rostovtzeff Lecture Series Egyptian versus Greek in Late Antique Egypt: The Struggle of Coptic for an Official Status, IV
Jean-Luc Fournet
Collège de France, Paris
Jean-Luc Fournet is a papyrologist and a specialist in late antiquity. In March 2015, he was appointed professor at the Collège de France (Paris), which created for him its first chair of papyrology named “Written Culture in Late Antiquity and Byzantine Papyrology.” Prior to his current position, he was a scientific member of the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale in Cairo (1992-1996), researcher at the CNRS in Strasbourg (1996-2004), and professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Department of Historical and Philological Sciences) in Paris (2004-2015). He devotes much of his scholarly activity toediting new texts, including papyri and Greek inscriptions on late antique amphorae, which he was the first to decipher, and has a special interest in the culture of late antiquity—particularly poetry, multilingualism, and modalities of written culture.
This lecture will present an unpublished set of wooden tablets from Panopolis (now in the Louvre) attesting the use of Coptic for tax receipts in the 6th century, and revisit the archive of Apa Abraam bishop of Hermonthis (c. 595-621) and of the monastery he founded—the largest group of legal Coptic texts prior to the Arab Conquest. These texts will lead us to examine the role of the Church and especially monasticism in the development of Coptic for official transactions.
Registration is required at isaw.nyu.edu/rsvp
The Rostovtzeff Lectures are supported in part by a generous endowment fund given by Roger and Whitney Bagnall.
Admission to lecture closes 10 minutes after scheduled start time.
Reception to follow.
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