From Manchester with ... papyri

David Ratzan, ISAW's Head Librarian, headed over to Manchester in the United Kingdom last week for a conference on the papyrological collection at the John Rylands Library. The conference, entitled From Egypt to Manchester: Unravelling the John Rylands Papyrus Collection, was dedicated to highlighting the history, scholarship and recent developments in the collection. David presented a paper about a petition, P.Ryl. II 128, which makes a highly unusual moral argument about breach of contract in the early Roman Empire. The conference was a great success, with many notable papers delivered, among them one by AnneMarie Luijendijk on one of the earliest fragments of the Septuagint and another by Todd Hickey on the collaboration between Francis Kelsey and Bernard Grenfell in 1920, which resulted in hundreds of important papyri making their way to the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, the British Museum, and of course the John Rylands Library. Roberta Mazza, the convener of the conference, presented a new Christian amulet recently discovered in the collection, which had already made a splashy appearance in the popular press! The proceedings from the conference will appear in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. #ISAW #ISAWlibrary #papyrology.