Books are technology. The ancient book normally took the shape of a bookroll, but this form of the medium has been denied its rightful place in book history. Papyri unearthed in the sands of Egypt, fragmentary remains of bookrolls, provide a unique opportunity to study the ancient technology of the written medium. FIBRE studies the evidence from Roman Egypt using a novel, holistic approach, in order to rehabilitate the bookroll as a versatile, successful form of the book, and provide a new explanatory model for the emergence of the codex.
FIBRE studies a social, cultural, and technological development that is traced through the evidence of ancient books. This is an exploration of human culture and its output, but as it traces the developments of one of the crucial media in human history, it is inevitably and importantly also a study of the human past. By understanding the socio-economic factors that influenced bookcraft, we learn about its place in ancient society: in the lives of individuals, communities, and the bureaucracy of an entire empire.
Image: Didymus’ Commentary to Demosthenes’ Orations: Ägyptisches Museum und Papyrussammlung - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, scan: Berliner Papyrusdatenbank, P 9780.
