Research

Current Book Project

My research seeks to tell the history of the book through the lived experiences and embodied knowledge of ancient scribes. In my current book project, based on my dissertation, I explore the question, “How were scribes in the ancient world trained?” That is, how did the individuals responsible for recording and preserving the bulk of ancient history and literature acquire the skills needed to accomplish this monumental, world-changing task? 

Whereas earlier scholars have focused on ancient literary culture and text production through the gaze of the elite, my analysis re-centers the marginalized voice of the scribe in the story of how texts are written and literature preserved. I use documentary archives and scribal writing exercises from Roman Egypt as evidence for ancient scribes’ lives and training. I inform and contextualize these sources with comparanda from medieval Europe, the ancient Near East, and the continuous Ethiopian Ge’ez scribal tradition. By focusing on the lived experiences of the creators of our physical texts, my research uncovers unexplored realities about how these texts were written and read.

The copying and transmission of ancient texts is an issue with high stakes: so much of what scholars of antiquity know about the ancient Mediterranean world is bound to the reliability of this textual tradition. As such, careful scholarly attention has been given to “textual criticism” of the variations in our surviving manuscripts. Yet when we think about the works of Aristotle, Cicero, or the Gospel writers, we have typically failed to consider the individuals through whom our ancient sources were filtered, the hands that copied and transmitted texts. Ancient Mediterranean scribes were not inanimate extensions of the author’s pen, nor were they thoughtless copying machines prone to constant error; they were skilled craftsmen whose training equipped them to make innumerable conscious, interpretive decisions when producing books. 

Scribes were generally not of an elite class and many were slaves. As a result, their trade was considered low-status by the elite writers we often hear from and erased from discussions of how texts came to be written. However, the lives of these marginalized people and the way they were trained to practice their craft are central to understanding how books were produced and information transmitted.

Projects In-Press and In-Progress

My larger project has given rise to several interrelated articles and chapters at the intersection of comparative, ancient writing practices, embodiment theory as well as ancient religion. For example:

The Fackelmann Papyri

My article, “Questionable Dates in Duke Papyri Acquired from Anton Fackelmann,” currently in the revise and resubmit process, brings to light the misdating of an ancient scribal exercise on papyrus, sold to Duke by the now-infamous antiquities dealer Anton Fackelmann. My discoveries in the Duke University archive suggest that Dr. Fackelmann, leveraging his status as a well-known conservator misrepresented commonplace Roman-era papyri as much earlier and more valuable pieces of Ptolemaic mummy cartonnage. 

Scribes and Their Bodies

My article under review, “The Body of the Scribe,” deconstructs the popular notion that ancient scribal work was physically painful and damaging to the body. Ancient Mediterranean scribes, unlike their medieval counterparts did not view copying texts as an act of service or piety; they were craftsmen whose working bodies were crucial for their livelihoods. While their working conditions were often cruel and inhumane, ancient scribes used the agency they had over their practice to take care of their own bodies and to use their bodies most comfortably and effectively. Through a close, comparative study of scribal traditions and practices from Greco-Roman Egypt and Aksumite Ethiopia I re-center scribes’ own, frequently marginalized voices in the conversation about their work and their bodies. 

Inscribing "Magic" on the Body

My colleague, Amanda. C. Ball, and I are contributing a co-authored chapter on the “Embodiment of Voces Magicae” in inscribed magical artifacts to the international, peer-reviewed volume Voces Magicae and the Power of the Unintelligible, edited by Sofía Torallas-Tovar, Raquel Martín-Hernández, and Panagiota Sarischouli. Our manuscript for this edited volume chapter shall be submitted by May 2024 and is expected to appear in print by early 2025. 

Early Text of Christian Liturgy

I am in the process of editing a Duke papyrus, P. Duk. inv. 668, a Christian liturgical text preserved from Late Antique Egypt. This papyrus preserves exceptionally early example of the Christian practice of the "Liturgy of the Hours" and gives insight into how this form of prayer was practiced in Egypt in Late Antiquity as well as into the role scribes played in providing their communities such texts for private and communal worship.

Second Book Project

I am developing a second major project that explores the role scribes played in religious communities, particularly in the copying and transmission of so-called “magical papyri.” Again, I bring to bear rich and illuminating comparative evidence from the tradition of Ethiopian “magic scrolls” to demonstrate how scribes may balance the formal production of religious texts intended for communal worship with the private production of those intended for personal use. I ultimately argue that the collations, citations, and other vestiges of scholarly circulation in the magical papyri evidence a network of religious communities in the ancient Mediterranean centered around and operated by scribes themselves.

"I am developing a second major project that explores the role scribes played in religious communities... 

"I ultimately argue that... vestiges of scholarly circulation in the magical papyri evidence a network of religious communities in the ancient Mediterranean centered around and operated by scribes themselves."