Object of the Month

Here, another special text from the collection will be introduced every month.

Babylonian planetary calculation in Greco-Roman Egypt

P. 16511 V Anybody who is eager to determine the precise position of stars or planets in the sky, can nowadays open their computer and find everything they seek with a few clicks through modern software. In antiquity, this was… Read More

Medicine and Philosophy united?

BKT IX 42 (P. 21141) Reason in the head, bravery in the heart, desire in the liver – the famous ancient physician Galen tries to build a bridge between Hippocratic medicine and Platonic philosophy. A small fragment from this great… Read More

All you need to know about marriage

BKT V.2, S. 123–128, Nr. XX A (P. 11632) How to get an idea of what Greeks thought about marriage? Go to the anthologies! An anthology is a collection of selected literary passages by one or more authors. Greek papyri… Read More

History of a Wonder of the World

FGrHist 533 F 2 (P. 11632) Who can name all Seven Wonders of the World, let alone say, when and why they were built? With the Colossus of Rhodes, a papyrus can help us to understand its creation. The papyrus… Read More

Cooperative Agriculture

BGU IX 1900 (P. 11642) If you have ever been annoyed by the high rent of your apartment, house or land, then you are basically no different from the people of ancient Egypt. Already at that time pieces of land… Read More

A Magical Dream Oracle

GEMF 30/PGM II (P. 5026) Dreams played an important role in ancient Egypt and the ancient world in general. Only in a dream could a dead person appear to a living one. Furthermore, people believed that dreams could predict the… Read More

When Israel Was in Egypt’s Land

P. 11766 + P. 14046 What happens when one defies the will of God, the Pharaoh of that time was soon to find out in a not too pleasant way. „With the staff in my hand I will strike the… Read More

Germanic Fortune Teller in Egypt

SB III 6221 (P. 12682) Teutons in Egypt? One can hardly imagine that. And yet there are some testimonies from the Roman period that prove the stay of Germanic people in Egypt. One such example is the object presented here…. Read More

Numerical exercise

SB XXVI 16522 (P. 12750) Most of the finds from antiquity are quite everyday objects. This also applies to the documentary texts found in Egypt, most of which are receipts, tax declarations or lists and allow insights into the everyday… Read More

Grieving the Son in Homer’s Iliad

BKT X 3 (P. 5007) Crying singing, sad faces, that is how the city of Troy mourns its fallen hero Hector. His sister and widow lament his death, the father wants the corpse back. Troy – a name we instantly… Read More