Papyrology in the United States began at the University of Chicago with the acquisition of a small collection of Greek papyri from Egypt by Edgar J. Goodspeed in 1898. It was the great Chicago Egyptologist James H. Breasted who facilitated this purchase; thus, a strong sense of cooperation between Greek papyrology and Egyptology was evident from the beginning. In addition to the Goodspeed papyri, now housed at the Regenstein library, the Oriental Institute houses several texts from the P. Oxyrhynchus collection, dispersed here after Grenfell and Hunt published them, and also owns a large collection of unpublished Greek ostraca. At present, papyrology at Chicago is characterized by a strong interdisciplinary focus, with students from the Classics Department, the Divinity School, the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature, and NELC/Oriental Institute participating in its study.
People
The following represent the members of the Classics faculty who focus specifically on papyrology. There are other faculty-members who specialize in the related fields of Epigraphy and Classical Archaeology.
Profs. Christopher Faraone and Sofía Torallas Tovar are also leading a research project together that focuses on papyrology. The project is on Transmission of Magical Knowledge in Antiquity: the Papyrus Magical Handbooks in Context.
Outside the department, a number of other members of the University of Chicago faculty are interested in papyrology.
Three distinguished Biblical scholars of the Department of New Testament and Early Christian Literature and the Divinity School, Hans Dieter Betz (emeritus; still active), Hans-Josef Klauck, and Margaret Mitchell, are all interested in various aspects of the relationship of papyrology and early Christianity.