Team gets $800k for papyrus texts

The Duke Chronicle

A faculty-led team has received an $814,000 grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation to launch a new online system for editing ancient Greek and Latin texts preserved on papyrus.

The team is headed by Joshua Sosin, associate professor of classical studies, and Deborah Jakubs, University librarian and vice provost for library affairs. Over the next year, Sosin, Jakubs and a team of approximately 12 researchers hope to design a program that will integrate ancient text databases from universities across the globe, Sosin said.

The Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, which contains more than 50,000 published texts, is currently the University's primary collection of ancient documents preserved on different media, according to a University release. This vast compilation, however, can only be edited by Sosin and the few other scholars to whom he grants permission, he said.