Tebtynis

Cooperation between the joint Università degli Studi di Milano – Institut français d’archéologie orientale (IFAO) archaeological mission in Tebtynis, Egypt, and the Laboratory of Papyrology and Epigraphy (ERPE).
Since 2000, the Laboratory of Papyrology and Epigraphy of the University of Crete has appointed Dr. Nikos Litinas, a papyrologist and a specialist in restoration of papyri and ostraca, to participate as a team member in an Archaeological Mission under the direction of Professor Claudio Gallazzi at Umm-el-Breigat (Tebtynis) during the months of September and October each year. Dr. Litinas have been responsible for identification, cataloguing, registration, storage, restoration and conservation of the papyri, ostraca and other writing materials found during the excavations. On average this amounts to ca. 500 papyrus fragments or rolls of various sizes and ca. 500 ostraca per year (in various languages, Hieratic, Hieroglyphic, Demotic, Greek, Coptic and Arabic). Moreover, he supervises the archaeological work in a trench in the east of the Crocodile temple. Dr. Litinas has published an edition of the notations written on the vessels, usually amphoras (Vessels’ Notations from Tebtynis, IFAO, Cairo 2008) and a chapter in the volume Scripta Varia, IFAO, Cairo 2011 concerning the inscriptions or graffiti on stone and texts carved on wood and glass. Now he has prepared an edition of 120 ostraca and an edition of Greek papyri found in excavations.
Since 2008 a postgraduate student from the University of Crete participates in the excavations and works with Dr. Litinas, in the restoration of the papyri and other writing materials, and in the archaeological site supervising the archaeological work. In 2008 and 2010 Panagiota Vlachaki and in 2009 Konstantinos Tasoulas, both graduate students of the Department of Philology and postgraduate students of the Department of History and Archaeology, participated.