The Mummy Book Under the Microscope

9 September 2024

Photo: Karsten Helmholz

When researchers in Graz announced in early summer 2023 that they had found a fragment of a 2,300-year-old codex, it was a scoop – it would be by far the world’s oldest fragment of a bound book. But is the ‘Graz Mummy Book’ really one? The Artefact Lab at the CSMC aims to find the answer.

Deutsche Version

On 11 May 2023 at around half past three in the afternoon, paper conservator Theresa Zammit Lupi made a discovery in the special collection of Graz University Library that, according to the current state of research, was impossible: During routine work on the papyrus fragments in the collection, a papyrus from the 3rd century BCE caught her eye. It had a centre fold, stitching holes, and remnants of a thread – all of which are signs that it was a fragment of a codex, a bound book. According to widespread opinion, however, books did not exist in this phase of human history. Individual sheets of papyrus were glued together and rolled up, not folded and bound into book form. This technique only became established, so it was assumed, around 400 years later in early Christianity. The discovery of Zammit Lupi called this assumption into question at a stroke.

A few weeks later, she and the University of Graz publicised the find. The case caused some stir, various media reported on the ‘Graz Mummy Book’. The object owes its name to its later use as cartonnage for a mummy. It was pressed together with several other papyri and then attached to the mummy to decorate and protect it. In the early 20th century, it came to Graz University Library. For almost 20 years now, its digitalised version has been available to the research community worldwide. But until that afternoon in May 2023, nobody had realised what made the object so extraordinary.

Discoveries like this, which could have far-reaching consequences for our understanding of book history, are always met with some caution. Soon after its publication, experts began to debate the question of whether the Graz Mummy Book is actually a bifolio from a codex or just something that happens to have certain similarities to it. There is only circumstantial evidence, not proof, in favour of the codex thesis. Thus far, the argument is based solely on visual appearance. Protected by two glass plates, the papyrus has never been subjected to a detailed material analysis.

This is going to change now. To get to the bottom of the mystery of the mummy book, the precious object was sent on a journey to Hamburg at the end of August, where it was received by Sebastian Bosch, Grzegorz Nehring, and other members of the ‘Artefact Lab’ at the CSMC and its Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’  at the University of Hamburg. The lab specialises in material analyses of historical written artefacts and has a range of state-of-the-art non-invasive technologies at its disposal. It is often the special features of the material that are invisible to the naked eye that provide the decisive clues to the history of an object and can thus provide a new basis for debates in the humanities. Everyone involved hopes that this will also be the case with the Graz Mummy Book.