Papyrology and Reparations

Roberta Mazza (University of Bologna)

Thursday, 23 October 2025, 6:15 pm – 8:00 pm CEST
Warburgstraße 26, 20354 Hamburg

Abstract: Rooted in the age of modern European colonialism, the field of papyrology is based on a corpus of archaeological objects that were extracted from Egyptian soil and transferred to the Global North, where they became economic and cultural assets and sources of academic prestige to the advantage of the colonisers. Since then, papyrology and papyrus collecting have been enmeshed in the regimes of violence, injustice, and inequality created by colonialism. We are now called to decide what to do about this legacy.

After a critical historical outline of the birth and development of papyrology, the lecture questions current practices in papyrus collecting and publications and addresses the issue of reparations towards the artefacts and their ultimate owners, the Egyptian people.

Roberta Mazza is associate professor of papyrology at the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Bologna since July 2022. Before that, she worked in the United States and Great Britain. From 2009 to 2022, she was lecturer and then senior lecturer at the University of Manchester, where she still is an honorary research affiliate. Roberta’s research includes both editions of papyri and broader studies on the history of Egypt under the Roman and Byzantine empires. Most recently, she has written on issues of academic ethics in publishing manuscripts, the colonial history of papyrology, and the legal and illegal market in papyri and other Egyptian antiquities. Her recent book Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts was published in 2024 by Redwood Press/Stanford University Press and was awarded the Silver Medal in the World History Category at the 2025 Independent Publisher Book Awards.

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