This Project was established in 2007, when Sofía Torallas Tovar (CCHS, CSIC, Madrid) and François Gaudard (Oriental Institute, Chicago) decided to join efforts in the study of mummy labels, a source material that requires linguistic expertise in both Greek and Demotic. They were soon joined by Raquel Martín Hernández, and began to “feed” a first draft of the database. The Project received added impetus when the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (now Economy and Competitivity) awarded Sofía Torallas a three-year grant (2012-2014), covering the expenses of computer programming and travel. The team grew, adding Klaas A. Worp (Leiden University), who has extensive experience in the edition of mummy labels, Alberto Nodar (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), with remarkable expertise in databases related to the discipline of papyrology, and Amalia Zomeño (CCHS, CSIC, Madrid), who specialises in the Arabic period, providing a comparative vision into a later period. Younger scholars have also joined us: the postdoctoral fellows María Jesús Albarrán (UAH, IRHT, CNRS, Paris) and Irene Pajón (CCHS, CSIC, Madrid), and the graduate students Alba de Frutos García (CCHS, CSIC, Madrid), and Marina Escolano Poveda (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA). And finally, Sergio Carro Martín (CCHS, CSIC, Madrid) is the team’s research assistant since 2009.
The project is not solely devoted to the creation of the database of the mummy labels. More generally, its scope extends to the Funerary world in Graeco-Roman Egypt in its various aspects. For this reason, other scholars from the University of Chicago, at the Oriental Institute (Janet Johnson, Robert Ritner) and the Department of Classics (Christopher A. Faraone), form part of the team, providing their insights into this fascinating world of the dead.
Sofía Torallas Tovar
Sofía Torallas Tovar is tenured researcher at CCHS, CSIC. Madrid since 2006. She obtained her PhD in classics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM). She was trained as a papyrologist and a coptologist at University College London (UCL). Since 2002 she is the curator of the Papyrological collections at the Abadia de Montserrat and directs the research conducted by the CSIC at the Abbey. She is co-author with Klaas A. Worp of To the Origins of Greek Stenography. P.Monts.Roca I, Barcelona 2006, and author of Biblica Coptica Montserratensia. P.Monts.Roca II, Barcelona 2007, and with Prof. Juan Gil, Hadrianus. P.Monts.Roca III, Barcelona, 2010. She participates in international projects concerned with the edition of Coptic texts, such as those on Marc and Shenoute of Atripe. Since 2009 she collaborates with archaeological missions, like the Qubbet el Hawa (Assuan) Project of the University of Jaén and the Swiss Institute in the edition of the Syene ostraca.
François Gaudard
François Gaudard is an Egyptologist and the Associate Editor of the Chicago Demotic Dictionary at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, specializing in the various stages of the ancient Egyptian language, in particular Demotic and Coptic. He has also worked as an epigrapher for the Epigraphic Survey, based at Chicago House, the field headquarters of the Oriental Institute in Luxor. Gaudard is one of the editors and translators of the Codex Tchacos, which includes the Gospel of Judas. He has taught Egyptology at the undergraduate and graduate levels and is currently preparing an edition of an ancient Egyptian drama and of other related texts for publication. He received his M.A. and his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (Egyptology, Coptology) from the University of Chicago, graduating with honors. In addition, he holds a Licence ès Lettres (Egyptology, Ancient Greek, Coptology) from the University of Geneva (Département des Sciences de l’Antiquité), where he also studied papyrology and Sanskrit.
Raquel Martín Hernández
Raquel Martín Hernández has a PhD in Classics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where she is currently working as a researcher. Her field of expertise is Ancient Magic, especially Greek Magical Papyri, and Greek Religion. She started her studies on papyrology at the Abbey of Montserrat, with Sofía Torallas Tovar, and continued her studies in papyrology in Leiden, Netherlands, and in Lecce, Italy. She is responsible for the Ubach Papyrological Collection housed at the Abbey of Montserrat, and she is currently preparing its cataloguing.
Klaas A. Worp
Klaas A. Worp is emeritus professor of papyrology at the Papyrologisch Instituut of the University of Leiden. Among his numerous publications in the field of papyrology The Chronological Systems of Byzantine Egypt, Leiden, 2004, together with Prof. R. S. Bagnall, or Greek Ostraka from Kellis (O.Kellis) (= Dakhleh Oasis Project Monograph 13), Oxford, 2004, should be mentioned. He has been involved with the Roca-Puig papyrological collection project since its very beginning, and has co-authored To the Origins of Greek Stenography. P.Monts.Roca I, Barcelona, 2006, with Sofía Torallas.
Alberto Nodar Domínguez
Alberto Nodar Domínguez is lecturer in Classics at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where he is also the director of a papyrology unit associated with the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC). Since 2005 he is the curator of the Palau-Ribes papyrological collection, now housed at the Arxiu Històric de la Companyia de Jesús a Catalunya. He obtained his DPhil in Greek Papyrology from the University of Oxford, where he subsequently worked on the project The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. He conducted research at the Institut für Papyrologie, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, as an Alexander von Humboldt scholar, and at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, within the Catalogue of Paraliterary Papyri Project.
Sergio Carro Martín
Sergio Carro Martín holds a Ph.D in Humanities from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (2019). He has a BA in Arabic philology at the Universidad de Salamanca in 2007 and he has completed his academic training with Arabic language courses in Yemen (2005) and Cairo, Egypt (2009) as fellow of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID). He defended his MA thesis in 2011, after completing the Master of Contemporary Arab and Islamic Studies at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He worked as full-time research assistant in various national projects at the Spanish National Reseach Council (CSIC-ILC) and the University Pompeu Fabra (2009-2019). Since 2011 he participates in the DVCTVS Project, managing the databases of the different papyrological collections.
Marina Escolano Poveda
Marina Escolano Poveda is a Fulbright scholar doing her PhD in Egyptology at the Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, USA), where she is specializing in Demotic studies under the direction of Dr. Richard Jasnow. She has been trained in all the stages of the Egyptian language, from Old Egyptian to Coptic, and her minor field of specialization is Ancient Greek. She has been trained in Papyrology at the Abbey of Montserrat with Dr. Sofía Torallas Tovar, and at the University of Chicago in the Summer Institute in Papyrology 2012. She is part of the team of the Johns Hopkins University Archaeological Expedition to the Temple of Mut (Luxor, Egypt), under the direction of Dr. Betsy Bryan. Her main field of interest is Demotic Papyrology and the study of Graeco-Roman Egypt.
Amalia Zomeño Rodríguez
Amalia Zomeño Rodríguez is tenured researcher at CCHS, CSIC in Madrid since 2007. Since 2001 she has been working on the cataloguing, edition and study of the Arabic notarial documents kept at the Granada Archives, especially those at the Library of the University of Granada Royal Hospital, and is currently preparing a volume with the edition of an important number of unpublished documents. Since 2003 she has been cataloguing the Arabic manuscripts of the Oriental collections of the Abadia de Montserrat, and in 2006 she started the cataloguing and the study of the Arabic papyri belonging to the Palau-Ribes collection, housed at the Arxiu Históric de la Companyia de Jesús a Catalunya. She is a member of the International Society for Arabic Papyrology.
María Jesús Albarrán Martínez
María Jesús Albarrán Martínez obtained her PhD in Ancient History at the Universidad de Alcalá on the topic of female asceticism in the documentary papyri. She was trained in archaeology and in epigraphy at Centre CIL II, UAH; and as a papyrologist and as a coptologist in various courses in Spain at Madrid and Barcelona, and abroad at the Institut Français d’Archaéologie Orientale in Cairo, and at the Universities of Leipzig and Strasbourg. Her main interests lay in the area of documentary papyrology, Christianity and monasticism in Egypt in Late Antiquity, on which she has published several works.
Irene Pajón Leyra
Irene Pajón Leyra has a PhD in Classical Philology (2008) and an MA in Hebrew Philology (2006). In her thesis she studied the Greek paradoxographic literature, and moreover she has worked on geographic literature in Antiquity. Both fields of interest, geography and paradoxography, converge in her studies on the Artemidorus papyrus, on which she has published some articles in Spanish and international journals. She studied papyrology at seminars in Madrid and Oxford, where she was a postdoctoral fellow in 2010 and 2011. Since December 2011 she is a postdoctoral fellow at CCHS, CSIC in Madrid, where she is part of the DVCTVS team.
Alba de Frutos García
Alba de Frutos García has a MA Degree in Classics (UCM). She also obtained an MA in Ancient History (UAM-UCM) with an MA dissertation on the invitations on papyri. She is currently working on her PhD at the Center of Humanities and Social Sciences (CCHS) as a predoctoral fellow (2010-2014). She is being trained as a papyrologist in Spain (Madrid) and abroad (Lecce).
