Crossing Boundaries Between Humanities and Informatics: The Case of Egyptian Papyri

The corpus of papyri housed in the Museo Egizio in Turin comprises some 9000 fragments and approximately 230 larger ensembles and forms the most extensive known papyrus archive from the Pharaonic period. The papyri originate from Deir el-Medina, the New Kingdom workers' settlement on the Theban Westbank (1300-1070 BCE). In dealing with these papyri, the interdisciplinary project Crossing Boundaries : Understanding Complex Scribal Practices in Ancient Egypt , financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS) and led by the University of Basel, the University of Liège, and the Museo Egizio in Turin, seeks to overcome the epistemological and methodological boundaries between archaeology, digital humanities, informatics, papyrology, palaeography, prosopography, and textual research. In this paper, we highlight the limitations of current virtual research environments and digital images for ancient manuscripts studies, exemplified on the papyrus fibres, and how the synergy with modern machine learning techniques can widen their usability.