The ‘Crossing Boundaries’ Project proposes a contextualised, interdisciplinary approach to the written material produced by the highly literate ancient Egyptian Community of Deir el-Medina. This community consisted of the workers (and their families) who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings during the New Kingdom (c. 1350–1000 BCE). The partners in this project are the University of Basel, the Université de Liège and the Museo Egizio Torino, which holds the most important collection of papyri from Deir el-Medina: 11000 papyrus fragments and 230 larger ensembles.

In our project, we approach the papyri from an Egyptological, philological, material, technical and informatics perspective. The Turin Papyrus Online Platform is our working and publishing tool. Each TPOP entry includes metadata about the fragments and manuscripts, features of the scripts, and a description of the text content. Kathrin works on these components, especially on letters. Another aspect is the usage of computational methods on the papyri within Stephan’s PhD. This includes the development of research tools like the Virtual Light Table, a software designed to support the reconstruction of fragmentary documents with features tailored for the needs of scholars.

Link to the Videoclip here.