Elena Hertel

Having received my BA (Egyptology /Classical Archaeology) from Heidelberg University and my MA (Egyptology) from Leiden University, I am now based at Basel University to write my PhD as part of the ‘Crossing Boundaries’ project. My research focus has always been both on material culture as well as on papyrology, the latter one with abnormal hieratic and demotic as primary fields of interest.

The broader scope of my PhD project is to study the physical manuscripts and combine research on the materiality of the papyri with content of the texts written on them. Specifically, the goal is to investigate the different forms of use and reuse of the manuscripts, with a special focus on the practice of creating palimpsests and erasing older texts to make space for new ones.