Interview with Sofía Torallas
Facebook :https://www.Aroa (Desperta Ferro):As I have seen these days, the inauguration has been a complete success and has been very well received, as well that the first of all is to congratulate you for it and for the enormous work you carry out. How has the work been for all these months and who is this exhibition focused on?
Sofía Torallas:Well, thank you very much. We have been very happy with the work done, although exhausted. It has been interesting to do it, but difficult because when you have such large collections you have to select, you cannot have everything. It's not like the Berlin collection where you have complete papyri, but we have many fragments. You have to complete and give an idea of all daily life and structure it a little in spaces that are understandable to a large audience, because this exhibition is not made just for the papyrology congress, because this exhibition is designed for the city of Barcelona , for the tourism. So we had to give it a structure that could be followed. And that's why we have the crocodile and the funerary masks that have more attraction.
A:I have been browsing the “Flowers of the Pharaoh” exhibition website, but I would like to know a little more. As you explain on the web, this exhibition is made up of some 70 pieces, from two important collections of papyri from the country. But what are we going to find in this exhibition? How have you structured the exhibition for the visitor?
S:We have structured the exhibition as if it were a trip up the Nile, starting in Alexandria to Thebes, making stops. And in each of those 8 stops we have gathered texts around a theme. It is not chronological, it is rather geographical, because it has thus given us the possibility of structuring around a city. However, the pieces in that section are not from that city for that reason, but they are included in it because of their connection with the topic being discussed.
A:The journey begins in Alexandria, with the theme of its famous library. What texts can we find here?
S:We have dedicated the Alexandria section to literary texts for its library, as you told me. The visitor will be able to find several texts of Homer, some example of a book in roll format and in codex format so that the literary activity in Alexandria can be seen a little. And the copy of the ancient authors, and how they have been transmitted to us. For example, we have a couple of fragments from other authors such as Demosthenes, Thucydides and Hesiod, apart from Homer, who owns 80% of Greek literary texts.
A:We continue the journey through Naucratis, a city of Greek foundation and commercial port. What have you dedicated it to? Because also, we don't only have papyri.
S:In this section we have texts related to trade. For example, we have one that refers to the payment of a tax for the control of measures and weights in the market; and another refers to a market in a city gate, which is accompanied by some parallel pieces so that they are not all papyrus, and we have added a mina, which is a market weight in bronze, and some coins minted in Alexandria. In this way there is complementary material, so that it is not all papyrus, because we understand that when one looks at the showcases it is necessary to complement it a little and add a little salt and pepper.
A:The next stop has caught my attention because it is the Fustat, the first Arab foundation, founded in 641 AD, what kind of texts Arabs can we find in Egypt?
S:The papyri in this section are from the collection of the Jesuits of Barcelona, and we have, for example, an official letter, which is very good because it is from the early years of the arrival of the Arabs in Egypt, which is very valuable. Then we also have some sentences. We have added something else like some oil lamps, and some more documents to illustrate the fact that the Greek language was also still used in Egypt, like some accounts.
A:Of course, because the texts you have are not only in Greek. In what other languages can we find the texts on display?
S:Well, there is Greek, Latin, Arabic and demotic. And we have not been able to carry more for conservation. We had a Book of the Dead but it's in pretty bad shape so we've put it up virtually.
A:In the next section, which is the Fayum oasis and represents the administration, you have one of the pieces that everyone likes the most , which is a tax amnesty for Ptolemy V, why is it so important?
S:It is interesting mainly because it brings us a parallel to our time. Although this amnesty is different because after a popular revolt, the country was left in crisis and certain taxes were forgiven but not the rich, and that is the difference with our time. It was to cope with the fact that the agricultural year had been very bad because of the riots and the political and economic instability. This is the most striking, but the section also has other papyri that are various tax payments, from Roman times as well.
A:The next stop is Oxyrhynchus, where we have pieces related to the school, but who could access this type of text? Who could read and write them?
S:Society, as soon as it was integrated into the economic system, had to access this type of text. The fact of being illiterate did not mean that you had no contact with writing. For example, people wrote letters to each other and since they didn't know how to write or read, there were scribes who wrote it for you, and the letter was sent and when it reached the addressee there was another person who read it. He even translated it; it arrived written in Greek and he translated it into demotic. We know that there were scribes and people who read the letters aloud for the families. You paid your tax, from which no one was exempt, and they gave you your receipt and you took a receipt that you did not understand, because you did not know how to read, but you had it. The bureaucracy worked and affected all layers of society.
Another thing is literary texts that were probably very limited to one section of society.
A:And what texts have you included in this section?
S:In this section we have both poles, and we have managed to get enough pieces in the two collections to illustrate the evolution and the different levels of literacy. We have from the illiterate, with a document that is a contract in which one person signs for another because he does not know how to write. The problem of illiteracy was solved in this way, using other people for the bureaucracy to sign for you.
On the other hand, we have school documents in which the learning phases appear, from the alphabet, syllabaries and then more elaborate texts and the learning of rhetoric. We have also added a mythological drawing, and we have included it because it belongs to a higher education codex in which the texts of Cicero are collected, who was studied in southern Egypt as late as the fourth century.
A:We cannot talk about an exhibition of papyri without talking about the funerary world, which is in charge of the next stop, Amarna, a city of Pharaonic Egypt , whose funerary masks make it a very attractive section. You also have two mummy tags, one demotic and one Greek, what are these tags for?
S:Because the embalming process took time –depending on the process it could last about two months–, when they went to pick up the embalmed body, to find out which one was he had to bring the family (it was all wrapped up), he had a label tied around his neck saying who he was.
We have included in one of the exhibition panels a letter from a woman who writes to her sister and tells her that she is sending her the body of her mother and that it bears a label tied around the neck, and that it is sent to be buried or kept, because it is also said that they kept them in the house, a bit disgusting, but it was done.
A:Apart from these labels, we also have papers called “the bureaucracy of death”, what kind of texts are these?
S:Simply a death certificate that we have from the Montserrat collection. If you think about the practical part of death, when you die you have to stop paying taxes. And in the lists and the censuses, which were precisely for the collection of taxes, all the citizens appeared. So one sent these types of documents to say that X had died, and to be removed from the list.
A:Yeah, it's like the other side of the funeral world. For the next stop, which you open with two terracottas, we have Christianity represented; but do pagan texts still exist?
S:Yes, the next section is Hermopolis, which we have used more than just to represent Christianity, to present the transition to it. We open the section with those two terracottas and a letter from the 3rd-4th centuries AD. in which a hieroglyphic carver is mentioned. It is a time of transition when paganism is still strong and the country begins to Christianize at great speed. These remnants of paganism will last a long time and then they will start to persecute each other.
A:And about Christianity in Egypt, what kind of texts do we keep and can we see in the exhibition?
S:We have included several biblical texts because we have a manuscript from the 5th century, from the collection of the Jesuits of Barcelona. It is a parchment codex containing three gospels in their Coptic translation. It is a luxury manuscript and is one of the few in which the complete Sahidic Coptic translation of the gospels is preserved. Then we have a fragment of the Gospel of Matthew which is said to be one of the oldest fragments, and it is from the 2nd century AD. C., and belongs to a codex, although it is very small. The oldest papyrus of the New Testament is in the Manchester collection and is from the early 2nd century and contains John, and the one in the exhibition is a little later and contains Matthew.
Although we have not only included the Bible, but we also have administrative documents from monasteries that were the commercial and economic centers and were often in charge of managing the taxes of all the towns of around.
A:In the exhibition you have authentic papyrological jewels from what I see. But why have you chosen Hermopolis for this section?
S:Because we have a document of a wine delivery and this is very interesting because it is signed by the abbot of the Hermopolis monastery, and that is why we have chosen this city to represent the Christianity because there was a very important monastery there.
A:And now we come to the last section, which is the favorite:Thebes, dedicated to magic, why Thebes? What can we find, apart from papyri, in this section?
S:We have chosen the city of Thebes because of the library that was found from a wizard. Here we can see, for example, a curse written on an ostracon that has very striking drawings and magical characters. We also have a couple of amulets, one against fever and the other against a disease that we don't know very well and that is Christian, because it adds "In the name of the father, of the son and of the Holy Spirit", and asks for protection against the disease. And it's folded to carry it hanging.
A:Then I have also seen that in the exhibition you have dedicated a small section to 3 characters:Ubach, Josep O´Callaghan and Ramón Roca Puig. What role did these three characters play in the field of papyrology? Why have you dedicated a space to them in this exhibition?
S:Because the collections with which we have made the exhibition are with collections purchased by these three characters. The first and oldest is Father Ubach, who was a Benedictine from Montserrat who, from the beginning of the 20th century until the 1930s, traveled to the East and spent a large part of his life there, asking the Father Abbot to send him money to buy antiques. So Father Ubach bought all the antiques in the Montserrat Biblical Museum, in the Ancient and Eastern section. Of papyri he bought a small collection, there are a couple on display. But the most important thing he bought were cuneiform tablets, a spectacular collection. And the crocodile in the exhibition was also brought by him.
A:And who were Roca Puig and O´Callaghan?
S:Roca Puig was a canon of the Barcelona Cathedral and O´Callaghan was a Jesuit and both were contemporaries, although they did not get along very well. The two bought their collections at the same time in Cairo in the 1950s-60s, through intermediaries, and their collections come from the antiquities market, not from archaeological excavations. They created two collections that are private because they found their own patrons. O'Callaghan got money from his brother-in-law Palau-Ribes and Roca Puig de Myrurgia, from a cosmetics company. And it is very creditable because the two collections have more than 2000 pieces.
A:When you talk about the two collections, you are referring to the Montserrat Abbey Museum and the Historical Archive of the Jesuits in Barcelona, which belongs to where all the pieces that you have put in the exhibition come from. What kind of texts did they buy or were they interested in?
S:Father Roca Puig was fundamentally interested in the Bible, and so was O'Callaghan. He published some Christian texts. But of course, in all the lots they bought, because they bought them in lots, there were many texts that did not interest them at all, which were documentary texts. They are fantastic collections that they didn't even touch.
A:So, papyri of the collections are yet to be published, right?
S:A lot. Of Montserrat I have published more or less 100. I am working on another volume that will have another 50, and there are some that will never be published because they are fragments and not worth it. There is a lot of material and for many years.
A:Yes, I see, it's not just translating the papyrus.
S:No, there is a lot of groundwork.
A:And what is known about the origin and context of the papyri they bought?
S:Of some we can know the origin because it puts it. Maybe it says "Oxyrhynchus", but then who knows if it was found there or has been sent from that city. It is impossible to know. Some yes, because when they were sold in Cairo, they told you where they came from, and for example there are some in Montserrat where we have letters and others from intermediaries and we have some from Thebes. You can believe it or not.
On the other hand, we know, for example, that there are papyri that have been with antiquities dealers for many years because matching fragments of the same papyrus are in collections where one has been purchased at the beginning of the 20th century and another in the middle, that is, 30 years may have passed without being sold or being sold and resold. It's impossible to know.
A:This is the journey a papyrus took a few years ago, before the 70's when they could leave Egypt, but now they stay there. Are they preserved and restored there? How are texts currently worked?
S:With the situation in Egypt now, I don't know. I work in Aswan, in an excavation and I work with the Swiss institute that has enough means and material. So when I go there I work with ostraca, and I get there and they give me big plastic bags, like shopping bags, with material to study. I try to separate them but then that has to go by obligation to a deposit of the Supreme Council of Antiquities of Egypt. That the same thieves arrive, enter and break everything, and this is happening. So the archaeologists try to keep the most delicate pieces in their deposits, but it is very complicated. From year to year you find yourself with damage because they are constantly rubbing and cannot be stored well.
A:Of course, as soon as you take them out of context, the deterioration of the piece itself begins.
S:Indeed, and compared to how we have them here, all stored in the collections of European museums, it is very different. What you have to do is, as soon as possible, study them, get the text, digitize and take the photograph because the deterioration process, depending on where they are, is inexorable.
A:And in the end the piece is lost. Are many pieces lost for this reason?
S:Many are lost, and not just in Egypt. There are papyri that have disappeared from European and American collections. It's very sad.
We take this opportunity to remind you of Deserta Ferro Archeology and History No. 4:Egypt. The Book of the Dead.