Most of the papyri preserved at the Berkeley Collection were found by B.P. Grenfell and A.S. Hunt in the 1899–1900 excavation season at Umm El Baragat, the ancient Tebtunis, through funding from the University of California. In 2003, some fragments from the 1899–1900 finds were rediscovered by Todd M. Hickey. Kept in containers that had remained overlooked in Oxford for decades, the missing papyri were eventually moved to Berkeley in 2005. They turn out to be a crucial part of the collection: not a few of them join with fragments that were already published and belong to known ancient archives. Within the present research project a cluster of 32 of the rediscovered documents (all hitherto unpublished) will be studied and edited: all datable to the period of the Roman Principate, mostly written in Greek, some in Latin, they include contracts, official and private letters, public registers, and fragments of a technical book.

Lise-Meitner Project M3235 »Neue Texte aus dem römischen Tebtynis« (Principal Investigator: Roberto Mascellari)