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ME-Scripta: the Museo Egizio’s International Research Centre for Papyri
info@museitorino.it
011 44 06 903
Dal lunedì al sabato dalle ore 9:00 alle 18:00
The Museo Egizio in Turin holds one of the most important collections of papyri and ancient Egyptian written culture in the world: more than 1,000 manuscripts and over 30,000 fragments of papyri, ostraca (fragments of limestone or pottery), and parchment, spanning more than 3,000 years of history, six different writing systems and seven languages. Much of this collection is still held in storage, awaiting years of cataloguing, conservation and study.
ME-Scripta was established with the aim of making this collection accessible to both the scholarly community and to the wider public. Through the Museum's new research centre dedicated to ancient Egyptian papyri, this significant corpus of written culture will be made fully accessible online, providing a resource for advanced international research and for audiences worldwide.
ME-Scripta is a long-term strategic initiative that will support the Museo Egizio through to 2034, with the goal of strengthening its role as a centre of excellence for the study, conservation, digitisation and sharing of ancient written artefacts, with particular attention to papyri, ostraca and parchment manuscripts.
The Museum's new research centre builds on the work already carried out through TPOP - the Turin Papyrus Online Platform, the open-data platform that, since 2018, has made a large part of the papyrus collection accessible to both researchers and the general public. TPOP has already received a special mention at the European Museum of the Year Awards 2018 and the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards in 2020.
ME-Scripta is also the name of the platform itself, which will evolve to integrate not only papyri but also ostraca, parchment and bindings, becoming the world's first research environment allowing scholars everywhere to work simultaneously on the same materials, wherever they are held.
The project is built around five main objectives, with the revival of papyrological research in Turin at its core. The first is the complete cataloguing and digitisation of every written object in the Museum’s collection, through systematic inventories and high-resolution imaging, including texts that are in a fragile state or difficult to read. The second is in-depth philological and textual analysis: producing critical editions and annotated translations of texts that have never been published before.
Alongside this comes the material study and conservation of the artefacts, using advanced techniques to examine writing supports, inks and manuscript production methods, including 3D documentation and modelling for the most complex objects. Training will also play a key role, with internships, summer schools and workshops open to anyone wishing to specialise in Egyptology, papyrology, conservation or digital humanities.
Finally, there is the goal of accessibility: making research results understandable and meaningful not only for academics, but also for museum visitors. Through this new interdisciplinary research infrastructure, ME-Scripta will enable critical study, conservation and, at the same time, disseminating the Museum's textual collection to the public, so that research is no longer confined to specialists, but is also shared with the wider public, contributing to the institution's broader academic and cultural mission. It is within this framework that artificial intelligence is also being explored for papyrus research, designed to recognise, compare, and virtually reunite corpora that are currently dispersed across different international collections.
One of the key public highlights of ME-Scripta will be the Museo Egizio's exhibition The Soter Group, scheduled to run from December 2027 to May 2028. For the first time in two centuries, a corpus of funerary objects attributed to the archon Soter and his family will be brought together, originating from a Theban tomb reused in the Roman period and now dispersed across several European collections, including the Museo Egizio. Accompanied by a bilingual Italian-English catalogue, the exhibition will demonstrate how scientific research can become an experience accessible to all.
The Museo Egizio's research centre is also being developed thanks to the support of Fondazione CRT, whose contribution is fundamental in enabling investment in the human, technological and scientific resources needed to achieve this vision, a fully-fledged research project developed together with Fondazione CRT. Thanks to this partnership, the Museo Egizio can already begin building the research team that will guide the project in the coming years, ensuring continuity and sustainability for an initiative designed to continue well beyond the duration of the project itself.
Part of Turin's textual collection from ancient Egypt can already be explored online today: the Turin Papyrus Online Platform is available at collezionepapiri.museoegizio.it, the starting point from which ME-Scripta will develop in the coming years.
ME-Scripta was established with the aim of making this collection accessible to both the scholarly community and to the wider public. Through the Museum's new research centre dedicated to ancient Egyptian papyri, this significant corpus of written culture will be made fully accessible online, providing a resource for advanced international research and for audiences worldwide.
What is ME-Scripta?
ME-Scripta is a long-term strategic initiative that will support the Museo Egizio through to 2034, with the goal of strengthening its role as a centre of excellence for the study, conservation, digitisation and sharing of ancient written artefacts, with particular attention to papyri, ostraca and parchment manuscripts.
From TPOP to ME-Scripta: the evolution of an already award-winning project
The Museum's new research centre builds on the work already carried out through TPOP - the Turin Papyrus Online Platform, the open-data platform that, since 2018, has made a large part of the papyrus collection accessible to both researchers and the general public. TPOP has already received a special mention at the European Museum of the Year Awards 2018 and the European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards in 2020.
ME-Scripta is also the name of the platform itself, which will evolve to integrate not only papyri but also ostraca, parchment and bindings, becoming the world's first research environment allowing scholars everywhere to work simultaneously on the same materials, wherever they are held.
What will change: digitisation, research and artificial intelligence
The project is built around five main objectives, with the revival of papyrological research in Turin at its core. The first is the complete cataloguing and digitisation of every written object in the Museum’s collection, through systematic inventories and high-resolution imaging, including texts that are in a fragile state or difficult to read. The second is in-depth philological and textual analysis: producing critical editions and annotated translations of texts that have never been published before.
Alongside this comes the material study and conservation of the artefacts, using advanced techniques to examine writing supports, inks and manuscript production methods, including 3D documentation and modelling for the most complex objects. Training will also play a key role, with internships, summer schools and workshops open to anyone wishing to specialise in Egyptology, papyrology, conservation or digital humanities.
Finally, there is the goal of accessibility: making research results understandable and meaningful not only for academics, but also for museum visitors. Through this new interdisciplinary research infrastructure, ME-Scripta will enable critical study, conservation and, at the same time, disseminating the Museum's textual collection to the public, so that research is no longer confined to specialists, but is also shared with the wider public, contributing to the institution's broader academic and cultural mission. It is within this framework that artificial intelligence is also being explored for papyrus research, designed to recognise, compare, and virtually reunite corpora that are currently dispersed across different international collections.
Beyond the digital: "The Soter Group" exhibition
One of the key public highlights of ME-Scripta will be the Museo Egizio's exhibition The Soter Group, scheduled to run from December 2027 to May 2028. For the first time in two centuries, a corpus of funerary objects attributed to the archon Soter and his family will be brought together, originating from a Theban tomb reused in the Roman period and now dispersed across several European collections, including the Museo Egizio. Accompanied by a bilingual Italian-English catalogue, the exhibition will demonstrate how scientific research can become an experience accessible to all.
A project made possible by Fondazione CRT
The Museo Egizio's research centre is also being developed thanks to the support of Fondazione CRT, whose contribution is fundamental in enabling investment in the human, technological and scientific resources needed to achieve this vision, a fully-fledged research project developed together with Fondazione CRT. Thanks to this partnership, the Museo Egizio can already begin building the research team that will guide the project in the coming years, ensuring continuity and sustainability for an initiative designed to continue well beyond the duration of the project itself.
Part of Turin's textual collection from ancient Egypt can already be explored online today: the Turin Papyrus Online Platform is available at collezionepapiri.museoegizio.it, the starting point from which ME-Scripta will develop in the coming years.
info@museitorino.it
011 44 06 903
Dal lunedì al sabato dalle ore 9:00 alle 18:00
