On the evening of September 24, 2019, Professor Omar Al-Ghul of Yarmouk University delivered an ACOR public lecture titled “The Petra Papyri: A city’s diary from the 6th century CE.” Please see below to learn more about the presentation.
About the Lecture
In 1993, an archive of Greek papyri was uncovered in the Byzantine Church in Petra. The approximately 140 texts belong to a private archive dated to the 6th century CE. The papyri contribute significantly to our knowledge about Petra and its inhabitants at that period, only a few decades before the emergence of Islam. The lecture paid special attention to the information the papyri provide about the daily life in Petra and languages spoken and written there.
About the Lecturer
Omar al-Ghul is an epigraphist, with special interest in Northwest Semitic inscriptions, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the history of Arabic. He is a faculty member at the Faculty of Archaeology and Anthropology at Yarmouk University.
Resources
To learn more about the Petra Papyri, please visit the following links, including a video of a previous lecture on the subject at ACOR:
Porter, Barbara. 2015. “The Petra Papyri—An Archive from Petra’s Byzantine Past.”
Frösén, Jaakko; Antti Arjava, and Barbara Porter. 2018. “ACOR Public Lecture and Book Launch: The Petra Papyri V.”
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