“What no eye has seen”: Using a Digital Microscope to Edit Papyrus Fragments of Early Christian Apocryphal Writings

Scholars working with ancient papyri are often confronted with manuscripts that are challenging to read. Aside from the basic fact that papyri are often preserved in fragmentary condition, the deciphering of letters in the portions that remain frequently presents challenges. Sometimes only small parts of letters are preserved; at other times the ink may have faded away to near invisibility; and at still other times the letters are rendered almost unrecognizable by blotches of ink. Papyri may also be covered with an obscuring layer of silt as the result of inadequate conservation or a lack of conservation altogether, leaving scholars unclear as to what is ink and what is dirt. Faced with such challenges, editors still labor valiantly to produce accurate transcriptions of ancient texts. Nevertheless, uncertainties in readings still remain, and texts that have been edited more than once will sometimes have very different transcriptions. The difficulties in deciding which readings to prefer may even lead to the conclusion that such decisions are hopelessly arbitrary. A relatively new technology, however, may be able to resolve some of these papyrological impasses, at least in part: digital microscopes. Although some of the leading repositories of papyri collections have had analog microscopes available for use by researchers for some time, digital microscopes have three significant advantages over analog microscopes. First, a digital microscope can be connected to a computer via a USB port, allowing for the image to be seen on a computer screen, rather than straining through a tiny eyehole. Second, a digital microscope can take photographs of the manuscript under magnification, allowing an editor to provide key photographic evidence in favor of one reading over another – and this paper will include a selection of photographs taken with a digital microscope. Third, some digital microscopes – including the one used by the authors – have the added feature of ultraviolet and infrared lighting modes, and these different light spectra can greatly improve the legibility of ink in some cases.