Ostraca & Papyrus Field Journal Aswan · Est. 2016 · ISSN 2735-6204
Quarterly paleographic editions · Independent · Aswan editorial

Newly read potsherds, papyri and Coptic letters from the Upper Egypt excavations.

The Ostraca & Papyrus Field Journal publishes first-edition paleographic transcriptions of newly excavated written material from the Upper Egypt and Western Desert sites — hieratic accounting ostraca from the Elephantine garrison, demotic narrative papyri from the Roman-period rubbish heaps, Coptic monastic letters from the Wadi al-Natrun monasteries, and the occasional Greek-Egyptian bilingual fragment that turns up where the institutional excavations are working. The journal is based in Aswan, three kilometres from the Elephantine excavation house, and is read by paleography seminars at twenty-six universities worldwide.

Latest Elephantine ostraca 2025 finds summary
What the journal publishes

Four working corpora across forty seasons of Upper Egypt excavation.

The journal works with four established excavation projects that produce most of the publishable written material from Upper Egypt: the Elephantine garrison excavation at Aswan (German Archaeological Institute), the Tebtunis temple library at Fayoum (Berkeley), the Wadi al-Natrun monastic sites (Coptic Studies Institute Cairo) and the Abu Sir el-Meleq Roman-period dump (Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology). The institutional projects retain academic-publication primacy on their finds; our journal publishes first-edition transcriptions only with the project director's written consent, on the agreement that the institutional final publication remains the canonical scholarly source. Approximately sixty percent of our published items are alongside-publications with the institutional project director's name on the transcription; the remaining forty percent are from material the institutional teams have agreed to release for our journal because the items are paleographically interesting but archaeologically peripheral to the project's main publication.

OPF-2026-118 · Hieratic

Elephantine offering account

"Bread, beer and natron were issued as a temple offering to the chief mystery-priest…"

House L-44 · regnal year 14 likely Ramesses III · 21 lines
Read the hieratic file →
OPF-2026-102 · Demotic

Tebtunis temple-archive marriage contract

"In the matter of Khemis daughter of Petesouchos and the embalmer Pasis son of Marres, year 27 of Augustus Caesar…"

Tebtunis village · 27 BCE • year 4 of Augustus · 14 lines + signatures
Read the demotic file →
OPF-2026-074 · Coptic

Bishop Apa Mena's letter to the brothers at Scetis

"To our brothers in Christ at Scetis, peace from Mena, the least of bishops, writing from Sohag…"

Wadi al-Natrun · Sahidic dialect · fifth-century paleography · 38 lines
Read the Coptic file →
Methodology in four passes

From the field tray to the published edition.

Every item published in the journal passes through a documented four-stage process from the moment the excavator hands it to our reader to the moment the first-edition transcription appears in the quarterly issue. The methodology document — fourteen pages, last revised March 2026 — describes each stage in detail; the summary below is the working version.

Initial reading at the excavation house.

The journal's reader visits the excavation house (Elephantine, Tebtunis, Wadi al-Natrun or Abu Sir el-Meleq) and produces an initial reading in the field, with the excavator's institutional record number cross-referenced against our internal inventory. The initial reading is the first attempt at a continuous text and notes the writing material, dimensions, ink colour, and visible damage.

Photographic plate at standardised calibration.

The item is photographed at the excavation house under our calibrated lighting standard with the Pantone colour-reference card visible. Two passes — visible light and raking light — produce the photographic plates that go into the published edition. The original photographic files are colour-managed and archived in our internal database.

Aswan transcription and apparatus.

The lead editor for the relevant corpus produces the full transcription in the Aswan office, with paleographic apparatus comparing the hands and orthography against the published reference corpora. The apparatus is the work that takes longest — typically three to ten working days per item depending on length and difficulty.

Two-editor peer review and institutional sign-off.

The transcription and apparatus are reviewed by a second editor with adjacent corpus expertise, then sent to the institutional excavation project director for their written sign-off. Where the institutional director's reading differs from ours, the difference is documented openly in the published edition with both readings shown.

Why an Aswan editorial desk

Because three of our four working sites are within four hours by road from Aswan.

The editorial desk is in Aswan for structural reasons. The Elephantine excavation is three kilometres from the office. The Tebtunis archive is hosted in Fayoum but the project's Egypt liaison office is in Cairo, four hundred and forty kilometres north — a long working day. The Wadi al-Natrun sites are similarly north of Cairo but accessible by road. The Abu Sir el-Meleq site is at Beni Suef, halfway between Cairo and Aswan, accessible from either direction. Of the four projects we work with, three are closer to Aswan than to Cairo or to any of the more conventional editorial homes for Egyptian classical-period scholarship.

Aswan also offers something none of the larger cities does — quiet. The editorial desk is on Sharia al-Sail in the Souk district, above a glassware merchant's shop, in a building that has housed three previous publishing ventures (a Coptic-language newsletter in the 1980s, a regional travel guide in the 1990s, a short-lived academic translation imprint in the 2000s). The street is busy in the morning souk hours and quiet from early afternoon. The full editorial team is described on the about page; the methodology is set out on the services page.

Aswan editor's workbench with ostracon under raking light
The editorial workbench — Aswan office, March 2026
10
Years publishing since 2016
487
First-edition transcriptions in the archive
4
Excavation projects in active partnership
26+
University seminars subscribing
Reader questions, briefly

The questions paleographic readers and journalists ask first.

Are these editions citable as the first edition?

Yes, with the standard understanding that the institutional project's eventual scholarly publication remains the canonical source for material from active excavations. Our editions are citable as "first edition with the institutional director's consent, OPF Journal issue X, page Y", and the standard paleographic apparatus we publish is reusable in subsequent scholarly work with proper citation.

How does the journal handle material from non-institutional sources?

We do not publish material with undocumented post-1970 provenance. The four projects we work with all hold valid excavation permits from the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, and the material we publish is recorded in the projects' inventories with the excavation context noted. We have declined material on provenance grounds nineteen times since 2016; each refusal is documented in the December transparency note.

Can I send a private-collection piece for reading?

No. The journal works exclusively with material from documented institutional excavations. Private-collection material — even where the owner believes the provenance is sound — falls outside our publication scope. Owners seeking attribution of their pieces are directed to the licensed-paleography consultancy services in Cairo and Berlin that handle that work.

Why no commercial sponsors?

Because the journal's value depends on its commercial and political independence from any specific institution or interest. Reader subscriptions cover about fifty-four percent of annual costs; the Mokhtar Foundation paleography grant covers thirty-three percent; the remainder is small consultancy work by the editors. No university, museum, antiquities dealer or advocacy organisation funds the journal.

Subscribe

One quarterly issue. Forty to sixty pages of first-edition transcriptions and paleographic apparatus.

Subscribers receive the quarterly issue by post (institutional subscribers) or by email PDF (individual readers). Three tiers from twenty-four euros a year. The annual back-issue archive is included for Researcher and Institutional subscribers.

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