Writing as an event and a process: Ancient and Medieval scribes at work
International Conference
Basel 10-12 September 2025, Alte Universität, Seminarraum 201
Organized by the SNSF-funded project EGRAPSA with the support of the ERC project MIDRASH and the Centre Jean-Mabillon, École nationale des chartes (Paris).
Attendance to this event is open upon previous registration via email to i.marthot-santaniello@unibas.ch.
The study of ancient manuscripts has long focused on their textual content, neglecting their material aspects until these last decades. The “material turn” taken by recent research has shown how fruitful it can be to interrogate manuscripts as ancient objects, representative of their historical, cultural and technical context of production. Massive digitisation of cultural heritage collections now provides new materials to specialists, digital “avatars” that are extremely useful for the study of layout and handwriting (palaeography), but capture only partially the complex nature of these objects, often reducing them to 2D photographs. The aim of the present conference, organised by the SNSF-funded project EGRAPSA in Basel, the ERC project MIDRASH and the Centre Jean-Mabillon, École nationale des chartes (Paris), is to tackle the challenge of reconstructing the event of writing understood as specific persons in a specific place with specific equipment, and the process of writing as chains of movements producing written traces.
The conference will bring together presentations from specialists in Ancient Egyptian, Cuneiform, Hebrew, Greek, Latin and vernacular scripts, covering Antiquity and the Middle Ages with a glimpse into the Renaissance. Including two hand-on workshops (experimental and digital palaeography) and various moments devoted to discussion, it will foster multidisciplinary exchanges between palaeography, history, archaeology, iconography, digital humanities, and computer science, on methods and tools for extracting evidence from handwritten artifacts concerning their contexts and processes of production, investigating the possibilities but also the limits of reconstructing how people used to write in the past.
Programme
Wednesday September 10
| 14:00 | Welcome by I. Marthot-Santaniello (Universität Basel) |
| Panel 1: Writing bodies and archaeology of writing | |
| 14:30 | Michele Cammarosano (Università di Napoli L’Orientale): The biomechanics of inkless writing on clay and wax: cuneiform vs linear scripts |
| 15:00 | Michael Freeman (Texas Tech University): Embodied Knowledge in Ancient Mediterranean Scribal Practices |
| 15:30 | Coffee |
| 16:00 | Lavinia Ferretti (Universität Basel): To the Grave with your Writing Tools. The Grave Goods of Tomb T.11 in Saint-Martin-de-Corléans (Aosta, IT) |
| Panel 2: Professional writers | |
| 16:30 | Jean-Luc Fournet (Collège de France): À l'école des professionnels de l'écrit |
| 17:00 | Giacomo Cardinali (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana): CV, horaires, salaires et logements : les conditions de vie et de travail de copistes latins et grecs dans la Rome de la Renaissance |
| 17:30 | Discussion |
Thursday September 11
| Panel 3: Writing support | |
| 9:30 | Paul Schubert (Université de Genève): An Egyptian scribe in Graeco-Roman Egypt facing his roll of papyrus: how to proceed? |
| 10:00 | Lorelei Vanderheyden (Universität Heidelberg): Mapping materials. Surveying possible local trends in Egypt through Coptic correspondence |
| 10:30 | Coffee |
| Panel 4: Scripts and ductus | |
| 11:00 | Marc Smith (Ecole Nationale des Chartes): Production vs perception in the history of (Roman) letterforms |
| 11:30 | Floriane Goy (Université de Genève): Scriptural Evolution in the Latin Middle Ages: the Dissemination of Gothic Script |
| 12:00 | Peter Stokes (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes): Cursivity as Practice and Process in Early Medieval England |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 14:30 | Miruna Belea (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes): Ki yesh biyado Qabbalah: the importance of the ductus in medieval substitutes for the Tetragrammaton |
| 15:00 | Evgeniya Zarubina (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes): Revealing the Ductus: invisible lines and transitionary letters in medieval Hebrew manuscripts |
| 15:30 | Judith Olszowy-Schlanger (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes/University of Oxford): Suivre le tracé de la cursive Sepharade |
| 16:00 | Coffee (change of location to Rosshofgasse/Schnitz S02 for the workshop) |
| 16:30 | Discussion |
| 17:00 | Workshop experimental palaeography (Rosshofgasse/Schnitz S02 ) |
| Rush: Tabitha Kraus (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz) | |
| Reed pen: Isabelle Marthot-Santaniello (Universität Basel) | |
| Quill: Floriane Goy (Université de Genève) | |
| Stylus: Michele Cammarosano (Università di Napoli L’Orientale) | |
| Data acquisition for the digital workshop: Maria Gurrado (Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes) |
Friday September 12
| Panel 5: Digital applied to material | |
| 09:00 | Svenja A. Gülden (Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz / Technical University of Darmstadt): Writing in detail: from traditional to digital paleographic methods for Egyptian hieratic hands |
| 09:30 | Fabian Wespi (Universität Heidelberg): Demotic writing in action: capturing the pulse of ancient scribes |
| 10:00 | Maria Gurrado and Muriel Roiland (Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes): Observing and recording the writing hand: issues and methods |
| 10:30 | Coffee |
| 11:00 | Ray Dinh Dung Van, Pedro Garcia-Baro and Olga Serbaeva (Universität Basel): EGRAPSA project: How to investigate the evolution of Greek handwriting on papyri? |
| 11:30 | Workshop digital palaeography |
| Marine Capallera and Robin Cherix (Haute École spécialisée de Suisse occidentale/Université de Fribourg): from papyri to 3D | |
| Ray Dinh Dung Van, Pedro Garcia-Baro, Olga Serbaeva and Giuseppe de Gregorio (Universität Basel): The use of IoT (Wacom) and Repaper in EGRAPSA project | |
| Mart Herman Gerrit Makkink (Universität Wien): Demonstration of Quil2Vec | |
| Maria Gurrado and Mikhaïl Benali (Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes): Le geste authentique (with results from the experimental palaeography workshop) | |
| 13:00 | Lunch |