AUSTIN, TX.- The Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin announces its exhibition, Lives and Literacy in Ancient Egypt, on view through August 3, 2026. Developed in collaboration with The John Rylands Library, this immersive exhibition brings to life the voices of a multilingual, multicultural society from Greco-Roman Egypt through rare papyrus manuscripts—fragile, handwritten documents rarely seen by the public.
These humble sheets of papyrus revolutionized communication in the ancient world, preserving personal letters, legal petitions, magical amulets, medical prescriptions, and early religious texts. Visitors will encounter extraordinary glimpses of daily life. The exhibition also features painted mummy masks, offering a vivid look at the faces of antiquity.
A highlight of the exhibition is one of the world's earliest New Testament fragments—the St. John's Fragment (P52)—on view in the United States for the first time. Additionally, visitors can see early adaptations of The Odyssey by Homer, as well as early writing palettes, and panel paintings.
“Although literacy rates in the ancient world paled in comparison to today's, documents were nonetheless essential for both government bureaucracy and cultures defined, at least in part, by religious and literary texts,” said Dr. Aaron T. Pratt, Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at the Ransom Center. “The papyrus fragments that survive today, then, offer windows into both the everyday and the high-minded. On the one hand, we have copies of Homer's Odyssey and the Gospel of John, and on the other we have a dispute between neighbors about property boundaries and a discussion of irrigation equipment. Three papyri, which appear to list payments, were reused to make shoes.”
“This exhibition focuses on a writing material that had been used in Egypt for millennia but that, in the Greek and Roman periods, survives in remarkable numbers,” said Dr. Jeremy Penner, Curator of African and Near Eastern Manuscripts at The John Rylands Library. “These papyri preserve letters, accounts, and petitions that record the everyday concerns of ordinary people and offer an unusually intimate view of life in the ancient world in ways that stone monuments never could. Visitors to the exhibition are invited to step into this ancient world and encounter these lives at a human scale, through the fragile traces they left behind.”
A Global Collaboration
Lives and Literacy in Ancient Egypt is the result of an international partnership between the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin and The John Rylands Library at The University of Manchester. The exhibition is curated by leading scholars: Dr. Jeremy Penner (Rylands), Dr. Aaron T. Pratt (Ransom Center), Dr. Geoffrey S. Smith (UT Austin), and Dr. Katherine Taronas (UT Austin). Their combined expertise makes it possible for a broad range of ancient voices to speak to audiences in the United States for the first time.
