The Securely Datable Paleographic Samples of Greek Papyri written in a Literary Hand

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The collection was put together for a research project seeking to reassess the dates of early Christian papyri. The collection suggests that date ranges assigned to literary papyri solely on the basis of palaeography (analysis of handwriting) need to be considerably wider than previously thought (in the range of up to two centuries rather than 50 years).  The project findings indicate that greater precision within those larger ranges can be achieved by exploring data other than handwriting, including typologies of codices (form and format of books and the construction techniques used to make them).

The dataset consists of a spreadsheet that acts as an index to fragments of papyri that are securely datable (i.e. the date of creation has been confidently established). The columns in the spreadsheet details the papyri designation (identifier), date range of creation, dating method, image source (holding library, web, scan from a book), and the rights (print rights, pending, etc.) pertaining to the image. The dataset covers approximately forty such fragments of paypri.