I am pleased to inform you that the Digital Edition of the Coptic Sahidic Old Testament research project at the Göttingen Academy, in collaboration with the Seminar for Egyptology and Coptic Studies at the University of Göttingen, will soon begin a lecture series entitled Written and Material Culture of Christian Egypt.

The lectures will be held monthly by established scholars in the field and will focus on different topics related to the Christian communities in Egypt from the second century CE until the Ottoman period. The lecture series will be held in online format as Zoom webinars.

While the audience can attend the lectures free of charge, registration is required. If you want to get the Zoom access link, please feel free to email me and I will send it to you in due time (typically one day before the scheduled lecture). NB: As the number of attendees is limited, access requests will be dealt with in the order in which they arrive.

The first lecture in our series will be held by Alberto Camplani from the Sapienza University of Rome on Wednesday, October 21, from 16.30 CET. His paper is titled “The Patriarchal Institution in Egypt and Its Ideology between Demetrius and Isaac: Old and New Documents.”

Please feel free to circulate this information and the attached poster.

Here is a brief sketch of Camplani’s paper:

“This paper takes into consideration some historiographical and hagiographical compilations produced in the milieu of the bishopric of Alexandria and in the lay and monastic circles linked to this institution, from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE. Through the analysis of certain characters and images, it will be offered an outline of the various evolving conceptions regarding the role of the Alexandrian see within the Mediterranean Church and the political system of the Eastern Roman Empire.”

Alberto Camplani is professor of Early Christian Literature at the Sapienza University of Rome. He also teaches courses on Syriac literature and Greek Patristics at the Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum. Former professor of New Testament philology and exegesis at the Catholic University of Milan (2016-2019). Former editor of Studi e materiali di storia di religioni (2009-2012). Since 2013 he is director of Adamantius. Annuario di Letteratura Cristiana Antica e di Studi Giudeoellenistici. A member of the “International Association for Coptic Studies”, he was congress secretary on the occasion of the Tenth International Congress of Coptic Studies in Rome, 2012. He is a member of some committees for the evaluation of the historical research in Italian universities. His research focuses on early Christianity in Syriac and Coptic language (Bardaisan, Aphrahat, Ephrem), episcopal institutions in Late Antiquity (Athanasius, Cyril, Timothy, Damian, Benjamin), Gnostic and Hermetic texts, Marcionism in the East.