I am Pierpaolo Petrelli, graduated at the University of Salento in “Philology, Literature and History of Antiquity,” with a thesis in Documentary Papyrology entitled “Petitions from the Roman Period of Soknopaiou Nesos: Human Dimension and Social Context.” From this thesis I wrote an article forthcoming in the next issue of "Papyrologica Lupiensia" (35, 2025-2026), for which I also edited two reviews.
I am currently a PhD candidate in the first year of the Doctoral Course in “Humanities” at the University of Foggia (supervisor Prof. Giuseppe Solaro; co-supervisor Prof. Natascia Pellè, University of Salento), with a project entitled “Egypt between Historical Reality and Fiction: Historical and Geo-Ethnographic Adespota Papyri.”
I participated as a papyrologist assistant in the 2025 edition of the Archaeological Mission at Soknopaiou Nesos (Dime es-Seba, Egypt), directed by Prof. Paola Davoli (University of Salento), and in September 2025 I took part in the 22nd Florentine Papyrological Seminar (Istituto Papirologico “Girolamo Vitelli”).

• University of Foggia

• University of Salento

My doctoral project aims to define and analyse, through a philological and papyrological approach, a corpus of historiographical and geo-ethnographic adespota papyri relating to Egypt, dated between the III century BC and the V century AD (from ChrestWilck 1 to SB XXVI 16607). The research focuses on fragmentary texts belonging to an indirect tradition, often marginal to the literary canon, yet highly significant for the study of the transmission and reworking of historical and geographical knowledge in Greek. The papyri will be examined in their material, palaeographical, textual, and paratextual features, with the aim of clarifying their status, typology, and contexts of production and reception. A significant group of anonymous papyri currently under study within this project consists of adespota relating to events in Ptolemaic history, covering a range of episodes that involved the entire Hellenistic world. Particular emphasis will be placed on comparison with the manuscript tradition of known authors (Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, as well as the fragments collected by Jacoby, especially with reference to Manetho’s Αἰγυπτιακά), in order to assess continuity, divergence, and modes of textual re-elaboration in the papyrological evidence. Through the philological analysis of these fragments, the project seeks to contribute to the study of historiographical and geo-ethnographic genres in the Hellenistic and Imperial periods and to a better understanding of the role of the Greek language as a medium for the production, preservation, and transmission of knowledge in Egypt.

• Papyrology

• Fragmentary literature

• Hellenistic and Roman Egypt

• Ancient Historiography

• Ancient Geography

• Documentary Papyri, Fayum