Monday Seminar:
Sofía Torallas-Tovar
Professor of Classics and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, The University of Chicago
Much attention has been paid to the rise of the “codex” in Antiquity, especially in connection with the rise of Christianity and the circulation of the Bible. Although the codex would indeed become the most frequently used format, the roll, the ancient book par excellence, remained in use for certain specialized documents and reading practices. In this paper, I will explore these late uses of the roll and its evolution into liturgical object in Byzantine times.
Sofía Torallas Tovar is Professor at the Departments of Classics and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, affiliated faculty at the Divinity School, member of the Oriental Institute, and affiliated faculty in the Department of Classics at the Università La Sapienza, Rome. She obtained her Ph.D. in Classics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) in 1995 on the Book on Dreams by Philo of Alexandria. Her main areas of research are Papyrology, Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Egypt. Since 2002 she is the curator of the Roca-Puig papyrological collection at the Abadia de Montserrat. She is author and co-author of the four volumes of papyrus editions published since 2006. She is currently working on the edition of the roll of Athanasius’s Letter to Dracontius, probably the earliest witness of Athanasius works, and a critical edition of the Coptic versions of the Gospel of Mark in collaboration with Anne Boud’hors (CNRS, Paris).