papiro

 

The Archive of Robert Marichal and PLATINUM

The Marichal legacy (‘Legs Marichal’) is a notable section of the Archives of the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, where the paleographer Robert Marichal (1904-1999) taught for many years. It is made up of heterogeneous material both in form and in content and reflects the breadth and depth of Marichal’s scientific interests. Sections are made up of big boxes in which smaller files are stored, ranging from epigraphic scripts to annotation concerning Romance and Medieval philology. A considerable section is occupied by photographs and slides – often made by Marichal himself –, whose importance is clear since in many cases graffiti or inscriptions (such as in Pompei) have been lost: these photos are among the few sources to reconstruct their texts. In 2004 Marichal’s Archives were presented by Jean Vezin at the Academie in Paris in order to stimulate specialists to «repérer les cartons ou les fichiers qui concernent leur recherches»¹. Vezin had finished a description together with an inventory made under his direction by Marie-Cécile Anfray. Since 2004 no contribution has followed Vezin’s preliminary contribution, and most of Robert Marichal’s unpublished scripts still remain unpublished in the shelves of the EPHE’s Archives. The Marichal legacy is valuable for understanding the history of scholarship and unique in preserving a great amount of material which has never been officially ‘published’ by Robert Marichal and never studied by scholars other than Marichal. Thinking about Marichal’s planned (and partly written) monograph concerning Latin papyri from Herculaneum (with transcriptions) is illustrative. Since April 2015 a systematic analysis of Marichal’s Archive has been started in the domain of the project PLATINUM, focussing on the sections concerning Latin texts on papyrus. These sections have been described and scanned, and they will be soon freely accessible on PLATINUM’s website.
¹J. Vezin, ‘Les Archives léguées par Robert Marichal à l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres’, Comptes Rendus des Séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 148 (2004), p. 1340.

Berchon JacquesJacques Berchon
He is director of the “Service commun de la documentation, des bibliothèque et des archives” at the École pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) in Paris.
Responsible for an archive of extraordinary historical and documentary richness, he works with the project PLATINUM in order to enhance and employ scientifically the uncharted “Robert Marichal” fund, in particular the documents related to the Latin texts on papyrus.
https://www.ephe.fr/bibliotheques/presentation-generale

Océane ValenciaOcéane Valencia
She is University Archivist at the École pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) in Paris. She holds a master’s degree in “Histoire, spécialité Métiers des archives” from the University of Angers (France) and she is now attached to collect, preserve and communicate the archival collection of the EPHE and its teachings.
Within PLATINUM project, she collaborated with the P. I. Maria Chiara Scappaticcio in defining the technicals arrangements and she supervised the archival descriptions for the digitisation of the documents about papyri and Latin texts in the “Robert Marichal” fund, conserved at the EPHE.