The study of documents written on papyrus has long been a favourite of Greek researchers at the University of Helsinki. In this area my teacher Henrik Zilliacus’ influence has been decisive. It is thanks to him that Finland was able to publish a distinctive collection of papyrus rolls found in Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. I happened to knock on Zilliacus’ office door just when he was opening a package from England and straightaway I got to help him place these fragile documents safely between sheets of glass.

A working group was set up to study the papyrus rolls. The group has been working for nearly fifty years and in this time has grown in many ways. As the new generations of students come through, they have become deeply involved in the intricacies of the papyrus research work, many have written their doctoral theses on the topic, and new material has come to light, be it from the Austrian national library in Vienna or the recent excavations conducted by the American Center of Oriental Research in Petra, Jordan. The burnt papyrus rolls found there called on the expertise of Professor Jaakko Frösén. The papyrus project under Professor Frösén’s leadership has been my main field of research for the last twenty years. Together with the papyrus researchers from the Universities of Michigan and Cologne our working group has already published four volumes on the Petra papyri, and the fifth and final part is forthcoming (The Petra Papyri I-V, Amman 2002-16).

There can be little that is as much fun as deciphering the script of the papyri. It gives direct contact to the very hand that has written the text over a thousand years ago, and yours truly is the first person in modern times to have read the texts. And these texts deal with familiar and contemporary issues: property deals, rental agreements, marriage registrations, settlements of neighbour disputes…Moreover, in this work I enjoy what in humanities research is often a rather rare commodity – exactitude. What is written on the papyrus is indeed written there, and if I have read it correctly, I am correct. It’s another matter then where the papyri are more or less just shredded remains and lacunae, when the guesswork as to what might have been written in the lacunae is based on more or less reasonable grounds.

The seminars in the early days put me in touch with Jorma Kaimio, and we made both a married couple and, if modesty allows me, a great papyrus team. In this work, our different ways of thinking complement each other, and it’s a huge advantage when you get an immediate reaction to a problematic passage from the other person. In the humanities the papyrus research has been a pioneer in the use of digitalised data, and the availability and processing of the relevant material is so good that it is possible to work efficiently even here at home, in the parsonage at Rantasalmi.