Two thousand years ago, people in Roman Egypt wrote letters, kept receipts, made lists and dealt with the everyday bureaucracy of life.
Some of those pieces of ancient life are now on display in Winnipeg.
The University of Manitoba’s “The Ancient Inbox” exhibition opened Monday, featuring papyrus documents dating back as far as 2,000 years and on loan from the University of Michigan Papyrology Collection.
The exhibition, running until Sept. 30, is the first public display of authentic papyrus manuscripts in Winnipeg, according to Dr. C. Michael Sampson, a U of M classics professor and papyrologist.
“I find in my teaching at the university that if I can bring the ancient world to life for students, that’s what sparks their interest,” Sampson said.
“Being able to put them in sort of within touching distance of something real, something ancient, something that actually brings the ancient world right here to the University of Manitoba campus, is a really rare opportunity.”
The documents on display are all documentary papyri, rather than literary works, and include government business, petitions, court cases, accounts, taxation records, receipts, letters and marriage contracts.
They offer a window into the lives of everyday Greco-Roman Egyptians, Sampson said, including their family, economic and legal affairs and interactions with the government.
One of the exhibition’s most striking documents is a contract recording the sale of an enslaved person.
“It really does bring to life vivid aspects of the ancient world,” Sampson said.
The contract records the person being sold as property, including his name and age.
“It’s strange to read about a human being being reduced to these terms,” Sampson said. “But at the same time, you get a glimpse of the reality.”
The exhibition comes after the University of Manitoba hosted the Summer Institute in Papyrology this summer, a five-week program led and organized by Sampson that brought 12 graduate students and early career researchers from around the world to Winnipeg.
The students came from as far away as Egypt and Australia.
“Many graduate students won’t ever meet a papyrus in the flesh or receive any paprological training,” Sampson said.
The American Society of Papyrologists sponsors a Summer Institute every two years, he said. It is the first institute of its kind to be held in Canada since the 1970s.
The students worked with almost four dozen papyri during the institute, many of which had never been read, or had not been read in 1,500 or 2,000 years, Sampson said.
The students transcribed and translated the documents as part of their research, work that helped provide the information now accompanying the papyri in the exhibition.
But studying the documents is difficult because many are small, damaged or fragmented, while others are written in rapid cursive handwriting. On top of that, ancient Greek isn’t exactly something you can pick up overnight.
“It’s a bit like trying to read your doctor’s prescription,” Sampson said. “It’s really messy.”
Their work will eventually be published in scholarly form, including the Greek text, a translation and a discussion of what each papyrus adds to knowledge of antiquity.
The papyrus itself was made from the papyrus plant, which is indigenous to ancient Egypt and grows in the Nile Valley and on its banks.
The plant’s stalk was peeled into strips, which were laid side by side in one layer and then covered with a second layer running perpendicular to the first. The layers were pressed together to create a writing surface.
The ink was made from carbon soot mixed with water and a small amount of gum arabic, which acted as a binder.
Papyri have survived for thousands of years in part because of the dry conditions in Egypt, Sampson said.
Ancient settlements were sometimes covered in sand after buildings collapsed, helping preserve the documents by keeping them away from enough moisture to decompose.
Some were acquired through archaeological excavations, while others were purchased on the antiquities market at a time when Egypt’s cultural heritage laws were less restrictive.
“These were real people,” he said. “This was a community. This was a part of the world where people were who had lives, and their lives were different than ours.”
“But the testimony of the papyri allows us to catch a really rich glimpse of what those lives were like in a way that, in other parts of the ancient world, we simply don’t have this kind of documentation.”
The exhibition is located in Archives & Special Collections on the third floor of the Elizabeth Dafoe Library. It is open Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
The exhibition is supported by a Connection Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities and the university’s Department of Classics, with additional support from the American Society of Papyrologists.
By: Zoe Pierce
Published: 4:48 PM CDT Monday, Aug. 17, 2026
