Biography

Lajos Berkes is a papyrologist, specialized in late Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic Egypt (ca. 200 – 900 AD). Originally trained in classical philology and history, he has developed a research profile characterized by an interdisciplinary approach including especially Coptic and Arabic studies. He has gathered extensive experience in deciphering Greek and Coptic papyri, and has familiarized himself with editing Arabic documents. His interests extend beyond philological questions: He has worked and published on various issues of late antique administrative, economic, and social history. Furthermore, his research interests have recently started expanding to early Christianity, especially Christian literary papyri and the textual history of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

Project Abstract

Negotiating Time in Greek, Coptic, and Arabic Papyri from Egypt (ca. 300–900 AD)

The "long" late antiquity, the period roughly 300 – 900 AD, witnessed the rise of Christianity and Islam and a complete transformation of the Mediterranean world. Egypt is the only region where documentary sources have been preserved in large numbers over these 600 years. During this period, the country was a multicultural environment, in which Egyptian, Greek, Latin, and later Arabic languages and cultures, as well as polytheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and later Islam, coexisted. Greek, Coptic, and Arabic documentary papyri offer a unique perspective on the perception of time across all social strata. This project will follow two main lines of research. Firstly, it will provide a chronological overview of the annual dating systems attested in Greek, Coptic, and Arabic documents. It will focus on major changes and innovations and will analyze them in their historical context: What do they mean for understanding local perceptions of time? Special emphasis will be placed on the multilingual context by analyzing which dating systems were used in which language(s) and how they were synchronized. Secondly, it will be examined which events were remembered and taken into account in everyday documents. The main focus will lay on the term "kairos", which appears both in Greek and Coptic documentary papyri, and can refer to a variety of occasions, such as the time of harvest, the Persian occupation, or even a "whatever time" as an unspecified time frame in the future.

Curriculum vitae

Academic Positions

Since October 2016

Lecturer of Ancient Greek at the Theological Faculty at the Humboldt University of Berlin February

2015 – September 2016

Postdoctoral Researcher in the project Papyri zum Zusammenleben von Christen und Muslimen im früharabischen Ägypten (Heidelberg)

October 2013 – February 2015

Research Assistant (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Institut für Papyrologie, University of Heidelberg

Education

October 2010 – October 2013

PhD, University of Heidelberg

January – May 2009

University College London, Department of Greek and Latin (Erasmus scholarship)

2004 – 2010

MA in History, Latin, and Ancient Greek, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest

Selected Publications

2024. "Greek Documents and their Scribes in Eighth-Century Egypt." Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 65 (1): 80-98.

2024 with Gabriel N. Macedo. "The Earliest Manuscript of the So-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas: Editio princeps of P.Hamb.Graec. 1011." Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 229: 68-74.

2022. "Christians and Muslims in Early Islamic Egypt" In American Studies in Papyrology 57, Ann Arbor. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11514301.

2021. "Vom byzantinischen zum arabischen Ägypten. Neue dokumentarische Papyri aus dem 5. bis 8. Jh. (P.Heid. XI)." In Studien und Texte aus der Heidelberger Papyrussammlung 2, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.17885/heiup.869.

2017. "Dorfverwaltung und Dorfgemeinschaft in Ägypten von Diokletian zu den Abbasiden" In Philippika 104, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11qdtw2.