Obviously, being ancient, it’s not a new idea. But it’s one that is forgotten at our peril, UM classics professor Mark Joyal says.

“The Greeks had great respect for human nature and their stories have lessons,” he says. “We’ve deluded ourselves into thinking that we can change human nature, but human nature is unchangeable. Ancient Greeks realized this, and that’s one of the reasons why they had no difficulty in characterizing all sorts of forces in this world as gods or goddesses, because they recognized these forces are immortal, we can’t change them, and they have power over us.”

“Loves Resistance” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1885.

Pop star Taylor Swift captures Eros’s bewitchery and irrationality in lyrics like, “Isn’t it just so pretty to think / All along there was some / Invisible string / Tying you to me?” and “This love is good / This love is bad.” The 18th century German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe caught the selflessness of it with the quip, “If I love you, what business is that of yours?”

Deep down we know about it, but if we do forget or overlook Eros, it may be because we know his Roman version better: Cupid. Both Cupid and Eros were unbearably beautiful archers with magical arrows but, Joyal notes, the Roman version morphed into a cultural conceit and over time lost its everyday power. Yet the Greeks stories told it differently.

“The stories aren’t exactly warnings because a warning implies you should resist,” Joyal says. “Stories about Eros are not a warning but a heads up…. You can use reason to overcome it, but you’ll probably be unsuccessful because it’s a god after all and you’re not. Eros will overtake you and it may make you do things at odds with your long-term interests, but in the moment, it is a very attractive thing.”

Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher, makes Eros something different in his dialogue Symposium. (“But you have to remember that most Greeks thought of Eros as a god and at the time didn’t read or know who Plato was,” Joyal says). Here Plato uses Eros to make a philosophical point by framing Eros as an intermediary that can connect us to the gods and ideals and our better selves, even calling Eros a daimon (root of our “demon”), something that can attend to someone from birth. It was an incredibly influential idea, laying the runway for ideas like guardian angles to later land. Plato also tied Eros to same-sex relationships, which is why Eros and Cupid are sometimes treated as gods of homosexuality, but Joyal says Plato was just trying to relate to his audience, which was leisure class males who liked spending time among younger males.

“At the root of it, the Greeks saw Eros as an irrational impulse that brings two things together. It could be two people, two animals, two insects. It’s a force we cannot reason away,” Joyal says. “It’s why sex sells. People might tear their hair out and wish it weren’t so, but it’s so.”

The announcement follows years of questions about the origins of the fragments, and the origins of a fragment from the same papyrus roll that came to public attention in 2014.

Scholars and literary critics were abuzz after The Daily Beast reported on Jan. 28, 2014, that papyrologist Dirk Obbink of the University of Oxford had identified two new poems by Sappho.

Sappho of Lesbos is one of the earliest Greek lyric poets, famed in antiquity for the polish and elegance of her verse.

Today, Sappho’s legacy extends beyond poetry. Her expressions of female same-sex desire (“… sweat pours down me / a tremor shakes me …”) have made her an icon for some LGBTQ+ communities.

Little of Sappho’s poetry survives, and what does is fragmentary. Obbink’s discovery was remarkable because it preserved the final five stanzas of one poem and portions of a second, making it one of the longest continuous sequences of Sapphic verse.

News of the discovery made international headlines, but serious questions about the papyrus’s origins, acquisition and ownership history — its provenance — did not. Provenance is important for establishing the authenticity and legal status of antiquities.

In the fall, I published new research into a digital sales brochure produced by the auction house Christie’s. My research calls into question the published accounts of the papyrus’s provenance. I believe the accounts of the Sappho papyrus’s origins that Obbink published were fabricated, and that its owner had access to Obbink’s unpublished research and sought to capitalize upon it.

Legal, ethical concerns

Papyri originate almost without exception in Egypt. In 1983, the Egyptian government passed legislation prohibiting the domestic trade in antiquities, establishing definitively that the country’s archeological heritage is state property.

To combat looting and the illegal antiquities trade, more than one scholarly association’s ethical guidelines cite the 1970 UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property in condemning the study of newly surfaced antiquities. According to those guidelines, scholars shouldn’t authenticate or publish objects that left their country of origin illegally or prior to the 1970 convention.

How and when the Sappho papyrus left Egypt are pressing legal and ethical questions.

The Daily Beast linked to an unpublished, draft article Obbink briefly made available on a blog.

Regarding the papyrus’s origins, it said only that it was newly uncovered and in the private collection of an anonymous owner.

Scholarly questions

Historian and broadcaster Bettany Hughes soon reported in London’s Sunday Times that Obbink discovered the papyrus after prising it from mummy cartonnage — the casing of an Egyptian burial similar to papier-mâché.

Obbink corroborated its origin in mummy cartonnage in a Times Literary Supplement article. Hughes stated that the papyrus’s “provenance was obscure” and that it “was originally owned, it seems, by a high-ranking German officer.” Obbink said only that its provenance was both documented and legal.

Scholars questioned the mummy cartonnage narrative because the practice of recycling papyri in the manufacture of cartonnage ceased long before the papyrus was copied.

When Obbink’s scholarly paper was finally published on April 10, 2014, it didn’t discuss provenance.

A year later, Obbink revised the papyrus’s origin story at a scholarly conference on Jan. 9, 2015. He said it was recovered from an unpainted fragment of papyrus cartonnage that was purchased at a 2011 Christie’s auction. He did not specify when the recovery took place.

The Christie’s brochure

After Obbink’s presentation, Christie’s produced a 26-page brochure advertising the new Sappho papyrus for private sale. It circulated exclusively among Christie’s clientele, and was unknown to scholars. I received a digital copy from Ute Wartenberg Kagan, a scholar of ancient Greek coinage, which she obtained from a client of Christie’s. The brochure contained photographs captioned as “the recovery of the Sappho papyrus.” When I inquired about the brochure, Christie’s responded: “We cannot discuss private sales activities unless authorized to do so.”

I hoped to learn when the files had been created and modified, and to scrutinize what the images depicted more closely. I ran a computer program that examined the brochure and its JPG files, and was able to extract the metadata associated with them.

I concluded that the photos presented in the Christie’s brochure were staged and don’t depict the extraction of the Sappho papyrus. In my view, the photos document the story about mummy cartonnage that Hughes and Obbink wrote about.

One photo includes a panel of cartonnage I have identified as previously belonging to a high-ranking German officer, as was mentioned in Hughes’s report. The story was never plausible — scholars questioned it and Obbink subsequently revised it. But the brochure, I believe, bears witness to the original narrative.

I also concluded that the anonymous owner of the papyrus had access to Obbink’s unpublished research, and undertook to propose the papyrus for private sale almost immediately after Obbink presented the revised story at the scholarly conference Jan. 9, 2015.

The brochure’s “Provenance” section cited not Obbink’s January presentation but a scholarly article that wasn’t published until June 15, nearly four months after the creation of the brochure.

In response to an article in The Guardian that reported on my research, Christie’s said it: “… would never knowingly offer any works of art without good title or incorrectly catalogued or authenticated. We take our name and reputation very seriously and would take all necessary steps available to address any situation of inappropriate use.”

Scholarly ethics and antiquities

Scholars are wary of the antiquities market because academic appraisals add to objects’ commercial value, which can incentivize looting and the illegal trade in antiquities. Scholarship also offers legitimacy.

For this reason, scholars must scrutinize new discoveries carefully before conducting or publishing research, and present their findings transparently. When the media reports on preliminary research, it is important to convey its preliminary nature.

Last April, an Oxford student newspaper reported that Obbink had been arrested Mar. 2, 2020, for “for alleged theft of ancient papyrus from the Sackler Classics Library in Oxford.” Obbink has denied those allegations.

Questions remain about the 2014 Sappho papyrus. The Museum of the Bible’s recent announcement acknowledges the “insufficient reliable provenance information” of its papyri — including its Sappho fragments. The chapter about the museum’s Sappho papyri has concluded, but the status of the Sappho papyrus Obbink discovered is uncertain. The papyrus’s present owner is anonymous and its location is unknown.

C. Michael Sampson, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Manitoba

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Dr. Lea Stirling, head of classics, worked with her student Illya Stasica-Fogg on documenting the effects of Spanish Flu on Winnipeg in 1918

A research paper written by third-year undergraduate history and classics student Illya Stasica-Fogg in conjunction with her professor Dr. Lea Stirling, head of classics, shows that the University of Manitoba has been through this before.

The paper, titled, “The Varsity and the Virus: The University of Manitoba and the “Flu-ban” in 1918,” notes that classes were cancelled for seven weeks in 1918 to protect students and staff, much like what has transpired today.

Stasica-Fogg and Stirling note:

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, countries have closed borders and medical experts have recommended we all practice “social distancing” whenever we have to venture outside our homes. For large institutions such as universities, this has meant cancelling in-person classes and moving instruction and educational services online.

Anxieties are increasing and headlines in mainstream and social media posts are dominated by discussions of prevention methods, medical information about testing and treatment, and updated statistics. But life goes on.

Long before 2009’s A(H1N1) pandemic and SARS in the early 2000s, the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic (often called the “Spanish Flu”) was a close parallel to our current state of affairs. Despite the passage of a century, reactions to the spread of disease in a time before social media are remarkably similar to trending news today, as is the urgency in preventing the spread of disease.

Illya Stasica-Fogg

Stasica-Fogg and Stirling had been researching the early history of the classics department when the decision to stop in-person classes was made.

They explained:

Just as emergency messages about the UM switch to online teaching began a month ago, they had been reading documents in the University of Manitoba Archives from 1918-1919 and came across an eerily similar situation for students and faculty a century ago.

During the last weeks of the First World War, influenza reached Western Canada. On September 30, 1918, a troop train arrived in Winnipeg carrying returning soldiers, three of whom were carrying the virus. They were immediately isolated, but by October 10, two of the soldiers and the first civilian had died.

As a reaction to the rapidly spreading virus, cities across Canada banned public meetings in what was called a “flu-ban” and took further steps to mitigate the spread of infection. However, life went on – just in a different fashion. People wore gauze masks while tending to the ill, maintaining the daily functions of life, in an astoundingly similar parallel to today.

Instructions for making DIY face masks were published in the Winnipeg Evening Tribune on October 11, 1918

The University of Manitoba cancelled its classes for seven weeks beginning October 11, 1918. Grades and assessment methods had to be re-evaluated, and procedures of instruction had to be reconsidered. As staff scrambled to mitigate the impact on the academic year, “modern” forms of communication were used for students to keep up to date with their courses and in touch with each other. These included student and city newspapers, mail and even the “newfangled” telephone. The Registar’s office mailed out “leaflets for the direction of home reading,” which students followed (eventually).

In 1918, students and their instructors had to make a shift in their educational strategies by moving learning delivery to include the “new” technology of the telephone. This is hauntingly similar to the way in which many post-secondary courses in 2020 have moved online using present-day “newfangled” technology such as video conferences and digital instruction.

The editor of the student paper confessed, “So our mail from the registrar lay unopened on our desks, our homework suffered in the interests of journalism, and the tired and careworn student returning from his long and weary vigil found some solace in the November issue of the ‘Toban that awaited him.”

Students complained about the homework they were assigned to complete during this period, arguing that it would take them until the academic term ended in April to complete it all. Despite the challenge, the students were applauded by staff in university’s year-end report for rising to the occasion and completing a great deal of assigned work in a less than ideal manner of teaching.

The Faculty of Science, including prominent educator and scientist Dr. Gordon Bell, was directly involved in efforts to mitigate the damage caused by the flu. As chair of the Provincial Health Board, Bell was responsible for declaring a state of epidemic emergency in the city. Taking advantage of the lack of required class instruction, he also manufactured vaccines which were offered free of charge to the general population. Unfortunately, the vaccines were not ultimately effective, but this endeavour showcases the efforts of individuals in the crisis.

Here, Stasica-Fogg and Stirling found that much like today, the University of Manitoba was sharing its medical expertise with the community and was at the forefront of vaccine development.

While the regular functions of academic life were maintained as well as possible, albeit from a distance, a number of students and staff were engaged in nursing the ill or were ill themselves. Sadly, the 1918-1919 Annual Report indicates a higher-than-usual number of student withdrawals resulting from personal or family illness.

Much of the burden of care fell on women. The Manitoban reported that female students and faculty members volunteered as nurses and in centres known as “diet kitchens” or “flu kitchens” where food donations were collected and distributed to patients. In fact, the shortage of nurses was so dire that the call for volunteers was extended to any who was willing and able to help – with or without nursing experience.

UM students worked in “diet kitchens”” to prepare food for people under quarantine

The parallels between the pandemic response a century ago and today’s developments noted by the paper’s authors are remarkable. Then, as now, UM students were volunteering in the fight against the disease and nurses were being called out of retirement.

By the end of November, the “flu-ban” was lifted as the number of active cases in Winnipeg began to decline. The University Council made a series of adjustments in order to ensure that the academic lives of the students felt little impact, moving regularly scheduled term breaks around in order to regain instruction time. Despite this scramble, the 1918-1919 Annual Report of the university asserted that there seemed to be little impact on the final grades of students and that exam results were “wonderfully successful.”

In fact, one editor in the student newspaper reported “a general boredom” with the onset of an additional seven-week holiday after barely beginning term. Even so, though the student newspaper and the Brown and Gold yearbook of 1918-1919 are peppered with references to curtailed activities or student illness. Returning to social groups such as the Glee Club and the Literary Society was also on the minds of students who missed their peers.

Students made use of telephones the student newspaper to keep in contact – telling witty stories and bad jokes, often about the circumstances of the flu-ban. One section editor phoned all his classmates “except a few who were original enough to get the Flu or go after it nursing.”

When the University began classes again, students were reminded to cheer on their basketball, hockey, and curling teams, and student life once again turned to academics.

That’s not to say that students moved on completely. In the 1918-1919 Brown and Gold, as well as in the semi-monthly student newspaper published throughout the academic year, a number of students and graduates who were infected or perished from influenza were commemorated by name, showcasing the solidarity among students despite such trying times. The university had also lost students and staff to the First World War. In total, out of the 183,595 people who lived in Winnipeg, 1,216 lost their lives to the disease.

Measured in the long run, the student experience seemed to only suffer a minor impact. With today’s universities switching to alternative teaching methods around the globe and students concerned about their academic futures, this reassurance is a timely reminder that life goes on. The transition may be less than ideal, but we’ll have to make it work.

Stasica-Fogg explains: “Coming across a university report detailing the closure of the University and ‘flu-ban’ in 1918 the same week that news began flooding social media about the closure of North American universities in 2020 was incredibly surreal – and incredibly reassuring. Despite the passage of a century, the lessons that the University – both staff and students – learned during the Spanish Flu epidemic seem to reverberate through history, and suggests that for better or worse, this too shall pass.”

The University of Manitoba community managed to survive the 1918 pandemic and its students were able to continue their classes in pursuit of their vocations. The world carried on.

“It was fascinating to read the student yearbook of that year and see the resilience of the students who had come out the other side of a sudden and disruptive experience that is so strangely similar to our own,” says Stirling. “I am thrilled that Illya spotted this.”

Illya Stasica-Fogg and Stirling noted, incidentally, that the University of Manitoba’s first female professor Maude Bissett was herself a classicist, hired in 1914. During the flu-ban, she was a volunteer nurse. 

Illustrations are from UM Archives & Special Collections, provided by Lea Stirling and Illya Stasica-Fogg. Drawing of flu-kitchen from The Manitoban, December 1918, p. 17.

8^th Annual Lecture in Hellenic Civilization

“Treasurers of the Goddess: Cultural Heritage and Survival in Post-2008 Greece”
Dr. John Brady Kiesling, Independent Scholar
Sunday, February 2
3:00 pm lecture, reception to follow
118 St. John’s College

The Greek state tends to treat monuments and history as bureaucratic leverage, a way to pry loose funds from the European Union and would-be investors. European liberalism’s embrace of 5th century BCE democracy as a weapon against despotism ultimately rescued Greece’s independence struggle after 1821. Two centuries later, as Europe wavered over how far to let the Greek economy collapse, Pericles and Plato played their roles. Patching holes in the Parthenon is not the same as preserving this unique diplomatic and economic capital. As the next generation comes to adulthood in an era of revived nationalism and deep distrust of educated elites, the stories Greece tells, and the means of delivering those stories, must evolve, partly through new technologies that engage the public as active interlocutors not passive worshippers.

Brady Kiesling is a historian, archaeologist, writer and former U.S. diplomat, who now lives in Greece. After studying Classics and archaeology, he joined the U.S. State Department in 1983. In February 2003, he resigned his position, chief of the Political Section of the U.S. Embassy in Athens, to protest the impending war with Iraq. His resignation letter to Colin Powell went viral after it was published by the New York Times. His latest major project is ToposText, a free mobile application organizing ancient primary sources around a detailed map of the ancient Greek world.

The University of Manitoba established the Lecture in Hellenic Civilization in 2012 as a legacy of the Centre for Hellenic Civilization (CHC). The CHC was an interdisciplinary research Centre (1995-2012) established by Professor Michael Cosmopoulos FRSC and devoted to the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge pertaining to any aspect of Greek culture from prehistory to the present. The Centre’s most successful enterprise was the sponsorship of scores of well attended visiting lectures by archaeologists, historians, literary scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, legal historians and diplomats, all of whom brought new understanding of Hellenism to the Manitoba academic community and the interested public. The CHC’s endowment is now applied to the permanent and sustainable continuation of this program of visiting expert lecturers.

32^nd Annual Edmund G. Berry Lecture

“The Roman Imperial-Period Portrait Statuary from the Library of Pantainos Complex in the Athenian Agora”
Dr. Sheila Dillon, Duke University
Friday, February 28
3:30 pm reception, 4:00 pm lecture
118 St. John’s College

This paper presents the results of the study of the imperial-period portrait sculpture found in the building complex known as the Library of Pantainos in the Athenian Agora. Excavated primarily in the early 1970s, the Library and associated Street Stoa are located in a very prominent position in the Agora, next to the Stoa of Attalos and along the wide processional way that led to the so-called Roman Agora. Most of the portraits found represent local citizens and benefactors. One surprising discovery was the over-lifesize statue of the emperor Trajan, dressed in parade armor, which appears to have been set up by the father of the famous Herodes Atticus. Although very fragmentary (over 40 fragments of the statue have been recovered) this statue is of very high quality, and the lavishly decorated breastplate displays a unique iconography.

Sheila Dillon received a Ph.D. in Classical Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She teaches courses on Greek and Graeco-Roman art and archaeology. Her research interests focus on portraiture and public sculpture and on reconstructing the statuary landscape of ancient cities and sanctuaries.

Edmund G. Berry (1915-2005) is synonymous with classics at the University of Manitoba having spent time as a Professor, Department Head, Assistant Dean and accomplished researcher in his 40 years at the University of Manitoba The annual lecture in his name invites a classicist who addresses a topic that intersects a selection of intellectual interests in the humanities. It is made possible by those who have contributed to The Edmund G. Berry Fund at the University of Manitoba.

Now, Mike Sampson, a papyrologist at the University of Manitoba, has found evidence, seen by the Guardian, suggesting that the origin-story of the Sappho manuscript reported by Obbink may be a fiction. Sampson was sent a PDF by an academic source. The document is a glossy, lavishly illustrated brochure produced by Christie’s. It advertises the Sappho fragment for sale by private treaty. A “private treaty sale” is a service whereby an auction house will broker a sale between vendor and buyer discreetly, outside the relatively public auction schedule. (The document is quite separate from the 2011 auction, and was produced some time after it.) The brochure will have been circulated very discreetly, too, to a few key collectors. Sampson has analysed the metadata of the PDF, and believes that the Sappho fragment was in fact probably offered for sale by private treaty twice – once in 2013, prior to the public announcement of its existence, and again in 2015. (No price is mentioned, but a collector familiar with the field estimates a likely figure of around $800,000.)

In the brochure, there are, at last, images that purport to show how the two different types of cartonnage – mummy cartonnage and industrial cartonnage – were confused. One picture shows a brightly painted blue-and-red piece of mummy cartonnage lying in a ceramic basin beside a brown mass of what appears to be flattened papyrus, described as “cartonnage”. The caption recaps the final story reported by Obbink – that the two items were muddled up in a “confusion of processing”. However, in the opinion of Sampson, it “defies belief” that the entirely different objects could have been confused. Furthermore, because of the physical condition and measurements of the brown papyrus mass in the photograph, he thinks it unlikely that the Sappho manuscript could have emerged from within it, as claimed.

Perhaps Sampson’s most telling finding, though, is that parts of the Sappho manuscript were shown in public when they were supposedly still undiscovered in a wodge of industrial cartonnage. According to his study of the PDF’s metadata, the photographs of the materials sitting side by side in the ceramic basin, prior to “processing”, were taken on 14 February 2012. And yet there is video footage of Scott Carroll brandishing 26 small fragments of the Sappho, those that ended up belonging to the Greens, a week earlier, on 7 February 2012.

There is no suggestion Carroll was involved in wrongdoing in this regard: the point is that the timeline seems so implausible as to be impossible. According to Sampson, whose analysis will appear in full in a forthcoming academic article, the most plausible interpretation of all this is that the photographs were retrospectively staged by persons unknown – along with images of the Sappho fragment apparently being prised from a dark-brown mass of papyrus.

The most obvious reason for staging an origin-story for the Sappho manuscript like this would be to conceal the fact that the papyrus had been illegally imported, excavated or traded. The other possible reason – though this is not Sampson’s personal view – would be to mask a fake.

Languages offered include French, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, German, Latin, and American Sign Language. For summer term, these languages are all offered at the introductory/beginner level and some are at the intermediate level.

Summer courses provide an opportunity to catch up or get ahead on credits, permit you to lighten your regular semester load, normally offer smaller class sizes and provide an intensive environment to engage in the language and get plenty of practice. The key to learning any language is participation. To that end, a Language Lab is available for oral practice.

If you have already learned a language other than English, consider expanding your knowledge of its vocabulary, grammar, culture, and even literature through the courses offered. Becoming more proficient at the language can help to improve your chances for success in school and in your career.

Why learn a language?

There is a bigger picture to learning a new language than picking up a few verbs and phrases. Courses teach more than just grammar and vocabulary. Students learn new sounds, expressions, and ways of seeing things. Studying a language can help expand your view of the world and increase your appreciation of other cultures and other peoples.

Transferable skills along with foreign language skills make for more valuable employees in the global marketplace. Studying a language can increase creativity, enhance listening skills and memory, and improve analytical and general communication skills. Not only will you have a competitive edge in career choices, you are more likely to be seen as a bridge to new clients that can be called upon to travel and communicate with people in other countries throughout your career.

Consider spending this summer learning a language. Exploring a language now could lead to a major, minor, honours, or master’s program in the future or it may open opportunities for travel, career choices, community involvement, and fun with family and friends.

For the full list of Arts summer language courses, visit Aurora.

Can’t take a course this summer? Even more language courses will be available from the Faculty of Arts in the fall and winter terms.

Through the course of the year over 1,500 stories were shared with the U of M community and these are some of our favourites.

New research provides further insight into the sexual rituals of peacocks

If you’re a male peacock who’s keen to mate and you happen to be reading this, researchers have discovered that it’s not the length of your tail feathers that matter, but how you use them. Read more.

Blacklisted in Naples, awarded in Vancouver

Before winning the American Musicology Society’s award for best music publication in 2016, Kurt Markstrom had to outsmart a librarian. To an outsider, it would seem rather mundane but when Kurt Markstrom read a casual remark in an 18th-century letter, it eventually led him to get blacklisted from an Italian library, and then 15 years later receive the prestigious Claude V. Palisca Award from the American Musicology Society for best music publication of 2016, which was presented to him in Vancouver this past November. Read more.

When all hell breaks loose in Classics

The Fifth Annual Lecture on Hellenic Civilization explored the mysteries of the latest poem from antiquity’s greatest poet and a hundred years ago, just like today, new Sappho was big news. Read more.

Warrior of Change

He is a man who has lived both genders. A judge who has spent a lifetime feeling judged. It’s taken nearly 40 years, but Kael McKenzie is finally the person he was always meant to be. Read more. 

Insight: Tina Greenfield

Digging up artifacts for 11 hours a day under a scorching Middle Eastern sun is not for the fainthearted, even more so when they work under the threat of ISIS. “Archaeologists are pretty tough characters,” says U of M researcher and alumna Tina Greenfield [BA/92, MA/97]. Read more.

First cruise ship navigating the Northwest Passage

‘The climate is warming up. There is no question.’ A cruise ship has navigated the Northwest Passage. If the significance of that has not sunk in yet, this is one more part of the proof that global warming is real. Read more.

CANDID: Meet Scott Kehler

Scott Kehler makes your pulse slow down. He speaks with a disarmingly calm and confident cadence. Conversing with him is a relaxing pastime more people should engage in, but he’s busy so don’t knock on his office door. He studies nocturnal thunderstorms and he enjoys chasing tornadoes, but he doesn’t show signs of being an adrenaline junkie. He’s a scientist in training after all. And storm chasing, it turns out, is a mostly uneventful affair. Read more.

EMERGING: Meet Viktor Popp

One of two incoming U of M students awarded the prestigious Schulich scholarship Viktor grew up on a farm near Erickson, Man. He trained prized steers and gave them names like Maverick and Goose (after Top Gun characters) and loved exploring the wide-open prairies. Read more.

Professor finds and publishes lost 233-year-old letter condemning slave massacre

233 years ago Granville Sharp argued that black lives matter. But for 233 years the true sentiments of Britain’s leading abolitionist were lost, until a University of Manitoba professor accidentally came across them in the British Library. Read more.

Breaking it Down: The professor who puts the phat in fats

When Michael Eskin wants to make a point about his favourite subject, lectures, overhead projectors and handouts aren’t enough. Like Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Ice-T, the University of Manitoba nutrition chemistry professor breaks into rap. Eskin’s masterpiece? A little ditty called Lipids Get a Real Bad Rap. Read more.

John Page’s Recipe for Good Ramen Calls for a Serving of Science

The physics of ultrasound can be applied to improve noodle quality. Read more.

A true renaissance man

There’s an art print hanging prominently in the office of Frank Hawthorne, tucked away in a back hallway on the fourth floor of the Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources. The title is Knight at the Crossroads, painted by Russian artist Viktor Vasnetsov in 1878. The original currently hangs in The Hermitage in Moscow, a gallery Hawthorne has visited half a dozen times. Read more.

Happy squirrel appreciation day

January 21 is Squirrel Appreciation Day. Yes, this is really a thing, and UM Today has written about it before – in great depth. So, it’s fair to ask, what more could we possibly say about these mammals? Lots. Read more.

Sampson, a papyrologist in the U of M’s Department of Classics, co-curated the exhibit alongside undergraduate student Amber Leenders. Sampson’s research has focused on the texts in that 1920 purchase.

“Almost 100 years later, more than half of them haven’t been read or published,” says Sampson. So my job as a papyrologist is to go and read someone’s scribbling, from almost 2,000 years ago (and in ancient Greek!) and to publish it so that historians or others who are investigating the history of Egypt of the time can use the material. Not everyone can read a papyrus (or ancient Greek!)”

The exhibit, as well as two corresponding lectures, has caught the attention of Greek media. Iefimerida, a well-known online news outlet in Greece, recently published an interview with Michael Sampson about his papyrological research.

Read more at www.iefimerida.gr (warning: published in Greek!)

UM Today sat down with Leenders to learn more about her. We came out of the conversation feeling cooler too.

Undergraduate researcher: Amber Leenders
Studying in: Department of Classics
Supervised by: Professor Michael Sampson

Amber Leenders

UM Today: So you’re going into fifth year, studying Classics, but you didn’t always study in this area. What happened?

Amber Leenders: I was majoring in English and I always liked working with kids, so I thought I’d enter Education. I thought English and Biology would be a good balance and was taking lots of courses in those areas. I didn’t really go into university thinking that Classics was going to be a possible career path, but I started taking more and more electives in the subject, and I realized that I couldn’t give it up.

What was it about Classics that got to you?

I’ve been reading classical mythology and literature since I was young. So that was the first thing that interested me. But I just like the variety you get within it. I can’t think of another subject where you get to study all aspects of a society in quite the same way. You get the challenge of the languages, history from a huge variety of eras, you get the scientific side with archeology, and you get to work with people from other departments if you want different insight. And this summer I did an archeological field school in Italy. That made me really fall in love with archaeology.

Was it through U of M?

No, it was directed by Queen’s University and I did it through St. Mary’s University in Halifax.

Where were you and what were you doing?

We were an hour north of Rome and we were excavating a Roman and Etruscan town called Caere.

Did you dig up anything cool?

Oh yeah!

Like what?

Thousands of fragments of pottery, obviously. And lots of everyday items like lamps, metal nails, and animal bones. But I don’t know what I’m allowed to talk about because it hasn’t all been published yet.

I think the coolest part was that the site this year included a lot of underground spaces. We got to climb through and excavate ancient wells and cisterns to investigate the water management system that was used in this town. So that was very cool.

Amber Leenders in an ancient well in Caere

What was it like for you holding a piece of pottery from thousands of years ago? What goes through your mind?

I got emotional the first time even though it was only a very small piece of pottery. It was really challenging at first because the site is backfilled every year: They have to cover it up so it’s better preserved in the off-season. When we were first uncovering it, getting down to the layer they dug last year, there were pieces in the fill that they missed in the previous seasons, so we had to keep throwing out the pieces we found. It was like, ‘this is so cool,’ but there’s no context for the artifact, so you can’t keep it. But eventually we started excavating the new layers, and got to the stuff we were able to keep, and that was super exciting. It’s amazing to think about who last used the artifact and what they were like. I like finding things like weaving tools, for example, because they were probably used by someone of the same gender and age as me.

And now you’re here, doing undergraduate research with professor Sampson. How did you end up here, co-curating a papyri exhibit?

I have done a little bit of assistant work with my Latin professor before, but this is my first big project. I did apply for the undergraduate research award this summer but I didn’t get it. So I was little disappointed, but Dr. Sampson then approached me and asked if I wanted to help with this exhibit for the summer. It was totally out of the blue but exactly what I have been wanting to work on. So it has been an amazing opportunity. I’m very grateful for it.

What: Ink and Sand: an Exhibit on Greek Papyri Purchased by Francis Kelsey and Bernard Grenfell for the University of Michigan in March-April 1920
When: Oct. 12, 2016, to Jan. 13, 2017
Where: Archives and Special Collections, 3rd Floor Elizabeth Dafoe Library, M-F 8:30-4:30
Admission: Free and open to the public

What have you been doing on it?

I am assisting with a bit of everything that needs to be done for the exhibit, doing reading and research, writing, doing some of the graphic design, and helping select artifacts that we’re going to display.

What’s the coolest thing you’re taking away from this project?

With this project, just learning about the papyri themselves is a highlight. They let you learn about the people you wouldn’t know about from other ancient sources. If you’re reading Cicero, for example, it’s all about the same upper-class group. But with papyri you get to learn about the lives of midwives, or you read letters from deployed soldiers to their mothers back home. Stuff like that. You get access to a side of the ancient world that you might not see otherwise. That’s my favourite aspect of what I’m doing right now. I’m excited to share it with others through the exhibit.

Enjoying an ancient storage jar in an Italian museum

Who’s your favourite Greek god?

Oh! Athena.

Why?

I like the military and wisdom aspects of her.

Least favourite god?

Dang! Probably Zeus because he starts a lot of problems. I shouldn’t pick a least favourite though because that is asking for trouble, if mythology has taught me anything.

What did you want to be as kid?

I wanted to be a ballerina for a while. I also wanted to be a paleontologist or archeologist at one point. I liked the idea of digging stuff up – I watched too many BBC documentaries as a kid.

Any hobbies?

Yeah! I am involved in the local slam poetry scene – I’m a performer, and I’m one of the directors of the youth slam organization in the city, called Voices, Ink. Our goal is to give young people a stage to be creative on.

I used to be a dancer for a long time too – ballet. But a few years ago I started doing karate instead and I have fallen in love with that. I just got my black belt last year.

High five!

Thanks!

“Out of the dust of Egypt comes the voice of Sappho, as clear and sweet as when she sang in Lesbos by the sea 600 years before the birth of Christ,” Joyce Kilmer wrote in the New York Times on June 14, 1914.

“This little song, whose liquid Greek syllables echo the music of undying passion,” was pulled from history’s locker by scholars who painstakingly excavated, deciphered, and pieced together 56 fragments of papyri – ancient paper made from a plant native to Egyptian marshes.

About one hundred years later, Dirk Obbink, a papyrologist at Oxford University, took a call from an anonymous private collector in London. The caller said he had a fragment of papyrus extracted from a mummy casing and perhaps Obbink could discern if it was something worthwhile.

“And this Oxford scholar went and read it and said, ‘Oh my god, this is Sappho.’ And when it was made public [in January 2014], all hell broke loose,” recalls Michael Sampson, a papyrologist in the U of M’s Department of Classics.

This fall will see the U of M host a trio of events centered on papyri—including the new poems by Sappho. The first is the Department of Classics’ Fifth Annual Lecture on Hellenic Civilization, which will be delivered by Leslie Kurke, the Gladys Rehard Wood Chair and Professor of Classics at the University of California, Berkeley. Her public lecture is titled “Sappho on Papyrus: Reading Some New Poems” and will take place on Sunday, Sept. 25, at 3 p.m. in 118 St. John’s College. It is free and open to the public.

Then, in October, Sampson and undergraduate student Amber Leenders are co-curating an exhibit in the U of M’s Archives and Special Collections based on his SSHRC-supported papyrological research. The exhibit aims to provide a general introduction to papyrology, but especially to the 1920 purchase of some 534 texts for the University of Michigan.

What: Ink and Sand: an Exhibit on Greek Papyri Purchased by Francis Kelsey and Bernard Grenfell for the University of Michigan in March-April 1920
When: Oct. 12, 2016, to Jan. 13, 2017
Where: Archives and Special Collections, 3rd Floor Elizabeth Dafoe Library, M-F 8:30-4:30
Admission: Free and open to the public

To formally open the exhibit, Associate Professor Todd Hickey from the University of California, Berkeley, will deliver the lecture “Kelsey, Grenfell and the Dealers”on Oct. 19 at 2:30 p.m. in the U of M’s Archives & Special Collections (3rd Floor Elizabeth Dafoe Library). Based on new archival research, this public lecture will describe the scholarly shopping spree in which the papyri Sampson’s research focuses on were acquired, and it will shed light on the Egyptian antiquities market of the era.

“When this latest [Sappho] work surfaced, the papyrological community was very… curious. That is the word I’ll use. But anyone who works in ancient Greek literature – classicists broadly – was very excited: it’s new Sappho! We know so little about her work that any new material is cause for excitement,” Sampson says.

“It’s a strange poem,” he says, “because it mentions two of her brothers, who we know from other sources were part of her biographical tradition. Herodotus, for example, recounts that Sappho criticized one of them for freeing an Egyptian courtesan. And if that’s in fact what’s happening in this poem, then we have very peculiar insight into the family dynamic of Sappho’s home. But there’s still work to be done. I am certain that Professor Kurke will have very interesting things to say about the poem; we’re very excited in Classics to be hosting her.”

Michael Sampson examines a papyrus in the University of Michigan’s collection. // Photo: Monica Tsuneishi

Q&A with professor Michael Sampson

UM Today: Was Sappho respected in her time by her contemporaries?

Michael Sampson: That’s a complicated question. So the question is which Sappho are we talking about? I’m not suggesting there were multiple women named Sappho who were poets in antiquity. But everyone has their own construct of Sappho. I would say that in antiquity she was greatly respected as a lyric poet. Plato, the philosopher, called her the tenth muse in an epigram. Everyone acknowledges that she is fantastically good as a songwriter.

Greek comedy, however, makes a caricature of her and puts her on stage as a comic figure, subject to ridicule and abuse. And a lot of this has to do with the fact that she comes from the island of Lesbos. There was a tradition already in antiquity that she engaged in same-sex relations with other women on Lesbos: we get our word Lesbian from this. And so on the comic stage she becomes a bit of a dirty old woman with insatiable sexual desires.

What’s the big deal about her poems? Why do people get so excited and why do they matter? How do you explain the importance of these works to someone who thinks they’re not worth much attention in the modern world?

It’s easy to sell new Sappho to the general public because she is famous. She was famous in antiquity. And we have, really, only scraps of her output: until papyrology as a discipline came along (in the last 130 years or so), we had one complete poem by Sappho, and that was it. The rest were snippets or quotations or fragments. But once papyri began being excavated and appearing on the Egyptian antiquities market, all of a sudden we had new poems of Sappho coming out. The New York Times ran a story when one of the new fragments was published in 1914 because it was that important.

So for the members of the public who ask, ‘is this really a big deal?’ Yeah, it really is a big deal.

A letter from the late third or early fourth century CE // Photo: Papyrus Collection, Graduate Library, University of Michigan

My research is where it gets a bit harder. Sappho is prominent. She’s famous. But most papyri are not new works of ancient literature. Most papyri in collections around the world are documentary – tax receipts and accounts. Historians go crazy for this stuff because it’s eyewitness testimony to the way the Roman province of Egypt was administered. And those documents outnumber literary texts by a ratio of about 8:1; it’s hugely disproportional.

No matter how you think about it, it’s miraculous. We have eyewitness, hand-written testimony about the daily life of communities in antiquity. It’s just that poetry and literature dominates the popular imagination: if you think about ancient literature, most of it survives because it was copied and recopied and recopied. But it’s the broken telephone game; if you copy things, over the course of hundreds of years mistakes creep in. What papyri allow us to do is to leap over that entire tradition and go back to the source. If you want to know how a community worked in Roman Egypt, these are the documents that actually tell you, and a lot of the material we present in the exhibit is documentary.

What is your research in this area?

The work I’m doing is focused specifically on 534 papyri that were purchased in 1920 by professor Francis Kelsey at the University of Michigan. He went to Cairo on a shopping spree, buying material that could be used for research and teaching at his university. These were the founding documents of Michigan’s collection, which has since grown to be the biggest in North America.

Yet, almost 100 years later, more than half of them haven’t been read or published. So my job as a papyrologist is to go and read someone’s scribbling, from almost 2,000 years ago (and in ancient Greek!) and to publish it so that historians or others who are investigating the history of Egypt of the time can use the material. Not everyone can read a papyrus (or ancient Greek!) The exhibit is an opportunity for me to share that work with the broader public, and for my co-curator Amber to enjoy a unique learning opportunity.

…Every papyrus sheds new light on history. And every papyrus, for me, is a surprise. I never know what I’m going to get when I sit down and try to read one.

Reading it is part of the challenge because the writing is usually scribbled. Plus, it’s in ancient Greek. So you have to decipher the letters, make Greek out of it, and then put the Greek into an English that can be understood. That’s a challenge!

Sampson’s research is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada