The only papyrology journal in North America

Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists

The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists has been the official journal of the American Society of Papyrologists since the publication of Volume 1, issue 1 in 1963 and is the only North American journal devoted to papyrology and related disciplines. 

The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists publishes a wide variety of articles and reviews of relevance to papyrology and related disciplines. From text editions to important synthetic articles, BASP has published studies on papyri, ostraca, and inscriptions in Greek, Latin, and Coptic. In the future, BASP will broaden its coverage to include Hieratic, Demotic, Aramaic, and Arabic texts. 

The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists is indexed and abstracted in the Arts and Humanities Citation Index; ATLASerials; L’Année Philologique; Bibliographie linguistique / Linguistic Bibliography; New Testament Abstracts; ERIH PLUS (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences); Scopus.

The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists is a peer-reviewed journal.

Electronic Access

The most recent three years of BASP are embargoed. ASP Members (only) can get access to those issues through Peeters Online Journals. (Members must first register with Peeters by following the instructions linked here.)

For all but the last three years, BASP is available as open access. Peeters Online Journals makes available full text and archives from Vol. 35 (1998) up to the embargo period. University of Michigan Library maintains an open-source electronic archive of BASP from Vol. 1 (1963/4) to Vol. 51 (2014).

BASP may also be found in JSTOR Arts and Sciences XIV.

ASP members receive the annual issue of BASP gratis. To become a member or to renew your membership, click on the button above. Institutions can subscribe to BASP through Peeters Publishers.

Information for Authors and Readers

The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists is the official journal of the American Society of Papyrologists. Below you will find general and specific information for authors & readers.

Editors and Advisory Board

Editors
Sofía Torallas Tovar, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (Managing Editor)
Jitse Dijkstra, University of Ottawa
Francesca Schironi, University of Michigan
C. Michael Sampson, University of Manitoba (Reviews Editor)​​​

Advisory Board
Serena Ammirati
Antti Arjava
Paola Davoli
Andrea Joerdens
AnneMarie Luijendijk
Kathleen McNamee
David Martinez
John Tait
Peter van Minnen

Articles

BASP publishes a wide variety of articles of relevance to papyrology and related disciplines. From text editions to important synthetic articles, BASP has published studies on papyri, ostraca and inscriptions in Demotic Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Coptic and Arabic; in the future, we hope to broaden our coverage to include Hieratic and Aramaic texts of relevance to our readers. Since 2014 BASP includes an annual review of Christian inscriptions from Egypt and Nubia.

Book Reviews

BASP publishes important reviews by the best scholars in the field. We encourage publishers to send their publications to the reviews editor, C. Michael Sampson, Department of Classics, University of Manitoba, University College, 220 Dysart Road, Winnipeg, MB   R3T 2M8 Canada

Submissions

The editors of BASP invite submissions not only from North American and foreign members of the Society but also from non-members throughout the world. We welcome preliminary inquiries on article topics, but please note that we cannot make a decision on the acceptance of an article without a manuscript in hand. Editorial guidelines & stylesheet are provided below. Please include a brief abstract of your article with each submission. Submissions may be in English, French, German, or Italian.

Editorial Guidelines and Stylesheet

View / Download Guidelines and Stylesheet as a single PDF

The editors invite submissions not only from North American and other members of the Society but also from non-members throughout the world. Manuscripts submitted for publication should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief at the following address:

Sofía Torallas Tovar
​School of Historical Studies
Institute for Advanced Study
Princeton, NJ
sofiat@ias.edu

Initial submissions can be sent as an e-mail attachment (both in Word and PDF format) with little or no formatting. For images and other large attachments, please use a file sharing service, such as WeTransfer or Dropbox.

Policy on Illegal Trade of Objects

As the Society’s journal, BASP follows the 2007 ASP resolution condemning the illegal trade of papyri, as well as the 2022 ASP-AIP Papyrus Trade Resolution (https://www.papyrology.org/resolutions.html). Under no circumstances will contributions be accepted that publish objects that are considered illicit. Objects of questionable provenance (where it is not clear whether they are legally or illegally acquired) are not necessarily excluded from publication in BASP, but a “frank and thorough” investigation and documentation of their provenance must be undertaken. The burden of establishing the “legality” of an object falls on its editor, in which it cannot be assumed that an object has been acquired legally by virtue of the fact that its “illegality” cannot be demonstrated unambiguously. A submission demonstrating or even implying that a contributor has been involved in the authentication of  illicit (or potentially illicit) material cannot be accepted for publication in the Society’s journal.

Prospective contributors should read carefully the information below for details on style sheet and process.

Type of Contribution

In addition to articles, since BASP 46 (2009) 145-150 we have started a series of brief notes on individual texts (Lesefrüchte). The editors welcome such observations for inclusion in BASP, especially if they are too brief to stand on their own as articles.

Language

Contributions may be written in English, French, German, or Italian. The author is responsible for correct use of the language chosen. Those who do not write in their first language should have their text corrected by someone whose first language is the one in which the contribution is written.

Structure

Title
A title should be placed above the main body of the text.

Identification of Author
Submissions are supposed to be anonymous. The author should avoid including any information that might lead to his/her identification in the manuscript. In addition to a PDF and Word file of the manuscript, the author should also provide a separate statement with the name(s) and affiliation(s) of all authors. This information will not be accessible to the referee(s), but will be added below the title only after the peer-review process (below) is completed.

Abstract
Articles should be provided with an English abstract of no more than 200 words.

Body Text
Articles may be subdivided into sections headed by titles. The headings should be put in italics, with space allowed above and below the heading. In case of an edition of multiple texts the heading in italics can be preceded by an Arabic numeral in bold: e.g. 1. Loan through a Bank. A word that is italicized in the main text, is written in roman in the heading: P.Got. 9.13-15 Revised. All paragraphs, including the first and those underneath headings, should be indented, without any extra space intervening between them.

Footnotes
Footnotes should be continuously numbered with Arabic numerals in superscript. They should preferably follow punctuation marks and be placed at the end of a sentence. In editing footnote-text, authors should use the standard footnote functions provided by their text processor. Endnotes are not allowed

Editions of Texts

Editions of texts should conform to the usual standards. This means that they normally contain at least the following elements:

Heading
The heading consists of the inventory number (or other identifier), measurements, provenance, and date of the text, according to the following model:
P.Mich. inv. 6665         H x W = 13 x 17 cm        Oxyrhynchus, ca. 150 CE

Physical Description
This part includes a physical description of the text and remarks about the hand of the scribe.

Text
The presentation of Greek documentary texts follows the Leiden System. The text is printed as a regularized text, with accents, breathings and so on. Any features of the text on papyrus that are not normally found in a standard transliteration, such as a diaeresis above an upsilon or a letter in superscript, belong in the apparatus criticus to be included below the text: e.g., ϋἱοὺς should be noted as υἱοὺς in the text and ϋιους pap. in the critical apparatus; ἀπὸ (with raised small omicron) should be written ἀπὸ in the text and απ° pap. in the critical apparatus.

Translation
In the translation, the square brackets of the text indicating a lacuna do not have to be repeated; lacunae can be noted down simply with three dots: …. Line numbers do not normally have to be specified, as in the text. The translation is placed between double quotation marks. In case of long texts, line numbers should be added and indentation can be used to facilitate the accessibility of the translation.

Commentary
A vital component of the edition is a line-by-line commentary. Note that references to secondary literature should be confined to footnotes as much as possible.

References

References to ancient texts
Abbreviations for editions of papyri, ostraca and tablets should follow J.F. Oates et al., Checklist of Editions of Greek, Latin, Demotic and Coptic Papyri, Ostraca and Tablets (available online at http://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/clist.html); epigraphical abbreviations follow those in the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. The volume number of the edition should be included in Arabic numerals: e.g., P.Oxy. 41.2943.1-3; 2968.5; P.Lond. 2.293.9-10 (p. 187); SEG 32.1601. The same holds for column numbers: e.g., P.Oxy. 14.1650.1.5 denotes line 5 of column 1 of papyrus 1650 in volume 14 of The Oxyrhynchus Papyrirecto is noted as r, verso as v: e.g., P.Oxy. 17.2086.fr1.r.5 denotes line 5 of the recto of fragment 1 of papyrus 2086 in volume 17; arrows may be used in the case of codex leaves only: e.g., P.Oxy. 17.2089.fol1.↓.5 denotes line 5 of the side written against the fibres of the first (preserved) page of codex 2089 in that volume.

For abbreviations of classical authors, contributors should consult S. Hornblower, T. Spawforth (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford 1996), for Patristic authors G.W.H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1968): e.g., Hom. Il. 2.489, Just. 1 Apol. Bible books should be written in roman and abbreviated according to P.H. Alexander et al. (eds.), The SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd ed. (Atlanta 2014) 73-74: e.g., Isa 23:8-10.

References to secondary literature
References to secondary literature are given in full the first time they are cited and in abbreviated form subsequently. The abbreviated form consists of the name of the author, followed – between brackets – by the footnote in which the full reference is found:

First time: T.G. Wilfong, Women of Jeme: Lives in a Coptic Town in Late Antique Egypt (Ann Arbor 2002).

​Second time: Wilfong (n. 1) 33-55.

Abbreviations of papyrological journals follow the list provided in R.S. Bagnall (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology (Oxford 2009) xiii-xiv, of other journals the one of the American Journal of Archaeology (online at http://www.ajaonline.org/submissions/journals-series: e.g., JJPAPFMDAIK. If a journal does not appear in either of these lists, it is written out in full.

Examples of full citations:

Book

E.G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia 1977).

Book (multiple volumes)

P.W. Pestman (ed.), A Guide to the Zenon Archive, 2 vols. (Leiden 1981).

Article

N. Lewis, “Notationes Legentis,” BASP 11 (1974) 44-59.

Article (collected studies)

H.C. Youtie, “Βραδέως γράφων: Between Literacy and Illiteracy,” GRBS 12 (1971) 239-261 (repr. in Scriptiunculae    Posteriores, vol. 2 [Bonn 1982] 629-651).

Book sections

W. Clarysse, “Egyptian Religion and Magic in the Papyri,” in R.S. Bagnall (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of       Papyrology (Oxford 2009) 561-589.

Note that in case of references to specific pages (or even footnotes) of articles or book sections, only the relevant page(s) are indicated: e.g., U. Wilcken, “Papyrus Urkunden,” APF 7 (1924) 111, n. 2.

​For papyrological corpora and instrumenta, the abbreviations of the Checklist may be used: e.g., C.Ord.Ptol. 75-76; ; Mayser, Gram. 1.1.75; Calderini, Diz.geogr. 4.316-317. It is up to the author, however, to decide whether to use the abbreviation or cite in full: e.g., both A. Calderini, S. Daris (eds.), Dizionario dei nomi geografici e topografici dell’Egitto greco-romano, vol. 4 (Milan 1983-1986) 316-317 or Calderini, Diz.geogr. 4.316-317 are allowed. Such abbreviations, if used, do not have to be specifically explained in a footnote.

Abbreviations of other reference works are according to S. Hornblower, T. Spawforth (eds.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed. (Oxford 2012): e.g., LSJ, LIMCANRW.

Series titles for books should be avoided in bibliographical references, as should bibliographies at the end of articles.

Figures

Photographs and other figures need to be of sufficient quality to warrant their publication. In the case of photos and scans, they should have a resolution of 600 dpi and handed in in TIFF-format. Captions for the figures with appropriate accreditation should be provided below the body text of the article. References to the figures (Fig. 1, etc.) should be inserted in the body text where the author would like to have the figure. It is the responsibility of the author to obtain permission to publish copyright material.

Peer-Review Process

Manuscripts submitted to BASP are reviewed by appropriate experts from around the world. All submissions are read by the Editors and at least one external referee, who remains anonymous. After the reports are received, authors are informed in writing of the Editors’ decision to accept, reject, or invite resubmission, and are given copies of the referee reports.

Proofs

When reading proof, contributors should limit themselves to correcting typographical errors. Revisions and additions should be avoided; if necessary, they will be made at the author’s expense.

Varia

For general matters of style, contributors should consult the Chicago Manual of Style, , 17th ed. (Chicago 2017). We further note the following specific points:

  • All fonts used in submissions should be Unicode
  • Transliteration of Greek words is to be avoided where possible, except for common technical terms (in these cases, do not use macrons): e.g., solidusstrategos; but ὄρος; ἐνδοξότατος. Note also the following example: “Senouthios the dux and φροντιστής of the Holy Church”
  • Words that do not occur in an English dictionary, even if they are commonly used in the field, should be written in italics: e.g., transversa chartaarouraartaba. Letters of the Greek alphabet are also written in italics: e.g., alphaomega; or they can be written in Greek font: e.g., α; ω
  • Special uses of a word and quotations/translations should be placed between double quotation marks: e.g., “yoke tax”; κέμιον “legumes” (French articles: e.g., « épilepsie »; German articles: e.g., „neugepräft“; Italian articles: e.g., δημόσια “cariche”).
  • Avoid, where possible, the use of abbreviations in the main text: e.g., “the editio princeps” rather than “the ed.princ.“; in the footnotes a few common abbreviations are allowed: e.g., cf., etc. Do not use op.cit.loc.cit. and idem/eadem
  • Do not use small caps, bold or underline for emphasis. Emphasis should be restricted as much as possible; if necessary, it should be given to individual words by italicizing them
  • Write out dating to centuries: e.g., third century BCE, not 3rd (or 3rd) century BCE or III BCE; only in exceptional cases where there is little space, such as in tables and the heading of text editions, is the shortened indication of centuries (e.g., III BCE) allowed
  • Acknowledgments of institutions, colleagues, and so on, should go in n. 1
  • References to secondary literature should be restricted to the footnotes; if a work needs mentioning in the main text, only the name and title should be given, with a full reference in the accompanying footnote (same holds for commentaries in editions of texts, cf. above
  • Page numbers in references and other numerical sequences should always be written out in full: e.g., 55-57, 115-117, 1100-1215
  • Use of “ff.” should be avoided: the author should state exactly which pages he/she is referring to
  • Parentheses within parentheses become square brackets: e.g., (Whitehorne [n. 7] 3081)
  • Names of authors in references should contain their initials; in the main text, it is up to the author whether he/she wishes to write out the name in full or to provide initials
  • The primary author(s) of contributions published in BASP will receive an electronic off-print in PDF-format.

© Jitse Dijkstra, 6 June 2023
(on behalf of the Editorial Board of BASP)

Notice on the publication of illicit antiquities

In light of the recent discussions on the publication of illicit antiquities, ASP wishes to emphasize the need to abide by ASP and AIP Policy on Illegal Trade of Objects. We firmly believe that this is a serious matter and as the Society’s journal, BASP follows the 2007 ASP resolution condemning the illegal trade of papyri, as well as the 2022 ASP-AIP Papyrus Trade Resolution. Under no circumstances will contributions be accepted that publish objects that are considered illicit. Objects of questionable provenance (where it is not clear whether they are legally or illegally acquired) are not necessarily excluded from publication, but a “frank and thorough” investigation and documentation of their provenance must be undertaken. The burden of establishing the “legality” of an object falls on its editor, in which it cannot be assumed that an object has been acquired legally by virtue of the fact that its “illegality” cannot be demonstrated unambiguously. A submission demonstrating or even implying that a contributor has been involved in the authentication of  illicit (or potentially illicit) material cannot be accepted for publication under the Society’s aegis.