Abstract
Taking off in the 19th century with the discovery of thousands of papyri in Egypt, papyrology is the study of Greek and Latin texts written on transportable media (papyrus, pottery shards, wooden tablets or parchment). While inscriptions and literary sources can present a normative, idealized or sometimes distorted image of individuals, papyri - however fragmentary - take us into their daily lives, making possible an archaeology of their cultural practices. Attempting to decipher " these shreds, guardians of the memory of men ", to paraphrase Leonardo da Vinci, is the challenge of the papyrologist, who is constantly renewing our knowledge of the past.
