Harry Ransom Center opens exhibition exploring everyday life in ancient Egypt

April 14, 2026

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin opened an exhibition titled Lives and Literacy in Ancient Egypt, which runs through Aug. 2. The show brings together papyri and other objects that scholars use to study private and public life in Egypt between 332 BCE and 641 CE.

Curators assembled material in partnership with The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, focusing on fragments recovered from mummy cartonnage, a technique similar to papier-mache used to form cases for the deceased. Those recycled fragments have yielded administrative papers, letters and literary texts that survive when other records did not.

The exhibition presents several high-profile pieces, including what researchers identify as the world s earliest fragment of the New Testament and early Greek adaptations of Homer s Odyssey. Visitors will also see funerary portraits and steles, examples of pottery, and other objects that accompanied burial and everyday routines.

Organizers built hands-on elements into the show, such as a puzzle reconstructed from a manuscript fragment and a station where visitors can feel a sample of papyrus. Those features aim to make fragile materials more accessible while preserving the original artifacts behind glass.

Aaron Pratt, Carl and Lily Pforzheimer curator of early books and manuscripts at the Ransom Center, said the display offers multiple ways to connect with the past, from the dramatic to the intimate. He noted that while some items feed popular fascination with mummification, other documents reveal mundane problems and paperwork.

Geoffrey Smith, a religious studies professor at UT Austin, highlighted an uptick in documentary material during the Roman period, which he described as an early expansion of bureaucracy. He added that modern institutions, including universities, benefit from the survival of so many administrative records when historians reconstruct daily life.

The texts on view range from neighbor disputes and marriage poems to legal complaints and a copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, showing that people then faced quarrels, romance and legal hassles much like people today. Ashley Park, head of communications and marketing at the Ransom Center, emphasized that the fragments reveal gossip, insults and legal wrangling alongside religious and literary culture.

Visitors can see the full range of documents and objects at the Harry Ransom Center on the UT Austin campus through Aug. 2. The exhibition aims to deepen understanding of how literacy, paperwork and personal life intersected in ancient Egypt under Greco-Roman influence.