Prestigious grant awarded for new research project bringing together Greek, Roman and Egyptian education

A new research project seeking to better understand how education worked in the ancient Mediterranean 2,000 years ago is set to be launched thanks to the award of a prestigious European grant.

EduGRE: Education in Graeco-Roman Egypt – An Intercultural Approach will explore how Egyptian, Greek and Roman culture coexisted over the period from the 3rd Century BC to 700 A.D.

Led by Dr Chiara Meccariello of the University of Exeter, the five year study, funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant of €1,999,484, will seek to challenge preexisting notions that Greek and Egyptian education operated independently of one another. Instead, it will highlight their dynamic interplay and the cultural exchange that shaped educational practices in Graeco-Roman Egypt.

The project will enable Dr Meccariello to conduct a detailed analysis of ancient Egyptian artefacts such as papyri, tablets and potsherds that would have been used by teachers and students and which survive in international archives and museums.

“Traditionally, research in this area has been split by disciplines, with scholars of Greek or Latin material rarely engaging with Egyptian material and vice versa,” says Dr Meccariello, of the Department of Classics, Ancient History, Religion and Theology. “EduGRE addresses this gap by studying all the evidence together to reconstruct the bigger picture of how education worked in a multicultural society, and how it evolved over time against the backdrop of societal and religious changes.”

During the project, Dr Meccariello and her team will visit museums and collections around the world to study specific artefacts written in Greek, Latin and Egyptian. There, they will not only analyse the text, but also use techniques such as photogrammetry to capture the physical form of the artefact.

From this, they will create and launch a dedicated digital platform that will ‘host’ these artefacts, with detailed images and 3D reconstructions. This will be open to other researchers, who will be able to analyse not just the texts but also the physical aspects of the artefacts, such as their handwriting and layout.

Dr Meccariello specialises in the study of manuscripts of ancient literature, as well as other specialist areas including Greek literature and mythology. She said: “There is a tendency to think of Greek education as a fixed, impermeable system designed only to preserve and spread an abstract notion of Greek culture. Instead, this project argues that education in this setting was far more diverse, involving interactions between different cultural traditions.

“My hope is that we can change perceptions of ancient education through the project, and develop a new editorial method for school texts, to capture how learners and teachers adapted existing material. And this approach might be more widely applicable to a broader range of written artefacts across disciplines.”

ERC Consolidator Grants are part of the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme and are aimed at supporting outstanding scientists and scholars to develop promising research ideas. This year, Exeter was awarded three grants out of a total funding package of €678 million across 328 successful applicants.