Interesting, but with a few photos this would be even more interesting. (See for example the post from <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=medievalbooks.nl" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=medievalbooks.nl</a> )
The reason that methods of papyri dating have become of interest lately is the controversy over the so-called "Jesus' Wife" fragment. The question of its authenticity is right in Hurtado's wheelhouse, so to speak, and he has addressed it in several posts:<p><a href="https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/?s=wife" rel="nofollow">https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/?s=wife</a>
I remember reading recently that humans started dating documents relatively late in history, and that even as late as in the Renaissance most people wouldn't have been aware of the current calendar year. [Ong 1982]
Given that paleographists estimate how old ancient papyri are by means of dated documents I wonder:<p>Where these documents explicitly dated or are datings mostly extracted from the context (e.g., names of rulers / geographical references)?
Are "documentary" papyri always reliable for comparisons?<p>In any case very interesting.
<i>"But, as with all such judgement-activities, experts can disagree, often by several decades, even a century or so, and sometimes even more."</i><p>That sure escalated in a hurry! Decades... Century... More than a Century. Still, I get it, when the next best tool (radiocarbon dating) deals in millennia.