Ninth Annual Celia M. Fountain Symposium

Greek Myths from Egyptian Sands: Discovering the New Euripides

Saturday, September 14, 2024
11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. MDT (GMT/UTC-6)
Cofrin Auditorium (Atlas 100, CU Ā鶹ӰŌŗ) and via live-stream

A link to the video recording of the Symposium is available

A complete program is available here: Fountain Symposium - 2024 Program

In November of 2022, a team of archaeologists led by Basem Gehad of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities recovered several papyri from a simple grave in the cemetery of Philadelphia in the Fayoum. The best preserved includes nearly 100 lines from two otherwise lost plays by the Athenian playwright Euripides - the most significant discovery of new tragedy in nearly 60 years. CĘÆ's Yvona Trnka-Amrhein, the team's papyrological expert, invited her colleague John Gibert, a specialist in Greek drama, to join her and Dr. Gehad in preparing the first edition of the text: here, for the first time in nearly 2,000 years readers will encounter gripping scenes from two plays based on little-known but intriguing incidents from the mythical careers of Dionysus' aunt Ino/Leucothea, the Cretan king Minos, and the seer Polyidus. The Ninth Annual Celia M. Fountain Symposium will introduce the discovery and explore its contexts in archaeology, literature, mythology, and vase painting.

• The papyrus was officially published on August 27, 2024, in the Zeitschrift fĆ¼r Papyrologie und Epigraphik (vol. 230, pp. 1ā€“40). It will take a while for it to reach libraries, but you may view the table of contents .
• Rob Cioffi discusses the papyrus in the London Review of Books here: 
• Colorado Public Radioā€™s Anthony Cotton (ā€œColorado Mattersā€) discusses the papyrus and the upcoming Symposium with Yvona and John here: 
• Brown University Professor Johanna Hanink discuses the papyrus with John and Yvona on her podcast Ī›Ī­ĻƒĻ‡Ī· here: 
• In June, 2024, Harvardā€™s  hosted a two-day conference devoted to further exploration of the newly discovered text by specialists. The proceedings will eventually be published in an online, open-access book, but in the meantime, there is information about the conference  and , including a  and several pre-prints (or choose Preprints from the Publications pull-down menu on the main page).
• This discovery was recently featured in CU's Arts & Sciences Magazine: Uncovered Euripides fragments are ā€˜kind of a big dealā€™
• On September 4, 2024, the Times Literary Supplement (London) published ā€œ,ā€ by Bill Allan.

The Fountain Symposium is sponsored by the generous support of Celia M. Fountain, the Bruce D. Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization, and the Classics Department.
It is free and open to the public

classics@colorado.edu | | 303-492-6257

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The Celia M. Fountain 2021 Webinar

Learning from the Past: Classics and the Contemporary World
Prof. Paul Cartledge, University of Cambridge

Tuesday, May 25 | 11:00am MDT | Virtual Webinar

Painting of the Reconstruction Of The Acropolis And Areopagus In Athens by Leo Von Klenze

This webinar explores contemporary political and social issues, including the nature of populism and authoritarianism and the treatment of disenfranchised groups, through the lens of ancient Athens and its extraordinary democracy with Prof. Paul Cartledge, emeritus A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge.

This lecture is free and will be hosted on Zoom.

This lecture is sponsored by Dr. Celia M. Fountain.  CU Classics is grateful for her generous support.

  View the Poster here

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