Since the beginning of papyrology, papyri have been regarded over the decades as an exceptional source of first hand information about the ancient world, inasmuch as they represent a direct contact with the people that lived and enacted that civilization, but the reading and subsequent editing of the papyrus texts is not a straightforward task: in many cases we find that the papyrus surface has been damaged, with breaks, folds, deposits of salt or other substances impeding vision. In more severe cases, the document might have disintegrated mechanically by the action of man or accident (fire), and therefore a reconstitution of must precede the initial interpretative task of reading; moreover, in modern times papyri have been the object of not always fair trade, and  have been subjected not only to intentional dismembering so as to make more profit from the sale of the single pieces, but to reassembling of ancient pieces belonging to different documents so that the final product appears to be a well preserved (and therefore more valued) single document. This project investigates into possible technological and digital solutions that may enable a virtual reconstruction, even if partial, of the original documents.

On the other hand, chemical and biochemical data resulting from the material analysis of the charta and the ink of the documents may contribute in a decisive manner to the interpretation of the texts: it is not indeed so much the chronological contextualization that we pursue with this kind of analysis, for other means such as the carbon-14 tests might be more useful for this sole purpose; we believe that changes and variations through time, space and cultural and socioeconomic environment in the manufacturing process of the papyrus charta and the making of the inks are significant for the characterisation of the context of production of the documents, and therefore for our understanding of the texts themselves.