Chair's Library

The library is accessible to all researchers of ancient law. However, the terms of use must be observed ( Terms of use (PDF, 60 KB)).

The library of the Chair of Prof. Alonso is a presence library with a focus on juristic papyrology, comprising more than 2000 works on Greek, Roman, Egyptian and Mesopotamian law. In addition to numerous resources, the library contains a large number of sources, in particular papyrus and ostraca editions.
The majority of the books in the Chair's library come from the estate of Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski (1930–2017) and from the private library of Hans-Albert Rupprecht (1938–2024). This brings together the holdings of two important papyrologists in the library, whose findings have shaped and continue to shape juristic papyrology and ancient legal history in many ways.

Born in Poland, Joseph Mélèze Modrzejewski initially studied law and history at the University of Warsaw, where he was appointed assistant and adjunct professor of history. After completing his first doctorate in "Historical Sciences", he continued his studies in Paris and Nancy. He received his Docteur  d'État from the Faculty of Law in Paris in 1970. In 1976, he received his Dr. phil. from the University of Paris I Panthéon - Sorbonne. Two years later, he was appointed Professor of Ancient History there, having already been appointed Director of the Papyrology and Ancient Legal History courses at the École Pratique des Hautes Études in 1972. Together with Hans Julius Wolff, Mélèze Modrzejewski succeeded in building a bridge between the generation of scholars who had studied under Ludwig Mitteis (e.g. Joseph Partsch and Raphael Taubenschlag) and the current generation of papyrologists. The tradition they created, which places a special emphasis on interdisciplinarity, enables a multifaceted approach to the study of papyri and still enriches our scientific work today.
Mélèze Modrzejewski's scientific œuvre is evident in the breadth of his almost 400 publications. Like Wolff, he dealt with Greek legal history in all its facets. He not only dealt with legal pluralism and the individual legal traditions in Hellenistic Egypt, but also with family law, land ownership and slavery in the ancient world.
His scientific expertise has been appreciated by numerous institutions and he has been awarded various memberships: among others, Mélèze Modrzejewski was a corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Athens in 2002 and from the University of Warsaw in 2010.

Hans-Albert Rupprecht was a German papyrologist who studied law at the universities of Munich and Erlangen from 1957 to 1962. In 1965 he received his doctorate with the topic "Untersuchungen zum Darlehen im Recht der graeco-aegyptischen Papyri in der Ptolemäerzeit" at the University of Munich. This was followed four years later by his habilitation on the subject of "Quittung im Recht der graeco-ägyptischen Papyri". In the same year, Rupprecht received a professorship for papyrus research at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Marburg, which he held until his emeritus in 2006.
For decades after the death of Hans Julius Wolff (1902–1983), Rupprecht's research made a significant contribution to the preservation of the discipline. With his chair, he was the only representative of juristic papyrology in the German-speaking world. Thanks to his efforts, papyrologists and researchers working with papyri today have access to valuable reference works: Rupprecht not only published the "Berichtigungsliste der griechischen Papyri aus Ägypten" (BL), but also the "Sammelbuch griechischer Urkunden aus Aegypten" (SB), thereby promoting the systematic study of papyri.
From 1989 to 1995, Rupprecht was president of the Association Internationale de Papyrologues, which, with its recurring congresses, plays an important role in the international and interdisciplinary networking of papyrologists. Since 2001, he has been a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz, where he was involved for a long time in the project "Forschungen zur antiken Sklaverei", which ran from 1950 to 2017.
Rupprecht's contributions to papyrology cover a wide range of topics that increasingly deal with legal issues in papyrology. In the tradition of Wolff, he devoted himself to ancient legal history, Greek law and Hellenistic and Roman Egypt. Together with Heinz Heinen et al., he published the "Handwörterbuch der antiken Sklaverei" (2017) even after his emeritus. His "Kleine Einführung in die Papyrusurkunde" has long since become a standard work for teaching the next generation of papyrologists.