Imaginary Queer Papyrologists (& the Importance of Representing Scholars with Marginalized Identities in Modern Fiction)

February 28th 2026

Introduction

“Representation matters.” Yes, this adage has been repeated to the point of exhaustion. But in an era when anti-intellectualism and a general disdain for academia are on the rise, the ways in which scholars are portrayed have the power to affect public opinion of what we do, as well as our own self-image. While public opinion of academics affects our social relevance and funding, our self-image influences our own indicators of “success” and its various definitions. The technical methods and skills that scholars cultivate often serve to alienate us, and the reputation of an ivory tower only further separates us by encouraging a perception of detached theoreticians within an inaccessible university. However, scholars of the humanities in the twenty-first century are not necessarily elite, privileged, and detached. The stereotype of the stuffy, older, white, male scholar in a suit has its genesis in the exclusionary world of 19th century academia, but in reality, the situation has gradually changed. White men still control most academic spaces [1], but the percentages of women and BIPOC in higher education faculty are rising [2]. Representation does matter, and Egyptologists in particular would do well to pay contemporary depictions of our work due attention– especially considering that the material we study is often controversial and sensationalized [3].

It is far beyond the scope of the present piece to analyze how historians and Egyptologists are defined and portrayed in modern fiction, and in lieu of this rather unfeasible goal, a focus on a specific selection of literature relating to papyrology (the study of ancient papyrus) may prove to be a more preferable avenue. In many of these depictions, the papyrologist holds an identity that has historically been marginalized and oppressed– a direct opposition to the expected stereotype described above. The following reflections are not meant to be ultimately conclusive or even provide a sense of finality on the subject of academic representation in modern media, but rather to encourage self-awareness among ancient historians and open a conversation about the benefits and dangers of our reception and representation.

Representation in Fiction and Reality

The immortal possibilities of vampire fantasy novels (Anne Rice’s The Queen of the Damned and Dr. Deborah Harkness’s A Discovery of Witches) offer a seamless link with history, while the academic interests of characters in books such as Call Me By Your Name, Cloud Cuckoo Land, and the infamous novel The Da Vinci Code lend themselves well to discussions of the manuscript tradition. These particular genres are rather magnetic, inviting sensationalized, romantic depictions of the ancient past and the scholars who study it. In The Da Vinci Code, professors with knowledge of papyrology are men, depicted as the keepers of specific knowledge that makes them essential to fighting their hellbent antagonists. This has contributed to the novel’s notoriety– by reinforcing stereotypes of male academics, the thrilling adventure spins conspiratorial fringe theories in light of the wizened academic man. In contrast, depictions of papyrological work in A Discovery of Witches, The Queen of the Damned, Cloud Cuckoo Land, and Call Me By Your Name (among others) feature “papyrologists” who are marginalized; many of them are women, face oppression, or experience same-sex desire. A distinct lack of BIPOC scholars in these fictitious examples is glaringly obvious. Likewise, these examples are not meant to be exhaustive, but rather illustrate a point that there is a general awareness in modern fiction of the work papyrologists do, even if it is largely invented or skewed. The origins of Egyptology are also filled with stories of scholars we could describe as queer today [4]. Aspiring scholars looking for representations of marginalized academics need look no further than the very history of the field itself.

The “state” of Egyptology (and, more specifically, papyrology) is difficult to pinpoint for a number of reasons. While we lack a systematic way to categorize ourselves in something of a global survey, there have been efforts to place a finger on the pulse of the field. The Egyptology State of the Field Project endeavored to do just that, and gathered data from a survey (and subsequent follow-up interviews) to accumulate the closest thing Egyptology has ever had to a census [5]. The results (with a set of 200 respondents) showed a higher percentage of LGBTQ+ respondents than other surveys have indicated for academics in the United States: In the aggregate, 16% openly identified as LGBTQ+, 0.5% “prefer to self-describe,” and 8.5% of respondents chose not to answer [6]. Two thirds of participants in the survey identified as women, which is a significantly higher percentage than the near-even split recorded in the US census [7]. The small dataset of this study makes it difficult to draw wide-ranging conclusions, but it indicates very interesting trends in the demography of the discipline. The fact remains that diversity in our field could be affected by portrayals of papyrologists in modern fiction and media such as film and television. 

Fictional Scholars, Real Ramifications

One of the most famous academic scandals to arise in the past decade concerns a forged papyrus that contained “the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” It was later proven as partly inspired by the international bestseller The Da Vinci Code 8]. This novel (and later, movie) is notorious as a modern thriller that builds tension through a winding journey that features murder, symbolic puzzles, religious history, and car chases across Europe. The adventure features a Harvard professor as the heroic lead character, and Gnostic Christian texts are invoked as clues to the historical Jesus. The protagonist’s mentor even retrieves facsimiles of the Nag Hammadi papyrus codices to expound upon the obscure history of early Christianity:

“Teabing located a huge book and pulled it toward him across the table. The leather-bound edition was poster-sized, like a huge atlas. The cover read: The Gnostic Gospels. Teabing heaved it open, and Langdon and Sophie joined him. Sophie could see it contained photographs of what appeared to be magnified passages of ancient documents—tattered papyrus with handwritten text. She did not recognize the ancient language, but the facing pages bore typed translations.” [9]

Here, Teabing and Langdon are depicted as the keepers of hidden knowledge about the life of the historical Jesus, networks of secret societies, and ancient manuscripts published in obscure books. Their initiation into the inaccessible realm of specialized study makes these men essential to cracking the mystery, while Sophie cannot even recognize the Coptic script. The stakes in The Da Vinci Code are high– lives are on the line, conventional interpretations of the New Testament are questioned, and the secret note in the center of the wooden “cryptex” puzzle is written on a sheet of papyrus. If the code is entered incorrectly, a phial of vinegar will burst and dissolve the papyrus [10]. The Da Vinci Code is undoubtedly the most famous representation of papyrologists in modern fiction, and it garnered international controversy before influencing the “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife.” 

In 2020, Ariel Sabar’s Veritas presented the saga of the grand controversy surrounding the so-called “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” (itself a credit-card sized fragment inscribed with the Coptic phrases “Jesus said to them, ‘my wife… she is able to be my disciple.’”). The forged papyrus gained international recognition, and heated debates about the transmission of early Christian texts ensued. This papyrus fragment was authenticated by experts and passed scientific analysis– the papyrus itself was ancient, but the inscription was modern using ancient techniques of ink-making, making it virtually undetectable under rigorous testing [11]. Its text was a pastiche of extant Coptic, rendering its grammar easily explicable with numerous parallels. Sabar’s 2020 (psycho)analysis proved that the forger took inspiration from The Da Vinci Code, having admitted to knowing the movie and owning a copy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a popular pseudohistory that inspired Dan Brown’s own novel [12]. 

Thefts, forgeries, and the publication of papyri without provenance do immeasurable harm by commoditizing cultural heritage, encouraging looting, and endangering the lives of children who retrieve antiquities in the global south [13]. If modern fiction has the power to influence a forgery that rocked the world, it also has the power to inspire young scholars. The influence of film franchises such as Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, and The Mummy have been widely-recognized, but literary characters have a sort of quiet power that, in my own conversations with underrepresented scholars, can positively affect our determination and ambitions. Likewise, they often negatively inspire a sensationalized view that leads to real harm in the form of stereotypes, over-simplifications, and even forgeries and black-market deals.

The Possibility of Queer Joy 

A more fantastical example of a fictional papyrologist comes from Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned, itself a dramatic sequel to Interview with a Vampire. The protagonist Jesse Reeves visits her immortal progenitors, spending a summer researching the extensive ancient archives kept in their lavish Sonoma estate. The pair of immortal ancestors take a liking to Jesse, and the three inaugurate an intense, warped relationship. Jesse returns to the Sonoma estate and remembers the affair while walking through the halls of the mansion:

“Ah, fifteen years ago, simply the happiest summer of her life. All her wonderful adventures afterwards (…) had been nothing to that magical and unforgettable time.

She and Maharet in this library together, with the fire blazing. And the countless volumes of the family history, amazing her and delighting her. The lineage of ‘the Great Family,’ as Maharet always called it– ‘the thread we cling to in the labyrinth which is life.’ How lovingly she had taken down the books for Jesse, unlocked for her the caskets that contained the old parchment scrolls.

Jesse had not fully accepted it that summer, the implications of all she’d seen. There had been a slow confusion, a delicious suspension of ordinary reality, as if the papyruses (sic) covered with a writing she could not classify belonged more truly to dream. After all, Jesse had already become a trained archaeologist by that time. She’d done her time on digs in Egypt and at Jericho. Yet she could not decipher those strange glyphs.” [14]

Jesse’s examination of the fictitious library included not only books but “parchment scrolls” and certain indecipherable papyri. The invocation of Jesse’s archaeological excavations in Egypt and Jericho is evidently meant to convey the breadth of her knowledge and emphasize the depth of time these fictional papyri date to. Crucially, Jesse is depicted in this nostalgic recollection as having “the happiest summer of her life” while doing this work.

On the very same page, the nature of Jesse’s relationship with Maharet becomes clear during a nighttime visit from the patron to her descendant:

“Suddenly it was ten o’clock, and she’d just awakened and Maharet was standing at the foot of her bed. Maharet had come to her and kissed her. Such a lovely warm kiss; it had sent a low throbbing sensation through her. Maharet said they’d found her down by the creek, asleep in the clearing, and at sunset, they’d brought her in.” [15]

This passage suffices to illustrate the same-sex attraction of this fictional papyrologist. The protagonist is perhaps best described as bisexual, since Mael and Jesse also share a kiss in a passage just 15 pages later. [16]

The description of the happiness that the queer papyrologist finds with her patrons is essential: Dr Jesse Reeves, however fictional she may be, was able to find financial stability, an ancient archive to study, and the freedom to kiss whomever she wanted. Such a convergence of social liberty, personal security, and academic opportunity led to this being what is described as “the happiest summer of her life.” [17] And in all honesty, what more could a scholar want? 

Jesse’s narrative reveals that her happiest summer ends when she is sent away from the estate, and she receives a letter from Maharet explaining why:

“Nevertheless, it had been paradise here, in those warm summer days and nights, when she had sat by the hour talking to Maharet, when she had danced with Mael and Maharet by the light of the moon. Forget for now the pain afterwards, trying to understand why Maharet had sent her back home to New York never to come here again.

My darling,
The fact is I love you too much. My life will engulf yours if we are not separated. You must have freedom, Jesse, to devise your own plans, ambitions, dreams . . .

It was not to relive the old pain that she had returned (to the Sonoma estate), it was to know again, for a little while, the joy that had gone before.” [18]

In the depiction of a queer historian, a kind of vicarious joy is possible at their joy, however fictitious or fleeting, and we can, in Anne Rice’s own words, “know again, for a little while, the joy that had gone before.” [19]

Fragmented Depictions

Another fictional papyrologist has been given to us by Dr Deborah Harkness in her All Souls series [20]. While Gillian Chamberlain is a minor character and appears only in A Discovery of Witches, her role is essential to illustrating the range of manuscripts held at the Bodleian Library as well as furthering the plot through her political stance. The main character of the series knows Chamberlain from her time studying in the Bodleian at Oxford, where she describes Chamberlain in first-person narration:

“Another American academic, Gillian Chamberlain, was my sole companion in the library on this Friday night. A classicist who taught at Bryn Mawr, Gillian spent her time poring over scraps of papyrus sandwiched between sheets of glass.” [21]

Gillian then invites her to join her for a social event, which the main character denies. It comes to light that Gillian Chamberlain is working with the antagonist of the series. She is eventually murdered by Matthew, the brooding, vampire love-interest of the protagonist, Diana. Harkness’s portrayal of academic female characters has been lauded [22], and (despite her conservative attitudes and untimely death) Chamberlain’s role is nonetheless a significant portrayal of a woman papyrologist. She ultimately lends her character and credentials to the benefit of Harkness’s scholastic landscape, which is populated with women who possess the agency to independently conduct their scholarship and their lives [23].

The imaginative novel Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr follows the reception of a fictional ancient Greek text called “Cloud Cuckoo Land” in three stories: one centers around the journey of a 15th century manuscript of the text during the fall of the Byzantine Empire, another takes place in a modern library where schoolchildren experience the tale, and a final story in which it is read by a young girl in the 22nd century. As a New York Times bestseller, the novel received generally positive reviews. The fictitious ancient text the novel centers is described in its various forms as a medieval manuscript, typed on modern paper, and in futuristic digital reading devices in the 22nd century, reflecting the manuscript tradition that provides us with ancient literature today. The novel uses this manuscript tradition to tell a story that links individuals who encounter the text in the past, present, and future. The centrality of the manuscript tradition is also emphasized in the character of Rex Browning, who studies the Oxyrhynchus papyri. 

One of the three central characters is the modern librarian, Zeno, who often reflects on his time as a prisoner of war in the Korean War, where he met and fell in love with Rex Browning, a classicist from England. Rex teaches him ancient Greek by writing in the mud with a stick. The librarian corresponds with Rex after being released, and Rex sends him a letter back:

“I’m still mucking about with ancient texts– rummaging in the dusty bones of the dead languages like the old classics master I didn’t want to become. It’s even worse now, if you can believe it. I study lost books, books that no longer exist, examining papyri dug out of rubbish mounds at Oxyrhynchus. Even been to Egypt. Appalling sunburn.” [24]

Rex and Zeno do not receive a happy ending together, but they do find fulfilling purposes in their own lives. Part of Rex’s joyful fulfilment is, evidently, visiting Egypt and studying the Oxyrhynchus papyri, sunburn and all. A papyrologist’s true joy comes in studying the “dusty bones of the dead languages,” and finding that eternal, profound humor in our pursuits [25], irrespective of our orientation.

Fragmented Conclusions?

In modern fiction, there is a trope of an elusive, mystical “fragment” that serves to drive the plot or lend an air of mystery to the fictional atmosphere. This surely relates to papyrology and the manuscript tradition, even if papyri are not explicitly mentioned. The queer love-story Call Me By Your Name features the fragments of Heraclitus (themselves preserved partially in the Derveni papyrus and Oxyrhynchus papyri), and other “dark academia” novels such as The Secret History also allude to textual fragments. The fragmentation of history through nebulous references to quotations, papyri, or damaged artifacts is mirrored in the depiction of fictitious scholars– only showing a “fragment” of the work it takes to be an historian. In the same vein, our own, varying identities are only fragments of ourselves, never displaying a total individual. Fragments are fundamentally desirous, they reach out towards a conclusive whole without actually providing completion. The ways that identities, stories, and papyri are represented matter because they lead to inevitable conclusions of what a whole person, text, or narrative ultimately looks like. As we self-conceive, these representations matter, too.

1. Museus 2015.
2. Schneider & Bichsel 2024.
3. See below discussion of forgeries and thefts, but especially Mazza 2024, Sampson 2020, and Sabar 2020.
4. See Dowson 2006, Goldhill 2016, and Sheppard 2024.
5.  Website of project: https://egyptologystats.wordpress.com/. The results are published in Davidson et al., 2024.
6.  Davidson et al. 2024, 17-18. The 8.5% of respondents who abstained from answering is quite striking.
7. Davidson et al. 2024, 17
8.  The entire debacle is explained in Sabar 2020.
9. Brown 2003, 245.
10.  While any sort of damp can damage papyrus, an acidic solution like vinegar will not dissolve it instantly.
11.  Tuross 2014, King 2014. In addition, the cut of the pen can be seen in the handwriting, and appears very inconsistent with ancient nib cuts. See Swift 2017.
12.  Sabar 2020, 219, 253-255.
13.  See Mazza 2024. In the midst of various controversies, the scholarly community has agreed upon the 2007 ASP resolution concerning the illicit trade in papyri and the 2022 AIP-ASP joint statement on the papyrus trade. These are essential to review before choosing to publish or work on a papyrus. Both of these declarations emphasize the importance of the 1970 UNESCO convention to prohibit the illicit trafficking of cultural heritage and antiquities.
14.  Rice 1988, 129-130.
15.  Rice 1988, 130.
16. “She’d been drinking burgundy all evening long, and she was standing on the terrace with (Mael) and he had kissed her,” Maharet finds them together and strikes Mael in a fit of rage. Rice 1988, 145.
17. Rice 1988, 129.
18. Rice 1988, 131.
19. Rice 1988, 129.
20. Dr Harkness herself (B.A. Mount Holyoke College, M.A. Northwestern University, PhD UC Davis) is a scholar of the early modern period, and has written a number of academic chapters and articles as well as two academic books. She is currently affiliated with the University of Southern California as Professor of History.
21. Harkness.
22.  Fain, M.K.. “‘A Discovery of Witches’ Provides a Feminist Alternative to Twilight,” 4W, Dec. 1, 2019,
     https://4w.pub/a-discovery-of-witches-provides-a-feminist-alternative-to-twilight/
23.  It should be mentioned that Harkness has likewise been criticized for centering Matthew’s storyline at the expense of Diana’s own agency.
24.  Doerr 2021, 344.
25. Demotic papyrologists, in particular, are renowned for their good humor and dry wit, which the present author (who possesses the fortune of having visited Leiden on multiple occasions) can resolutely attest to.

Works Cited
Brown, Dan. The Da Vinci Code. Knopf Doubleday, 2003.
Davidson, Stacy, and Emily Cole, Anne Austin, Jess Johnson, Julia Troche, Clara McCafferty-Wright, Sara Orel, Kathleen Sheppard, Jason Silvestri, and Jen Thum, “Understanding Diversity in American Egyptology: Results of the 2021 Egyptology State of the Field Survey,” Interdisciplinary Egyptology 3, no. 1, 2024, https://doi.org/10.25365/integ.2024.v3.1.
Doerr, Anthony. Cloud Cuckoo Land. Scribner, 2021.
Dowson, Thomas A. “Archaeologists, Feminists, and Queers: Sexual Politics in the Construction of the Past,” in Feminist Anthropology: Past, Present, and Future, P.L. Geller and M.K. Stockett, eds.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006, pp. 89-102.
Goldhill, Simon. A Very Queer Family Indeed: Sex, Religion, and the Bensons in Victorian Britain. University of Chicago Press, 2016.
King, Karen L. “Response to Leo Depuydt, The Alleged Gospel of Jesus’s Wife: Assessment and Evaluation of Authenticity.” Harvard Theological Review 107, no. 2, 2014, pp. 190-193.
Mazza, Roberta. Stolen Fragments: Black Markets, Bad Faith, and the Illicit Trade in Ancient Artefacts. Stanford University Press, 2024. 
Museus, S.D., M.C. Ledesma, and T.L. Parker. “Racism and Racial Equity in Higher Education,” ASHE Higher Education Report 42.1, 2015, pp. 1-112. https://doi.org/10.1002/aehe.20067
Schneider, Jennifer & Jacqueline Bichsel. “Representation and Pay Equity in Higher Education Faculty: A Review and Call to Action,” The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, 2024. https://www.cupahr.org/resource/representation-and-pay-equity-in-higher-ed-faculty-trends-april-2024/
Rice, Anne. The Queen of the Damned. Knopf, 1988.
Sabar, Ariel. Veritas: A Harvard Professor, a Con Man and the Gospel of Jesus’s Wife. Knopf, 2020.
Sampson, C. Michael. “Decoding the Provenances of P.Sappho.Obbink,” Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 57, 2020, pp. 143-169.
Sheppard, Kathleen. Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age. St. Martin’s Press, 2024.
Swift, Ellen. Roman Artefacts and Society: Design, Behaviour, and Experience. Oxford, 2017.
Tuross, Noreen. “Accelerated Mass Spectrometry Radiocarbon Determination of Papyrus Samples.” Harvard Theological Review 107, no. 2, 2014, pp. 170–171.