UCY secures British funding to preserve rare Egyptian legal archives

The University of Cyprus’ (UCY) department of history and archaeology is set to receive €32,500 in British funding for the implementation of a project to save rare legal documents of Egyptian courts in the period from 1910 to 1950.

“The project aims at a deeper understanding of the public history of Egyptian society, as well as at highlighting its multiculturalism and multi-religiosity,” UCY said in a statement.

Titled Life Around the Courts: Legal Practices of Ethnic and Religious Pluralism in Egypt, the project will examine 50 volumes of rare legal documents of legal records to shed light on the multicultural and multi-religious fabric of Egyptian society during that era.

Both UCY’s archaeology and social and political science departments will be involved in the research.

The initiative will be a collaboration between the university’s departments of archaeology and social and political sciences.

It is supported by the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), which supports for the digitisation and preservation of the materials with its funding.