Odysseum, an initiative co-led by ENS-PSL and Biblissima in partnership with the Ministry of National Education, is presented as an innovative editorial platform. Its objective is to make ancient written cultures accessible to a broad audience, from educators and students to the curious, covering the period from Antiquity to the Renaissance, and geographically extending to Europe, the Mediterranean basin, and the Near East.
Drawing on the latest research, the site invites education professionals, students, and anyone interested to discover ancient texts, their accompanying illustrations, and the documents that have been transmitted to us. Whether it's a Mesopotamian clay tablet, a Greek papyrus, a Latin inscription, a Coptic manuscript, or an early printed book, Odysseum highlights the diversity of media and objects that bear witness to these cultures.
This scientific mediation site offers a variety of content: articles, dossiers, videos, podcasts, interviews, and educational resources. It is designed for a diverse audience including teachers, their students, university students, researchers, and anyone curious about ancient civilizations. The goal is to enable exploration of texts, their images, manuscripts, languages, transmission documents, as well as the scholars who study them, their methods, and their discoveries.
Odysseum is the result of an editorial collaboration between five contributors: Antiqui.TXTes, Biblissima, Humanités dans le texte, Journées Découvrir l'Antiquité, and Odysseum itself. Each maintains its own identity while participating in a shared space that fosters dialogue between educational resources, scientific work, mediation, and the discovery of research professions.
The project is guided by the conviction that knowledge derived from research on ancient cultures should be shared beyond the academic world. Biblissima, as a national research infrastructure dedicated to ancient written cultures, plays a key role in federating data, tools, and scientific communities.
Among the contributors, Antiqui.TXTes (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3) publishes investigations and interviews about those who keep ancient text sciences alive. Humanités dans le texte (ENS-PSL) offers a digital anthology of multimedia dossiers combining Greek or Latin texts, translations, and interdisciplinary perspectives. The Journées Découvrir l'Antiquité, supported by an association founded at ENS-PSL, aims to introduce ancient worlds to secondary school students through workshops and conferences.
