Five Facts about Philip Venticinque, AB’01, AM’02, PhD’09

(Photography by Somaiyya Ahmad)

Venticinque became dean of students in the College this past February.

Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93

The Core

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Fall/24

1

He came to Hyde Park in 1997: “I’m a 28th year.”

2

As a classics major, he learned Latin and Greek. In graduate school he added Coptic, “the last phase of native Egyptian,” and became a scholar of Roman and Byzantine Egypt.

3

He taught classics for ten years at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, commuting from his home in Hyde Park. This fall he is back in the classroom to teach Greece and Rome: Texts, Traditions, Transformations.

Papyrus Salt merchants’ guild ordinance — Salt merchants’ guild ordinance (P.Mich. V 245, 47 CE), which appeared on the cover of Venticinque’s 2016 book *Honor Among Thieves: Craftsmen, Merchants, and Associations in Roman and Late Roman Egypt* (University of Michigan Press). (© Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden Ägyptens [CC By 3.0])

4

He is a papyrologist, meaning he studies works written on papyrus (as well as on pottery sherds). “I used to study ancient petitions,” he says. “I had no idea that I was preparing for a life of receiving student petitions.”