Papyrological research has been carried out at Macquarie since the early 1970s under a variety of research programs. The Museum of Ancient Cultures holds the largest collection of papyri, parchment, and ostraca in the Southern Hemisphere, and the Macquarie Papyri Research and Development Committee oversees ongoing work publishing the collection. A number of research projects within the ACRC focus on papyrological evidence to study aspects of Graeco-Roman and late antique Egypt including the Greek language, monasticism, Coptic script, and Early Christianity in Egypt.

• Bilingualism and the Greek Language in Hellenistic Egypt: Evidence from the Zenon Archive
• Communication Networks in Upper Egyptian Monastic Communities
• Language, Literacy, and Acculturation in Early Ptolemaic Egypt
• Papyri from the Rise of Christianity in Egypt 
• Religious Authority and Linguistic Change in Late Antique Egypt: Non-Elite Perspectives on the Rise of Monasticism in Contemporary Documents
• Scribal Practice in Duplicate Documents on Papyrus from Graeco-Roman Egypt
• Words from the Sand: A Lexical Analysis of Early Greek Papyri from Egypt