UPDATE ON THE OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRI that Colgate Rochester Divinity School in New York auctioned off in June:

Opening a letter from antiquity (the Daily Telegraph, Australia, via Archaeologica News)

By ALEX WILLIAMS

December 27, 2003

IT looks like a nondescript dump but it's actually an historical treasure trove which may help scholars unravel the origins of Christianity.

Now Australia can lay claim to a piece of that history, with Macquarie University's recent purchase of three manuscripts from the ancient Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus.

[...]

In 1895, the dump was excavated by two British scholars. All of what they found they sent back to Oxford.

The rest remained in Egypt, except for 29 fragments, which were given to the Colgate Rochester Divinity School in New York.

Recently the school ran into debt, said Dr Don Barker of Macquarie University.

They decided to auction off their Oxyrhynchus papyri � to the fury of local scholars, who feared the papers would vanish forever into private collections.

They appear to have been right. Of 10 lots sold at Sotheby's in June, the world knows only where one of them went � the Macquarie.

Macquarie paid a bit more than $35,000 for its three papyri.

[...]