Rediscovered papyri at Basel University

I BET THERE ARE MORE DRAWERS LIKE THIS IN EUROPEAN LIBRARIES: Ancient papyrus texts found in Basel uni library. A valuable collection of ancient Egyptian papyrus manuscripts has been discovered in the University of Basel’s library after being forgotten for more than a century (The Local Ch).

The 2,000-year-old texts, written in Greek, Latin, Coptic Egyptian and hieratic, were acquired by the university 115 years ago but were subsequently overlooked.

Sabine Huebner, professor of ancient history, recently found them in two drawers in the library’s manuscripts section, the university said on its website.

She began searching for them after responding to a request from a papyrologist (a scholar studying ancient papyrus manuscripts) who wanted to know if the Basel university had a papyrus collection.

The 65 manuscripts are “mostly everyday documents”, such as contracts, letters receipts and petitions, Huebner said in an interview published by the university.

But one of the most interesting ones is a private letter written by a Christian that dates from the first half of the third century, she said.

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So far there is no mention of anything directly relevant to ancient Judaism in the papyri, but there were Jewish communities in Egypt at the indicated time, and something may surface in due course. Watch this space.

The article concludes with this reminder:

Huebner added that only five percent of known papyrus manuscripts in the world have been edited and published while most are sitting in boxes waiting to be analyzed, offering plenty of potential for new research.

And that's just the known ones, not the ones still sitting forgotten in some drawer. I commented on the implications for Old Testament pseudepigrapha research back in 2007 (with reference to a BNTC lecture by Larry Hurtado).