Karanis is located in the Fayum and was excavated between 1924 and 1935 in a project run by the University of Michigan. In a decade of work, some 4,000 papyri and 6,000 ostraca (inscribed ceramic fragments) were uncovered. The excavated materials are now divided between Ann Arbor, Cairo, and regional museums in Egypt. The Psalms fragments are among the pieces now in Cairo.The stratigraphy is complicated.
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