More on the "Ancient Lives" Oxyrhynchus Papyri project

MORE ON THE "ANCIENT LIVES" OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRI PROJECT:

First, some background on the genesis of the project:

Research grant combines astrophysics and archeology to decipher ancient texts
July 26, 2011 By Jenny Allan (PhysOrg.com)

Lucy Fortson, an astrophysicist and Associate Professor in the College of Science and Engineering at the University of Minnesota is part of a collaboration called Ancientlives which has received a grant to apply the analysis tools of astrophysics to help decipher a collection of ancient Egyptian papyri.

Co-PIs Nita Krevans and Philip Sellew, faculty members in Classical and Near Eastern Studies, will be working with Professor Fortson and an international team, including a new University of Minnesota post-doctoral fellow in papyrology, to oversee citizen transcribers who will volunteer to identify letters on these ancient scraps of books and documents.

The collection known as the Oxyrynchus Papyri was discovered over a hundred years ago yet archeologists and classics scholars have only managed to transcribe a handful of these fragments. Fortson said the papyri came from an ancient garbage dump and mundane documents such as insurance claims and contracts were mixed in with Homer and works by the ancient playwright Menander. Classics scholars originally had to rely on their personal knowledge of ancient texts in order to determine the meaning of the texts and thus far only 15% of the collection has been edited. The hope is that Ancient Lives will help complete the editing process by harnessing the brain-power of volunteers—no knowledge of ancient Greek required.

[...]

It's not too far off to say that only "a handful" of the papyri have been transcribed, but go and sit down and think about the fact that this "handful" consists of seventy-five large volumes. (A few of these are online.)

(Via Abu 'l-Rayhan Al-Biruni.)

Second, Alan Boyle at the Cosmic Log blog has some more information about the new fragment of a lost gospel which keeps getting mentioned:

Among the items recently picked out of the pile are fragments of a previously unknown apocryphal gospel that describes Jesus casting out demons, a lost play by Euripides titled "Melanippe the Wise" and newfound letters attributed to the philosopher Epicurus.

[...]

Update for 5:30 p.m. ET Aug. 1: Over the weekend, Oxford papyrologist James Brusuelas sent an email with further details about the juiciest bits of papyri:

Gospel: In its current edited state, the gospel has not been overtly connected to any other sources. It remains a hot topic amongst historians of religion and Christianity. One must think about how the wider apocryphal (i.e., not included in the accepted canon of biblical texts) and biblical stories of Jesus relate to and inform the very act of casting out demons. Where does this particular narrative fit in the tradition of Jesus' acts? We have the text, we've identified it. Now it has to be studied and debated (that's why this project can be so cool).

The e-mail from Brusuelas also has information on the new Euripides play.

A couple of other non-canonical gospel fragments (British Library 840 and 1224) are noted in the Wikipedia Oxyrhynchus Gospels article. No mention yet of this new one, Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 5072.

Background here, where there is a photo of the new gospel fragment. There have been many PaleoJudaica posts on the Oxyrhynchus papyri. Some interesting ones are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here (and follow those links).

UPDATE: The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Wikipedia page has lists of biblical and biblical apocrypha manuscripts (etc.). The list of apocryphal gospels is much longer than in the Oxyrhynchus Gospels page noted above, but the long list has also not yet been updated to include 5072. (HT Roberto Labanti.)

On the Oxyrhynchus Papyri

OXYRHYNCHUS WATCH: The Oxyrhynchus Papyri: From ancient trash to historical treasure. What can the famous papyrus corpus tell us about the ordinary people of late-ancient Egypt? Richard J Britton investigate (The Past).

Imagine that, 1,500 years from today, an archaeologist finds the remnants of your garbage in a dump. They might find your shopping lists, receipts, insurance contracts, bank statements, your will, personal letters to family and friends, and maybe even pages from a journal therapy course. Perhaps they might find religious or spiritual writings, a few old newspapers, and a few torn pages from your favourite thriller or romance novels.

Such a scenario should give you a flavour of what Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt found in their excavation of a site at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt between 1896 and 1907. Here, within a city rubbish dump, the archaeologists found a seemingly inexhaustible trove of papyrus documents dating to the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods that have revolutionised our understanding of late-ancient Hellenic Egyptian society and culture.

[...]

It's always good to come back to the story of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. This article focuses on some of the quite interesting non-literary texts.

For a great many PaleoJudaica posts on the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, run "Oxyrhynchus" through the search engine.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

The Oxyrhynchus papyri and an army of papyrologists

AN ARMY OF PAPYROLOGISTS: This is an excellent idea. Oxford University press release:

Public to hunt for lost gospels, literature & letters

26 Jul 11


Papyri of a lost gospel from the Oxyrhynchus collection
Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 5072 (3rd century AD), Uncanonical Gospel. Credit: Photo courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society and Imaging Papyri Project, Oxford. All rights reserved.

Members of the public are being asked to help decode papyri, in order to find fragments of lost gospels, works of literature, and letters about everyday life in ancient Egypt, in a new project launched by Oxford University.

Ancient Lives (ancientlives.org), which launches today, is putting hundreds of thousands of images of fragments of papyri written in Greek online. Researchers say that ‘armchair archaeologists’ visiting the website can help with cataloguing the collection, and could make amazing finds, such as the recent discovery of fragments of a previously unknown ‘lost’ gospel which describes Jesus Christ casting out demons.

Nobody knows who wrote this lost gospel: it is part of a treasure trove of papyri recovered in the early 20th century from the Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus, the ‘City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish’. The texts were written in Greek during a period when Egypt was under the control of a Greek (and later Roman) settler class. Many of the papyri had not been read for over a thousand years.

Because of the huge number of images involved researchers need volunteers to look through and catalogue them or transcribe the text using a simple web interface, which displays both known and unknown texts.

‘It’s with the digital advancements of our own age, that we're able to open up this window into the past, and see a common human experience in that intimate, traditional medium, handwriting,’ said lead developer and designer, William MacFarlane of Oxford University’s Department of Physics.

Experts have been studying the collection for over a hundred years. It is because of Oxyrhynchus that we now have lost masterpieces that went missing during the medieval period: the lost poetry of Sappho, the lost comedies of Menander and the lost plays of Sophocles. There are personal documents too – we learn from a letter that Aurelius the sausage-maker has taken out a loan of 9000 silver denarii, perhaps to expand his business, whilst in another letter of 127 AD a grandmother, called Sarapias, asks that her daughter is brought home so that she can be present at the birth of her grandchild.

‘Discovering new texts is always exciting,’ explains team papyrologist Dr James Brusuelas, ‘but the fact that you’re reading a piece of literature or a private letter that hasn’t been read in over a thousand years, that’s what I like about papyrology.’ Paul Ellis, an imaging specialist who assisted with the digitization of the papyrus texts, said: ‘Online images are a window into ancient lives.’

The project is a collaboration between Oxford University papyrologists, the Egypt Exploration Society, and a team in Oxford University’s Department of Physics who specialise in building ‘citizen science’ projects that allow anyone to make an authentic contribution to research.

‘Until now only experts could explore this incredible collection,’ said project leader Dr Chris Lintott of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, ‘but with so much of the collection unstudied there’s plenty for everyone. We’re excited to see what visitors to ancientlives.org can unearth.’

‘Papyrologists are well known for friendship among those interested in ancient texts,’ said Project Director Dr Dirk Obbink, Oxford University Lecturer in Papyrology and Greek Literature at the University of Oxford. ‘This effort is pervaded by a spirit of collaboration. We aim to transcribe as much as possible of the original papyri, and then identify and reconstruct the text. No single pair of eyes can see and read everything. From scientists and professors to school students and ancient enthusiasts, everyone has something to contribute – and gain.’

Ancientlives.org is part of the www.zooniverse.org network of public participation projects, which includes Old Weather, which aims to rescue weather records contained in World War I ship’s logs. More than 500,000 logbook pages have been transcribed so far. The original Zooniverse project was Galaxy Zoo, and a total of more than 400,000 people have registered to take part.

The project was supported by a grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the John Fell Fund, and is indebted to the Oxford University Department of Classics and the Egypt Exploration Society, London who oversee the Oxyrhynchus Collection in the Sackler Library, Oxford as part of a wide range of scholarly and outreach activities.

Should you take part in this initiative and you happen to run across anything that might be from a known or lost Old Testament pseudepigraphon, I would be grateful if you would drop me a note to let me know. The More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project (also here) is still recruiting texts.

Earlier posts on "An Army of" projects are here (for the Cairo Geniza, where I see I called for something similar for the Oxyrhynchus papyri) and here (the link is dead, but it was about the eTACT project). The title is nicked from Glenn Reynolds's book, An Army of Davids.

UPDATE (4 August): Lots more here.

They were still excavating Oxyrhynchus in 2020.

OXYRHYNCHUS WATCH: New findings in Oxyrhynchus archaeological site (University of Barcelona press release).

The archaeological mission returned this March to the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt. The work had to finish early due to the COVID-19 epidemics, although the campaign could focus on the study of architectonic structures and funerary rituals from the Saite Period (corresponding to the Late Period of Egypt, which started in the 7th century BC) until the Christian-Byzantine period.

[...]

And they are still finding inscribed materials:

They highlighted the remains of a papyrus with a Greek carved text, which is under study, and a gravestone with an engraved text in Coptic.

The phrase "Greek carved text" is "una inscripció en grec" in the Catalan release: "a Greek inscription."

For earlier substantive PaleoJudaica posts on the Oxyrhynchus papyri, see here links, and also the blog archive. For the recent scandal of the missing Oxyrhynchus papyri, see here and links.

UPDATE: I have adjusted my title to make clear that the excavation has been suspended due to the coronavirus crisis.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

A LECTURE ON THE OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRI at the British Academy in London:

New Greek Texts From Oxyrhynchus

7pm to 8.30pm, Wednesday 24 June 2009
British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1

Convenors:Professor Eric Handley, CBE, FBA, University of Cambridge
and Dr Dirk Obbink , University of Oxford

Speakers: Dr Dirk Obbink, Professor Peter Parsons, FBA, University of Oxford and Dr Dorothy Thompson, FBA, University of Cambridge

Just over a hundred years ago, on a site some 100 miles south of Cairo, two Oxford scholars, on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Society, excavated some 50,000 pieces of ancient books and documents that had been discarded in the city dump, and had survived the centuries in the dry climate.

The excavators were Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt. They devoted successive seasons to their task between 1897 and 1907, and gave more years still to publishing some of their significant discoveries. The site, by its Greek name, is Oxyrhynchus—'The City of the Sharp-nosed Fish', as Peter Parsons calls it in the title of a much-admired book that appeared in 2007. More than seventy volumes of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri have so far been published. They continue to reveal texts of Greek literature otherwise lost to the modern world, together with fragments of Christian gospels, technical treatises, tax returns, petitions to the authorities, private letters, wills and a host of other documents that give a unique insight into the life of the city and the Greco-Roman civilization of which it was part.

The presentation evening offers an opportunity to preview some of the exciting new texts to come from Oxyrhynchus and to consider such questions as did Euripides write two versions of his play Medea? How do modern methods of image-making work to recover an unknown classical text? How much can a personal letter reveal of the world about the writer? There will also be an opportunity to hear something of the present state and future prospects of the Oxyrhynchus project as a whole. A compact display of papyri, photographs, and other relevant material will also be on view.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Please note our registration and seating policy:
This event is free of charge. There is no advance registration for this event and no tickets will be issued.
The rooms for this event will be open from 6.30pm onwards - please do not arrive at the Academy before this time.
The first 100 audience members arriving at the Academy will be offered a seat in our Lecture Room where this event will take place. The next 50 people to arrive will be offered a seat in our Overflow Room which has a video and audio link to the Lecture Room.



The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AH Tel: 020 7969 5200, Fax: 020 7969 5300, Web: www.britac.ac.uk

The Oxford Oxyrhynchus papyri online

THE AWOL BLOG: The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Database.

This database presents digitised images of the published papyri belonging to the Egypt Exploration Society and housed in the Sackler Library at Oxford. The collection comprises thousands of texts on papyrus and parchment and is the largest of its kind in the world. It includes principally literary, documentary, and other texts in Greek, dating from the second century BCE to the seventh century CE; other languages represented include Latin, Demotic, and Coptic. Most of the papyri come from excavations conducted at the site of Oxyrhynchus (modern Behnesa) by Oxford classicists Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt in 1896–1907 on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society). Since then, scholars have worked continuously to catalogue, decipher, and publish this material.

The site of the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus is best known for its trove of many thousands of ancient papyri found in a trash dump. For many posts on it and them, start here and just follow those links. For the missing Oxyrhynchus papyri scandal, see here and links. Cross-file under Oxyrhynchus Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

TECHNOLOGY WATCH: According to the Independent, new imagining techniques are allowing the recovery of a vast amount of new information from the Oxyrhynchus papyri.

Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world

Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome

By David Keys and Nicholas Pyke

17 April 2005

For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible.

Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed.

In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament.

The web page of the Oxford Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project is here (and note this page especially), but there's nothing about the breakthrough there yet.

The Independent article describes the techniques as follows:

Since it was unearthed more than a century ago, the hoard of documents known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri has fascinated classical scholars. There are 400,000 fragments, many containing text from the great writers of antiquity. But only a small proportion have been read so far. Many were illegible.

Now scientists are using multi-spectral imaging techniques developed from satellite technology to read the papyri at Oxford University's Sackler Library. The fragments, preserved between sheets of glass, respond to the infra-red spectrum - ink invisible to the naked eye can be seen and photographed.

The fragments form part of a giant "jigsaw puzzle" to be reassembled. Missing "pieces" can be supplied from quotations by later authors, and grammatical analysis.

Much like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

And this passage really caught my eye:

When it has all been read - mainly in Greek, but sometimes in Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic, Arabic, Nubian and early Persian - the new material will probably add up to around five million words. Texts deciphered over the past few days will be published next month by the London-based Egypt Exploration Society, which financed the discovery and owns the collection.

We are already aware that the Oxyrhynchus papyri contain some of our earliest fragments of important Old Testament pseudepigrapha (2 Baruch is an example), and it's on our agenda to go through the published material to look for hitherto unidentified pseudepigrapha fragments for the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project. With luck, perhaps these new developments will add to our corpus.

UPDATE: David Meadows, over at Rogue Classicism says that most of the information in this article is a couple of years old and he speculates that this is opening hype for an as yet unannounced documentary. Maybe so, but some of the most interesting information about the new texts is presented as less than a week old. Is this poor editing of an older article or is the information actually new? Anyhow, it's new to me and has never been noted on PaleoJudaica before, so I'm glad they ran the piece.

UPDATE (18 April): Wieland Willker is skeptical.

UPDATE: More from David Meadows. BBC Radio 4 had a documentary on Oxyrhynchus.

UPDATE (20 April): More here.

UPDATE (1 May): More here, here, and here.

Some "Oxyrhynchus papyri" are not from Oxyrhynchus

VARIANT READINGS: The Oxyrhynchus Papyri of Dubious Provenance and Editorial Choice (Brent Nongbri). Excerpt:

But, to bring it back to my original point: If there are such unpublished pieces, the majority of which probably have certain Oxyrhynchite provenance, why are editors choosing to publish pieces of dubious provenance in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri series? I’m genuinely curious.

It's a good question. The questions about the no-longer-first-century Mark fragment just published in the series are helping to draw attention to it.

Dr. Nongbri has been posting a lot lately on the Oxyrhynchus papyri, so go have a look at his blog.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

More golden tongues, but still no Cleopatra's tomb

EGYTPIAN ARCHAEOLGY: Meet the lawyer-turned-archaeologist leading the search for Cleopatra's tomb. Kathleen Martinez has risked everything in her quest to find Egyptian queen's resting place, she tells 'The National' (Hamza Hendawi, The National).

This article gives a good brief account of Ms. Martinez's background and her archaeological work at Taposiris Magna. But one has to read far along to learn that the only new announcement is that there might be a new announcement soon:

But now, the end may be in sight.

“Sometimes I feel like I would like to update the people on what I am doing,” she said, explaining that only Egyptian authorities, not the relevant archaeologists, announce new discoveries.

“They may announce by the end of this year, that I am now closer to my objective,” she said cryptically.

“It is very improbable that I won’t discover the tomb,” she said, striking a confident note as she sipped a glass of lemonade at the lounge of a Nile-side Cairo hotel.

I hope she's right.

For more on Cleopatra VII (THE Cleopatra) see here and links. Plutarch reports that she knew Hebrew and Aramaic.

For the excavation at Taposiris Magna and the hope that it will lead to the tomb of Cleopatra, start here and follow the links. That link is about the discovery of two mummies there which were equipped with golden tongues. That leads to the other part of my header above. Two more golden tongued mummies have just been discovered, this time at at Oxyrhynchus:

Golden tongues found in mouths of ancient Egyptian couple. Tombs of man and woman dating back 2,500 years found at Oxyrhynchus; male mummy’s sarcophagus still sealed with hundreds of funerary items inside (Times of Israel).

The article also reports that three more golden tongues were recovered "outside the tombs," whatever that means.

The site of the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus is best known for its trove of many thousands of ancient papyri found in a trash dump. For many posts on it and them, start here (plus here) and just keep following those links. For the missing Oxyrhynchus papyri scandal, see here and links. Cross-file under Oxyrhynchus Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Review of Blumell and Wayment, Christian Oxyrhynchus

REVIEWS OF BIBLICAL AND EARLY CHRISTIAN STUDIES: Christian Oxyrhynchus.

2016.09.27 | Lincoln H. Blumell and Thomas A. Wayment (eds.), Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2015. ISBN 9781602585393.

Review by Matthew J. Hama, Trinity Western University

Excerpt:

In Christian Oxyrhynchus, Blumell and Wayment deliver an invaluable resource for both students and scholars engaged in or connected to Oxyrhynchus study and research. Through their work, students and scholars are afforded a unique glimpse into the early Christian world and are given an ideal foundation for future scholarship in this area. This groundbreaking volume is rich in content, excellent in organization, hugely relevant to a wide range of audiences, and highly recommended for both students and scholars alike.

Past PaleoJudaica posts noting announcements and reviews of the book are here, here, here, and here.

On the new noncanonical gospel fragments from Oxyrhynchus

NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: Early Christianity, fragment by fragment. A new published volume of ancient papyri contains sayings, attributed to Jesus, that were previously unknown—including a dialogue with a disciple named Mary ( Elizabeth Schrader Polczer, The Christian Century).

Last summer brought big news for scholars of early Christianity. Three previously unknown gospel fragments were published for the first time as part of an ongoing series, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. These three Greek manuscript fragments, which scholars date between the second to the fourth centuries CE, all purport to preserve otherwise unknown sayings of Jesus.

[...]

This article gives a good introduction to the Oxyrhynchus papyri and an excellent overview of these three noncanoncial gospel texts.

For PaleoJudaica posts on the new Jesus sayings fragment P.Oxy. 87.5575 (a.k.a. P.Oxy. 5575), see the links collected here.

Cross-file under Oxyrhynchus Watch.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Review of Leith, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume LXXX

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW:

M. Hirt, D. Leith, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Volume LXXX. Graeco-Roman memoirs, 101. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 2014. Pp. xiv, 176; 14 p. of plates. ISBN 9780856982224. $170.00.

Reviewed by W. Andrew Smith, Shepherds Theological Seminary (w.andrew.smith@gmail.com)

The eightieth volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, which introduces items 5219–5257 of the collection, was prepared by Marguerite Hirt (University of Cambridge), David Leith (University of Exeter), and W. Benjamin Henry (University College London). Additional contributions were made by Daniela Colomo (Research Associate and Curator of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri), Nick Gonis (University College London), and Livia Tagliapietra (PhD student in Classics, University of Cambridge). While most volumes in this series group texts in categories of theological, literary, and documentary papyri, this one presents a collection of medical texts (perhaps following the themed approach of volume 79's Games, Competitors, and Performers in Roman Egypt), making it the "largest single collection of medical papyri to be published" (vi).

[...]

Some of the material helps perfect our knowledge of the text of already-known ancient medical documents. Bit by bit, a letter at a time, whatever it takes. Until we're done.

Greek Matthew and 6 Ezra fragments from Oxyrhynchus

VARIANT READINGS: New Article on P.Oxy. 1 2 and P.Oxy. 7 1010 (Brent Nongbri).

Behind the bland title of Brent's post lies a very interesting article on two long-known manuscripts that deserve more attention:

AnneMarie [Luijendijk] and I gave a general overview of Christian codices among the Oxyrhynchus papyri and then focused on two pieces, P.Oxy. 1 2, a papyrus bifolium containing the beginning of the Gospel According to Matthew in Greek and P.Oxy. 7 1010, a parchment leaf from a codex containing 6 Ezra.

The Matthew papyrus is dated to the third century and is of interest to New Testament scholars.

The second manuscript is of particular interest to PaleoJudaica. The full text of 6 Ezra is known only in a Latin translation appended to the Latin version of 4 Ezra. This Latin combination of 4-5-6 Ezra is known as 2 Esdras. This small, late-antique parchment fragment preserves the little that we have of the Greek original of 6 Ezra.

This open-access article gives background on Christian papyri from Oxyrhynchus. It discusses the details of this manuscript and explores the question of its provenance (Jewish or Christian). The authors also argue that the manuscript was a stand-alone one containing only 6 Ezra. This is an important datum for questions about the text's origin, transmission, and attachment to 4-5 Ezra. The article also points to an intriguing reference to a copy of an Ezra book–conceivably this very manuscript—in a fourth-century personal letter, also discovered at Oxyrhynchus.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Homer at Oxyrhyncus?

OXYRHYNCHUS WATCH: Archaeological mission in Oxyrhynchus has found Homer's 'Iliad' inside a Roman-era mummy (PhysOrg/University of Barcelona, edited by Stephanie Baum, reviewed by Robert Egan).

During the campaign carried out between November and December 2025, Núria Castellano's team discovered a Roman-era mummy in Tomb 65 of Sector 22 that featured an unusual element: a papyrus placed on the abdomen as part of the embalming ritual. In previous campaigns, the Oxyrhynchus Archaeological Mission had already documented papyri written in Greek in similar positions, but all contained magical or ritualistic content. A literary text such as the "Iliad" had never before been found in this context.

The text is from the Catalogue of Ships in Iliad book II.

For a recent overview of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, see here. There are endless PaleoJudaica post on the site and the papyri in the archives.

Visit PaleoJudaica daily for the latest news on ancient Judaism and the biblical world.

Blumell and Wayment, Christian Oxyrhynchus

New Book on Christian Oxyrhynchus Texts (Peter J. Gurry, ETC). The book sounds very interesting, but note this:

We asked the publishers for a review copy so that we could report as to whether the book was any good or not, but they said, “Due to the size and cost of this book, we are not able to mail physical copies for review in Britain.” So we don’t know at this point of time whether this book is any good or not. Hence: caveat emptor.

An earlier book on the Oxyrhynchus papyri by L. H. Blumell was noted here a few years ago. Many, many other past posts on the Oxyrhynchus papyri etc. are here and links.

Parchments from Oxyrhynchus

BRICE C. JONES: Parchment Manuscripts Discovered at Oxyrhynchus. Most of the Oxyrhynchus texts are papyri (i.e., paper made from reeds), but there are a few parchments (made from animal leather. Brice Jones lists them here. There are a couple of New Testament manuscripts, one may be an otherwise unknown NT apocryphon, one is an amulet that quotes the NT, and another is a copy of LXX Genesis.

Much more on the Oxyrhynchus papyri can be found here and links.

Oxyrhynchus papyri at About.com Ancient History

THE OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRI are discussed in an About.com Ancient/Classical History blog post:

Little-Known Artifacts Shed Light on Early Christianity
Oxyrhynchus Papyri Are Considered Top Early Christian Find

By Cynthia Astle, About.com Contributing Writer

Nothing new, but a convenient capsule summary of some recent material on the subject.

Via N.S. Gill, Oxyrhynchus and Lost Early Christian Documents.

Background here and (e.g.) here (follow the links).

OXYRHYNCHUS PAPYRI (ETC.) WATCH: The Washington Post has an article ("Imaging Technology Makes Ancient Text Readable") on the use of multispectral imaging on the Oxyrhynchus papyri and the Herculaneum scrolls, with special attention to work at BYU. On a quick read-through I didn't see any notable inaccuracies. A couple of excerpts:

Obbink, who holds appointments at both Oxford and the University of Michigan, is a leading authority on ancient classics and conservation. He won a 2001 MacArthur Fellowship for his work at both Oxyrhynchus and Herculaneum. In 1996, he reconstructed Philodemus's "On Piety," a treatise on the gods and religion, from seemingly disparate pieces of the Herculaneum scrolls.

At Oxyrhynchus, Obbink is trying to repeat this achievement by recovering Hesiod's "Catalogue of Women," a genealogy describing the love affairs of gods with mortals and the offspring they produced. "We have so many pieces now that the text can be said to exist," Obbink said. "There are a lot of gaps, but you can read it."

That being the case, the following is especially interesting to someone who works on the Old Testament pseudepigrapha, which often were written in or now survive translated into most of these same languages:

Obbink and his colleagues have found a variety of languages and scripts in the fragments. Besides Greek and Latin, they include Hieratic (cursive hieroglyphs), Demotic (hieroglyphic shorthand), Coptic (Egyptian with the Greek alphabet), Aramaic, Hebrew, Persian, Old Nubian, Syriac and, in the later deposits, Arabic.

Obbink is going through 725 boxes of material to pick out the promising fragments, which are assigned to students "who translate them and try to figure them out," he said. "It's part of learning Greek and Latin, and it sharpens your editing skills."

OXYRHYNCHUS UPDATE: David Meadows collects all the latest news over at Rogue Classicism. Curiouser and curiouser ...

UPDATE: Important news on the Textual Criticism list. Wieland Willker forwards a message by Oxford papyrologist Dr. Dirk Obbink on the PAPY list regarding the Independent. Follow the link to read the whole thing.

Like other collections we do not normally announce our findings in advance of publication. In this case a team from ISPART (formerly CPART) at Brigham Young University in Utah spent last week creating MSI images (that is, at all ranges of the light band) of papyri in Oxford as part of a project begun in 2002. We scanned portions of the unrolled Herculaneum papyrus in the Bodleian Library and experimented on problematic carbonised and non-carbonised samples in the Oxyrhynchus collection in the Sackler Library ...

Details of the results follow.

The London press got wind of this (the unrolled Herculaneum papyrus of Epicurus' Peri physeos in the British Library is being done this week) and reported enthusiastically, if selectively. No mention, for example, was made of the success on the Bodleian Herculaneum papyrus (P.Herc. 118), now thereby revealed to be a Peri Epikourou or at any rate a pre-Philodemean history of the school. The article certainly should not have said (if it did) that all the papyri had been discovered yesterday, only that we made significant (and sufficiently exciting) advances in reading and confirmation of identifications with some, the same with some other pieces, while still others were identified for the first time, some standard classical authors, as usual, while others remain complete mysteries. ...

This does seem to confirm that the project has made "significant advances" recently, including identifying new fragments of classical authors. It clarifies that both the Oxyrhynchus and the Herculaneum texts were involved. We are not told how "the London press got wind of this" and it seems that Dr. Obbink himself has not seen the Independent article, which seems odd. He will be presenting the results in Berkeley this month and Oxford next month. I hope that means that something will go up on the Oxford Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project website soon as well.

Back to Oxyrhynchus

EXCAVATIONS AT OXYRHYNCHUS are resuming:

Spain: Catalan archaeological mission returns to Egypt

06 February, 18:36

(ANSAmed) - MADRID, FEBRUARY 6 - One year after the uprising in Egypt, the mission of archaeologists and Egyptologists of the University of Barcelona, working in collaboration with the Catalan Egyptology Society, returns to Cairo to resume its excavation work in Oxirrinco. The news is reported by mission director and Egyptology professor Josep Padro, quoted by La Vanguardia.

The goal of the Spanish mission, entering its 20th year, is to ''continue excavating the remains of a large Greek-Roman temple which, because of its position and texts found on papyrus scrolls, could be the Serapeum, dedicated to the god Serapis'', Pardo explains.


[...]

Contra the next paragraph in the article, the most famous find at Oxyrhynchus is the massive cache of papyri, of which only about one percent have been deciphered and published in the last century or so (background here and here, and here with many links). I hope the Spanish expedition stays safe. I also hope they find more papyri.

(Via the Agade list.)

UPDATE: I see that the article covered in the first background link says that 1% of the fragments have been edited and published, whereas the one at the third link says 15%. Also, Larry Hurtado quoted the first figure in a 2007 address at the BNTC. In any case, a lot of work remains to be done.