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Oxyrhynchus Papyri

Grenfell (left) and Hunt (right) in about 1896
Oxyrhynchus is located in Egypt
Oxyrhynchus
Oxyrhynchus
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Site where the Oxyrhynchus Papyri were discovered
Excavations at Oxyrhynchus 1, c. 1903.

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (28°32′N 30°40′E / 28.533°N 30.667°E / 28.533; 30.667, modern el-Bahnasa).

The manuscripts date from the time of the Ptolemaic (3rd century BC) and Roman periods of Egyptian history (from 32 BC to the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640 AD).

Only an estimated 10% are literary in nature. Most of the papyri found seem to consist mainly of public and private documents: codes, edicts, registers, official correspondence, census-returns, tax-assessments, petitions, court-records, sales, leases, wills, bills, accounts, inventories, horoscopes, and private letters.[1]

Although most of the papyri were written in Greek, some texts written in Egyptian (Egyptian hieroglyphics, Hieratic, Demotic, mostly Coptic), Latin and Arabic were also found. Texts in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac and Pahlavi have so far represented only a small percentage of the total.[2]

Since 1898, academics have collated and transcribed over 5,000 documents from what were originally hundreds of boxes of papyrus fragments the size of large cornflakes. This is thought to represent only 1 to 2% of what is estimated to be at least half a million papyri still remaining to be conserved, transcribed, deciphered and catalogued. The most recent published volume was Vol. LXXXVII, released on 31 August 2023.

Oxyrhynchus Papyri are currently housed in institutions all over the world. A substantial number are housed in the Bodleian Art Library at Oxford University. There is an online table of contents briefly listing the type of contents of each papyrus or fragment.[3]

Administrative texts

Administrative documents assembled and transcribed from the Oxyrhynchus excavation encompass a wide variety of legal matters, such as marriages, employment contracts, and censuses. Some of the more notable papyri transcribed so far include:

In addition to detailing the cases themselves, these legal documents provide interesting insight into everyday life under Graeco-Roman occupied Egypt, and are often overlooked beside its pharaonic predecessor. For example, Saraeus' hearing with strategus Paison reveal that courts used the Roman names for year, marked by the reign of the emperor, but maintained the Egyptian months, called Pharmouthi.[12]

Secular texts

Although most of the texts uncovered at Oxyrhynchus were non-literary in nature, the archaeologists succeeded in recovering a large corpus of literary works that had previously been thought to have been lost. Many of these texts had previously been unknown to modern scholars.[citation needed]

Greek

Several fragments can be traced to the work of Plato, for instance the Republic, Phaedo, or the dialogue Gorgias, dated around 200–300 CE.[13]

Historiography

The discovery of a historical work known as the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia also revealed new information about classical antiquity. The identity of the author of the work is unknown; many early scholars proposed that it may have been written by Ephorus or Theopompus but many modern scholars are now convinced that it was written by Cratippus.[14][15] The work has won praise for its style and accuracy[16] and has even been compared favorably with the works of Thucydides.[17]

Mathematics

One of the oldest surviving fragments of Euclid's Elements, found at Oxyrhynchus and dated to circa AD 100 (P. Oxy. 29). The diagram accompanies Book II, Proposition 5.[18]

The findings at Oxyrhynchus also turned up the oldest and most complete diagrams from Euclid's Elements.[18] Fragments of Euclid led to a re-evaluation of the accuracy of ancient sources for The Elements, revealing that the version of Theon of Alexandria has more authority than previously believed, according to Thomas Little Heath.[19]

Drama

Lines 96–138 of the Ichneutae on a fragment of Papyrus Oxyrhynchus IX 1174 col. iv–v, which provides the majority of the surviving portion of the play

The classical author who has most benefited from the finds at Oxyrhynchus is the Athenian playwright Menander (342–291 BC), whose comedies were very popular in Hellenistic times and whose works are frequently found in papyrus fragments. Menander's plays found in fragments at Oxyrhynchus include Misoumenos, Dis Exapaton, Epitrepontes, Karchedonios, Dyskolos and Kolax. The works found at Oxyrhynchus have greatly raised Menander's status among classicists and scholars of Greek theatre.

Another notable text uncovered at Oxyrhynchus was Ichneutae, a previously unknown play written by Sophocles. The discovery of Ichneutae was especially significant since Ichneutae is a satyr play, making it only one of two extant satyr plays, with the other one being Euripides's Cyclops.[20][21]

Extensive remains of the Hypsipyle of Euripides and a life of Euripides by Satyrus the Peripatetic were also found at Oxyrhynchus.

Poetry

P. Oxy. 20, verso
The Heracles Papyrus. (P. Oxy. 2331)

Latin

An epitome of seven of the 107 lost books of Livy was the most important literary find in Latin.

Christian texts

Among the Christian texts found at Oxyrhynchus, were fragments of early non-canonical Gospels, Oxyrhynchus 840 (3rd century AD) and Oxyrhynchus 1224 (4th century AD). Other Oxyrhynchus texts preserve parts of Matthew 1 (3rd century: P2 and P401), 11–12 and 19 (3rd to 4th century: P2384, 2385); Mark 10–11 (5th to 6th century: P3); John 1 and 20 (3rd century: P208); Romans 1 (4th century: P209); the First Epistle of John (4th-5th century: P402); the Apocalypse of Baruch (chapters 12–14; 4th or 5th century: P403); the Gospel of Thomas (3rd century AD: P655); The Shepherd of Hermas (3rd or 4th century: P404), and a work of Irenaeus, (3rd century: P405). There are many parts of other canonical books as well as many early Christian hymns, prayers, and letters also found among them.

All manuscripts classified as "theological" in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri are listed below. A few manuscripts that belong to multiple genres, or genres that are inconsistently treated in the volumes of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, are also included. For example, the quotation from Psalm 90 (P. Oxy. XVI 1928) associated with an amulet, is classified according to its primary genre as a magic text in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri; however, it is included here among witnesses to the Old Testament text. In each volume that contains theological manuscripts, they are listed first, according to an English tradition of academic precedence (see Doctor of Divinity).

Old Testament

P. Oxy. VI 846: Amos 2 (LXX)

The original Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) was translated into Greek between the 3rd and 1st centuries BC. This translation is called the Septuagint (or LXX, both 70 in Latin), because there is a tradition that seventy Jewish scribes compiled it in Alexandria. It was quoted in the New Testament and is found bound together with the New Testament in the 4th and 5th century Greek uncial codices Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and Vaticanus. The Septuagint included books, called the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical by Christians, which were later not accepted into the Jewish canon of sacred writings (see next section). Portions of Old Testament books of undisputed authority found among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri are listed in this section.

P. Oxy. <volume in Roman numerals> <publication sequence number>.

Old Testament Deuterocanon (or, Apocrypha)

This name designates several, unique writings (e.g., the Book of Tobit) or different versions of pre-existing writings (e.g., the Book of Daniel) found in the canon of the Jewish scriptures (most notably, in the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Tanakh). Although those writings were no longer viewed as having a canonical status amongst Jews by the beginning of the second century A.D., they retained that status for much of the Christian Church. They were and are accepted as part of the Old Testament canon by the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox churches. Protestant Christians, however, follow the example of the Jews and do not accept these writings as part of the Old Testament canon.

New Testament

Papyrus 𝔓1: Matthew 1

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri have provided the most numerous sub-group of the earliest copies of the New Testament. These are surviving portions of codices (books) written in Greek uncial (capital) letters on papyrus. The first of these were excavated by Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt in Oxyrhynchus, at the turn of the 20th century. Of the 127 registered New Testament papyri, 52 (41%) are from Oxyrhynchus. The earliest of the papyri are dated to the middle of the 2nd century, so were copied within about a century of the writing of the original New Testament documents.[22]

Grenfell and Hunt discovered the first New Testament papyrus (𝔓1), on only the second day of excavation, in the winter of 1896–7. This, together with the other early discoveries, was published in 1898, in the first volume of the now 86-volume work, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri.[23]

New Testament apocrypha

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri collection contains around twenty manuscripts of New Testament apocrypha, works from the early Christian period that presented themselves as biblical books, but were not eventually received as such by the orthodoxy. These works found at Oxyrhynchus include the gospels of Thomas, Mary, Peter, James, The Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache. (All of these are known from other sources as well.) Among this collection are also a few manuscripts of unknown gospels. The three manuscripts of Thomas represent the only known Greek manuscripts of this work; the only other surviving manuscript of Thomas is a nearly complete Coptic manuscript from the Nag Hammadi find.[25] P. Oxy. 4706, a manuscript of The Shepherd of Hermas, is notable because two sections believed by scholars to have been often circulated independently, Visions and Commandments, were found on the same roll.[26]

three libelli are dated: all to the year 250, two to the month, and one to the day;
a warrant to arrest a Christian is dated to 28 February 256.

See also

References

  1. ^ Professor Nickolaos Gonis from University College London, in a film from the British Arts and Humanities Research Council on Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project.
  2. ^ World Archaeology Issue 36, 7 July 2009
  3. ^ Search by table of contents; "Oxyrhynchus Online Image Database". Imaging Papyri Project. Retrieved 25 May 2007. A listing of what each fragment contains.
  4. ^ Jarus, Owen. Live Science. 16 April 2014.
  5. ^ Sharpe, Emily. Armchair archaeologists reveal details of life in ancient Egypt. The Art Newspaper. 29 February 2016.
  6. ^ Rathbone, Dominic. Documentary of an event organised by the Hellenic Society in association with the Roman Society and the Egypt Exploration Society. 28 April 2012.
  7. ^ Brewster, Ethel H. (1927). "A Weaver of Oxyrhynchus: Sketch of a Humble Life in Roman Egypt". Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association. 58: 132–154. doi:10.2307/282908. JSTOR 282908.
  8. ^ Grenfell, Bernard P.; Hunt, Arthur S. (1906). "Papyrus Cattaoui". Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete. 3 (1). doi:10.1515/apf.1906.3.1.55. ISSN 0066-6459. S2CID 202510388.
  9. ^ Bernard P. Grenhell and Arthur S. Hunt (1899). The Oxyrhynchus Papyri part 2. p. 305.
  10. ^ The Oxyrhynchus papyri. London: Egypt Exploration Fund. 1898.
  11. ^ Bernard P. Grenhell and Arthur S. Hunt (1899). The Oxyrhynchus Papyri part 2.
  12. ^ The Oxyrhynchus papyri. London: Egypt Exploration Fund. 1898. pp. 79–81.
  13. ^ Bernard Pyne Grenfell; Arthur Surridge Hunt (1898). "The Oxyrhynchus papyri". p. 187.
  14. ^ e.g. Goligher, W. A. (1908). "The New Greek Historical Fragment Attributed to Theopompus or Cratippus". English Historical Review. 23 (90). Oxford University Press: 277–283. doi:10.1093/ehr/xxiii.xc.277. JSTOR 550009.
  15. ^ Harding, Philipp (1987). "The Authorship of the Hellenika Oxyrhynchia". The Ancient History Bulletin. 1: 101–104. ISSN 0835-3638.
  16. ^ Meister, Klaus (2003). "Oxyrhynchus, the historian from". In Hornblower, Simon; Spawforth Antony (eds.). Oxford Classical Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-866172-X.
  17. ^ Westlake, H. D. (1960). "Review of Hellenica Oxyrhynchia by Vittorio Bartoletti". The Classical Review. New Series. 10 (3). Cambridge University Press: 209–210. doi:10.1017/s0009840x00165448. JSTOR 706964. S2CID 162707716.
  18. ^ a b Bill Casselman. "One of the Oldest Extant Diagrams from Euclid". University of British Columbia. Retrieved 2008-09-26.
  19. ^ Thomas Little Heath (1921). "A history of Greek mathematics". Oxford, The Clarendon Press.
  20. ^ West, M. L. (1994). Ancient Greek Music. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press at the Oxford University Press. p. 281. ISBN 978-0198149750. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
  21. ^ Sophocles' Ichneutae was adapted, in 1988, into a play entitled The Trackers of Oxyrhynchus, by British poet and author Tony Harrison, featuring Grenfell and Hunt as main characters.
  22. ^ Eberhard Nestle, Erwin Nestle, Barbara Aland and Kurt Aland (eds), Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th edition, (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2001).
  23. ^ Philip W Comfort and David P Barrett. The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts. Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers Incorporated, 2001.
  24. ^ Wallace, Daniel B. (4 September 2023). ""Sayings of Jesus" papyrus (P.Oxy. 5575) now published". Daniel B. Wallace.
  25. ^ Kirby, Peter. "The Gospel of Thomas", Early Christian Writings. Retrieved June 30, 2007.
  26. ^ Barbantani, Silvia. "Review: Gonis (N.), Obbink (D.) [et al.] (edd., trans.) The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Volume LXIX. (Graeco-Roman Memoirs 89.)" (2007) The Classical Review, 57:1 p.66 Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0009840X06003209

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