Pictures of Oxyrhynchus Papyri

By N.S. Gill, About.com Guide

Funded by the Greco-Roman Branch of the Egypt Exploration Society, Oxford classicists Grenfell and Hunt explored the Upper Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus in the 1896/97 season and brought back to England many of the papyri they had found in the city's rubbish dumps, which they dated to the 1st through 8th centuries, when Oxyrhynchus was mostly under Roman and Byzantine rule. These are known as Oxyrhynchus papyri. Within 11 months of returning to England, Grenfell and Hunt wrote the first book of Oxyrhynchus papyrus documents. The accompanying picture is from the frontispiece of their 1898 volume called simply The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Part I. They had already written a pamphlet Logia Iesou ('Sayings of Our Lord from an Early Greek Papyrus') in 1897. It was based on an uncial 5.75" X 3.75" fragment of a papyrus they dated to A.D. 150-300.

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• 'Oxyrhynchus Papyri Part I'
• Oxyrhynchus Papyri Fragment of Homer

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