The City Of Oxyrhynchus Series

The city of Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus is an ancient town in the north of Egypt (situated near the modern town of al-Bahnasa), approximately 160km southwest of Cairo on one of the Nile's canals. Many ancient documents written on papyrus were found there—70% of all known papyri originated there. At the turn of the last century, almost half a million fragments of papyri were uncovered at Oxyrhynchus. Though unknown to the general public, this is one of Egypt's most important sites since among the texts were iconic records: fragments of the Gospel of Thomas and texts that illuminate the Classical histories. Though it was a prosperous city during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, little remains of Oxyrhynchus today.

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.

How old are Oxyrhynchus papyri?

The earliest of the papyri are dated to the middle of the 2nd century, so they were copied within about a century of the writing of the original New Testament documents.

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri were discovered in excavations by two British archaeologists, Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt, between 1896 and 1907. These are tens of thousands of documents produced over about a thousand years.

Oxyrhynchus Papyri Collection

The ancient city of Oxyrhynchus in Egypt is the location of a significant archaeological discovery: the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Situated about 100 miles south of Cairo, Oxyrhynchus had a large Greek community that ran the local and provincial government during Hellenistic and Roman times. These papyri represent the written remnants of that Greek community within the larger Egyptian/Roman context.

Oxyrhynchus Papyri

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.

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

Only an estimated 10% are literary. Most papyri found mainly consist 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.

Although most papyri were written in Greek, some texts (Egyptian hieroglyphics, Hieratic, Demotic, primarily Coptic), Latin, and Arabic were also found. Texts

in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and Pahlavi have represented only a tiny percentage of the total.

The fragments of Papyri date to the 1st–7th centuries C.E. and represent almost all the types of documents found at Oxyrhynchus. They include fragments of significant literary texts from Euripides and Thucydides and, most importantly, the earliest surviving fragment of a Biblical New Testament book known as the Letter of James. There are also legal documents (sales records, a list of tax delinquents, a widow's plea to a judge to reconsider a case, a will, etc.) and personal letters. Other exciting documents are a wedding invitation that translates to "Eros invites you to a wedding tomorrow the 29th at the 9th hour" and a mummy foot tag.

Oxyrhynchus Papyri Excavations

These tens of thousands of documents dating over about a thousand years (3rd c. BCE–7th c. C.E.) were found in the town's garbage dump on the desert plateau above the city. Most of the documents are government records discarded when considered no longer necessary. However, many personal documents of private individuals and literary and religious texts made their way to the dumps over the centuries. During the first centuries C.E., a significant Christian community developed at Oxyrhynchus, and over 1/3 of the world's earliest known fragments of the New Testament come from this town.

Origin of the Spurlock Oxyrhynchus Papyri Collection

How did the Spurlock Museum wind up with 29 documents from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri? The Egypt Exploration Fund (EEF) of London ran their excavations with the support of private donations from universities, museums, and individuals. Under a system known as partage (sharing), the EEF received the papyri and other artifacts from the Egyptian government. Without a museum of their own, the EEF divided their finds among their sponsors. The EEF allowed private individual donors to choose a museum that would receive artifacts in their honor. Mr. and Mrs. William G. Hibbard, EEF donors from Chicago, designated the Museum of Classical Archaeology and Art at the U of I as a recipient of materials from the EEF beginning in 1911. In 1914 the EEF announced a particular distribution of Oxyrhynchus Papyri to museums already associated with them. The Classical Museum applied for a set and purchased the 29 papyri in the Spurlock Museum.

Oxyrhynchus, also spelled Oxyrynkhos, was the ancient capital of the 19th Upper Egyptian nome (one of the thirty-six territorial divisions of ancient Egypt; a province on the western edge of the Nile valley, in Al-Minya mu?afa?ah (governorate). It is best known for the numerous papyri uncovered there, first by B.P. Grenfell and A.S. Hunt (1897–1907) and later by Italian scholars early in the 20th century. The papyri—dating from about 250 BCE to 700 CE and written primarily in Greek and Latin but also in demotic Egyptian, Coptic, Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic—include religious texts (e.g., miracles of Serapis, early copies of the New Testament, and such apocryphal books as the Gospel of Thomas) and also masterpieces of classical Greek literature. Among the papyri were texts once considered lost, including selections of early Greek lyric poetry, Pindar, dramatists such