Management and Policies
Management
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Collection, which comprises the papyrus texts excavated by Grenfell and Hunt at Oxyrhynchus and other sites in Egypt and related materials, belongs mainly to the Egypt Exploration Society (apart from some personal items of Grenfell and Hunt and papyri purchased directly by them), and is housed by the University of Oxford in its Art, Archaeology and Ancient World Library.
The EES appoints a Management Committee to oversee the collection and its publication. The current chairman of the committee is Professor Dominic Rathbone of King's College London. The basic work of organising the publication of the papyri is undertaken by the General Editors, at present Prof. Amin Benaissa (University of Oxford) and Prof. Nikolaos Gonis (University College London). They are appointed by the Management Committee and are jointly responsible to it for the assignment of papyri and the preparation of texts for publication in the annual volume of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. They draw on the regular assistance of the Advisory Editors, currently Prof. Giovan Battista D’Alessio (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II), Dr W. Benjamin Henry (University of Oxford), and Prof. Lucia Prauscello (University of Oxford), and also contributions by many other papyrologists in the UK and abroad.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri project has been granted the title of Academy Research Project by the British Academy, which provides some financial support. The physical publication is funded by the EES. In recent years, the preparation of texts for publication has been funded mostly by grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The current AHRC-funded project, running from March 2022 to March 2026, is entitled Hexameters beyond the canon: new poetry on papyri from Roman and Byzantine Egypt. The Principal Investigator is Prof. L. Prauscello, with Prof. A. Benaissa and Prof. N. Gonis as Co-Investigators and Dr Ben Henry (Oxford) and Dr Michael McOsker (UCL) as Researchers.
Dr Henry is responsible for the curatorial work and daily running of the collection. Requests to visit the collection, queries about published papyri, and requests for images should be addressed to him in the first instance, at papyrology@classics.ox.ac.uk.
Assignment Policy
In line with other major papyrological collections, the Oxyrhynchus Papyri Management Committee (OPMC) of the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) places a 5-year limit on assignments of texts for publication, after which the assignment of a text will lapse. Lapsed assignments can only be renewed, if the circumstances justify it, by application to the OPMC. The 5-year period for each text will begin from the date of assignment. All assignments made before 2015 are deemed to have re-started on 1 January 2015. Assignments may not be transferred to other scholars without the express permission of the OPMC.
Scholars experienced in publishing papyri are welcome to apply to the OPMC, normally through a General Editor, to publish texts relating to their research interests. Students being trained on degree programmes or workshops at Oxford, London and elsewhere, for which texts have been allocated by the OPMC, may also be invited by a General Editor (normally their supervisor) to publish a text.
The policy of the OPMC is that all Greek and Latin texts from the excavations of Grenfell and Hunt at Oxyrhynchus on behalf of the EES must be published first by the Society in an Oxyrhynchus Papyri volume.
Copyright
Requests to reproduce or disseminate images of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri should be directed to the Egypt Exploration Society’s Collections Manager, Dr Stephanie Boonstra, along with a completed request form detailing the intended use of the material. See https://www.ees.ac.uk/reproduction-requests-and-fees for details. All images reproduced from the SDS database must be credited as “Courtesy of The Egypt Exploration Society and the Faculty of Classics, University of Oxford”.