Publications
The volumes of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri and related texts are published by the Egypt Exploration Society in its series Graeco-Roman Memoirs. About one volume is published each year. Available volumes can be ordered online.
Recent Volumes
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol. LXXXVII (London 2023), ed. P. J. Parsons and N. Gonis with contributions by 15 others. ISBN 9780856982521.
This volume includes editions of fifty-eight papyri and one text on parchment. Among the theological texts, three are of exceptional interest. 5575 is an early copy of sayings of Jesus corresponding in part to the canonical gospels of Matthew and Luke and in part to the apocryphal gospel of Thomas. Jesus is also the speaker in 5576 and apparently in 5577, where Mary is addressed. Both pieces may be loosely called 'Gnostic'; the latter appears to be Valentinian. Of the new literary items, the most extensive is 5584, a collection of short biographies of eminent Romans, written a century earlier than Plutarch. Plutarch's own Homeric Studies, now mostly lost, may be recognized in 5585. Early Greek philosophy is represented by 5583, a full column of what appears to be Antiphon's On Truth. The extant literary texts are fragments of two papyrological rarities, the historical work of Aristodemus (5586–7) and the astrological poetry ascribed to Manetho (5588–90). The documentary section illustrates social and economic realities of late antique estates, mostly that of the Apions; there is new evidence on the handling of wine distributions, on the pricing of equipment and materials, and on the more mundane relations of the Apion estate to monasteries.
Table of Papyri. Images on SDS.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol. LXXXVI (London 2021), ed. A. Benaissa and M. Zellmann-Rohrer with contributions by 12 others. ISBN 9780856982491.
This volume contains editions of 41 texts, theological, literary, subliterary, and documentary. The theological section includes large fragments of the First Apocalypse of James (5533), an early Christian narrative of conversations between Jesus and his brother, James. The Greek text is otherwise lost and scholars have depended on two often conflicting Coptic versions. The first of seven magical papyri is a second-century exorcism manual (5542). A series of potted lives of the Successors of Alexander the Great illuminates the history of ancient life-writing before Plutarch (5535). A fragment of commentary on Aristophanes (5536) and five grammatical texts (5537-41) complete Section II. Section III provides a mass of new evidence concerning slavery in the Roman world. The photographs show all the new theological, literary, and subliterary texts, and eleven of the documents.
Searchable Greek text of documents on papyri.info. Images on SDS.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol. LXXXV (London 2020), ed. N. Gonis, P. J. Parsons and W. B. Henry with contributions by 24 others. ISBN 9780856982477.
This volume contains the first editions of 55 Greek literary and documentary papyri. The theological texts include fragments of Genesis and Luke, both assignable to the third century. Pride of place among the new literary texts is given to a retelling of Egyptian mythology, in which Isis writes to Arianis, appealing for his help in locating the body of Osiris. Two others are philosophical (Peripatetic and Stoic). Among the extant classical texts, large fragments of Plato's Laches offer readings of particular interest. A paraphrase of Justinian's Digest shows a professor explaining the relationship between written law and custom in a mixture of Greek and Graeco-Latin. The documents include a group of ten private letters and an elaborate first-person account of a failed attempt to buy camels for the state.
Searchable Greek text of documents on papyri.info. Images on SDS.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol. LXXXIV (London 2019), ed. A. Benaissa, N. Gonis, W. B. Henry and M. Langellotti with contributions by 14 others. ISBN 9780856982460.
This volume marks a new departure for the series: it is the first to publish texts in Egyptian. One is a Greek–Coptic paraphrase of Homer's Iliad, the other a sale of house property in Demotic accompanied by a Greek tax receipt. Section I presents extensive remains of a set of codices of the Septuagint. Section II includes a miscellany of new literary and subliterary texts: remnants of post-Classical hexameter poetry, a possible fragment of Middle comedy with an Anacreontic theme, and a cento of Homeric verses on the myth of Daphne. The seventeen papyri of Apollonius Rhodius published in Section III, providing some two dozen new readings, confirm the Argonautica's status as the most popular epic poem in Roman Egypt after the Homeric and Hesiodic classics. The papyri of Apollonius are complemented by a painting of a wheeled float carrying the Argonauts, perhaps an illustration of a local spectacle. Section IV includes twenty declarations of livestock from the first and second centuries, and the largest number of accounts from the 'Apion archive' since vol. XVI. The global figures for the Apion estate's income, expenditure, and tax payments offer fresh data to steer and inform the lively debate about the economy of this prominent Oxyrhynchite institution.
Searchable Greek text of documents on papyri.info. Images on SDS.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol. LXXXIII (London 2018), ed. P. J. Parsons and N. Gonis with contributions by 11 others. ISBN 9780856982316.
This volume continues our publication of biblical texts, including what is only the second Egyptian witness to the Epistle of Philemon as well as further early witnesses to the text of Mark and Luke, and an amateur copy of excerpts from Ezekiel's Exagoge. Other sections offer new fragments from two popular genres: trials from the Acta Alexandrinorum, notably the trial of the former Prefect Titianus before Hadrian (an event sensational enough to reach the Historia Augusta); and adventures from the Greek Novel, including the Crimean narrative of Calligone and the Amazons. There is also a glimpse of the anonymous copyists to whom we owe our texts, practising the various graphic styles from which their customers could choose. Other documents contribute a mass of detail to the social and economic history of Roman and Byzantine Egypt, such as an official letter about the tax-grain destined to supply Rome; a tax-receipt that attests a Jewish community at Oxyrhynchus in the late fourth century; and, quite an extraordinary object, part of a ceremonial shield painted with a laurel wreath and a Latin inscription that celebrates the twentieth anniversary of some fourth-century emperor. The final section of the volume contains art: a fine pen-and-ink drawing of a rampant goat, and seven sketches on a single sheet, including a cockerel and a peacock, a wild boar, and a unicorn. As the Artemidorus papyrus has renewed discussion of drawing as an art in the Greek world, with some finding its own spread of drawings so striking as to suggest forgery, the new examples from Oxyrhynchus now demonstrate comparable technique and similar subject-matter in papyri of undoubted authenticity.
Searchable Greek text of documents on papyri.info. Images on SDS.
The Undertakers of the Great Oasis (London 2017), ed. R. S. Bagnall. ISBN 9780856982347.
The volume presents a group of papyri discovered in the 1890s and partially published by Grenfell and Hunt in 1897 (P. Grenf. II). They come from the Khargha Oasis and date to the period 237 to 314. Many of them relate to a family of 'nekrotaphoi' - 'undertakers', an activity which also included responsibility for the mummification process (rather than just grave-digging). The texts include petitions, letters and private legal instruments (such as loans, mandates, deeds of gift or sales).
Searchable Greek text on papyri.info. Images of the papyri kept in the Papyrology Rooms on SDS.
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri vol. LXXXII (London 2016), ed. N. Gonis, F. Maltomini, W. B. Henry and S. Slattery with contributions by 14 others. ISBN 9780856982309.
The core of this volume is the biggest concentration of magical papyri published in some 25 years, giving a fascinating insight into approaches to averting and treating illnesses, and attracting a partner. Further material includes theological texts, a major new fragment of Sophocles' Tereus, and extant classical texts (Menander, Theocritus, Euclid, Polybius, Plutarch).
Searchable Greek text of documents on papyri.info. Images on SDS.
For other publications in the series, see the online Checklist of Editions and search for "Graeco-Roman Memoirs". For a broader contextualisation of Oxyrhynchus and its papyri, see A. K. Bowman et al. (edd.), Oxyrhynchus: A City and its Texts (London 2007), and P. J. Parsons, City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt (London 2007).
