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, modern el-Bahnasa).

Oxyrhynchus

Site where the Oxyrhynchus Papyri were discovered

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^[update].

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 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:

• The contract of a wrestler agreeing to throw his next match for a fee.^[4]
• Various and sundry ancient recipes for treating haemorrhoids, hangovers and cataracts.^[5]
• Details of a grain dole mirroring a similar program in the Roman capital.^[6]
• Tryphon and Saraeus:
  • Tryphon, son of Dionysus, and Saraeus, daughter of Apion, a married couple are mentioned in several administrative papyri, detailing their various brushes with legal authorities in Oxyrhynchus.^[7]
  • However, before Tryphon married Saraeus, he had a wife called Demetrous, daughter of Heraclides. After their divorce, Tryphon complains to the strategus, Alexander, that she has stolen several of his belongings. The papyrus is too damaged, however, to correctly ascertain what these are.^[8]
  • In 37 CE, the couple appears in a marriage contract, almost entirely concerned with Saraeus' dowry. Most surviving marriage contracts keep similar detail on dowries and other assets, in case of divorce.
  • However Tryphon's first wife, it seems, had not forgiven him. The same year as his second marriage, he petitions the strategus again, this time alleging that Demetrous and her mother have attacked Saraeus. The response from the strategus, Sotas, is unknown.^[9]
  • In 49 CE, Saraeus was summoned before the strategus as part of a case between her and an employer. She has been contracted as a wet-nurse for a foundling, who had died during her employment. Pesouris, her employer, accused her of kidnapping the child to pose as her own. Paison, the strategus, ruled that the living child was Saraeus', and that in return she must pay back her wages.^[10]
  • However, several months, later, Tryphon is petitioning Capito, the praefectus, complaining that Saraeus' former employer is refusing to co-operate with Paison's ruling, and 'hinders [Tryphon] in [his] trade'.
  • In 51 CE, Tryphon files another complaint, presumably to the strategus, that he and Saraeus were attacked by unnamed women in the street.^[11]

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]

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]}

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).