The roll dates to around 340 BC, during the reign of Philip II of Macedon, making it Europe's oldest surviving manuscript.

[5] The roll was found on 15 January 1962 at a site in Derveni, Macedonia, northern Greece, on the road from Thessaloniki to Kavala.

The site is a nobleman's grave in a necropolis that was part of a rich cemetery belonging to the ancient city of Lete.

[3] It survived in the humid Greek soil, which is unfavorable to the conservation of papyri, because it was carbonized (hence dried) in the nobleman's funeral pyre.

[9] The main part of the text is a commentary on a hexameter poem ascribed to Orpheus, which was used in the mystery cult of Dionysus by the 'Orphic initiators'.

As he also makes clear in the well recognized verse: for, having ordered them to "put doors to their ears," he says that he is not legislating for the many [but addressing himself to those] who are pure in hearing … and in the following verse …[11]The first surviving columns of the text are less well preserved, but talk about occult ritual practices, including sacrifices to the Erinyes (Furies), how to remove daimones that become a problem, and the beliefs of the magi.

Two different reconstructions have recently been offered, that by Valeria Piano[12][13] and that by Richard Janko,[14] who notes elsewhere that he has found that these columns also include a quotation of the philosopher Parmenides.

In some instances, the same word appears in different dialectal forms throughout the text, such as cμικρό- and μικρό; ὄντα and ἐόντα; νιν for μιν etc.

A team of experts was assembled in 2005 led by A. L. Pierris of the Institute for Philosophical studies and Dirk Obbink, director of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri project at the University of Oxford, with the help of modern multispectral imaging techniques by Roger MacFarlane and Gene Ware of Brigham Young University, to attempt a better approach to the edition of a difficult text.