Originally discovered by anonymous tomb raiders as part of a mummy wrapping, it was purchased in the papyrus "grey market" in Europe in 1992[2] by the University of Milan.
Scholars have rushed to mine this new trove of highly conscious literary productions at the most sophisticated level that were created in a major center of Hellenistic culture.[7][when?]
[11] Scholarly work on the Milan Papyrus, on Posidippus, who is now revealed in a broader range of subjects, and on the Alexandrian literary epigram in general, was invigorated by the discovery and proceeds apace.[12][when?]
Over six hundred previously unknown lines of Greek poetry are on the roll, representing about 112 brief poems, or epigrams.
Two of these were already known and had been attributed by the 12th-century AD Byzantine scholar John Tzetzes to the Hellenistic epigrammatist Posidippus of Pella (c. 310 – c. 240 BC), a Macedonian who spent his literary career in Alexandria.