Oxyrhynchus Papyri

[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.

[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: 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.

[citation needed] Several fragments can be traced to the work of Plato, for instance the Republic, Phaedo, or the dialogue Gorgias, dated around 200–300 CE.

[18] Fragments of Euclid led to a re-evaluation of the accuracy of ancient sources for The Elements, revealing that the version of Theon of Alexandria has more authority than previously believed, according to Thomas Little Heath.

[19] The classical author who has most benefited from the finds at Oxyrhynchus is the Athenian playwright Menander (342–291 BC), whose comedies were very popular in Hellenistic times and whose works are frequently found in papyrus fragments.

Menander's plays found in fragments at Oxyrhynchus include Misoumenos, Dis Exapaton, Epitrepontes, Karchedonios, Dyskolos and Kolax.

The Septuagint included books, called the Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical by some Christians, which were later not accepted into the Jewish canon of sacred writings (see next section).

[23] The Oxyrhynchus Papyri collection contains around twenty manuscripts of New Testament apocrypha, works from the early Christian period that presented themselves as biblical books, but were not eventually received as such by the orthodoxy.

4706, a manuscript of The Shepherd of Hermas, is notable because two sections believed by scholars to have been often circulated independently, Visions and Commandments, were found on the same roll.