The Purchase of the Nash Papyrus: Two Different Dates

Posted on August 4, 2026 by Brent Nongbri

In my earlier post about a papyrus containing the Odyssey at Cambridge, I mentioned that this piece was purchased together with the Nash Papyrus, but I noted that I could not figure out the precise date of the purchase. There seem to be two different stories.

Recall Burkitt’s report about the purchase of these papyri in his 1903 article: “The recent history of the [Nash] Papyrus is involved in some obscurity. It came into the possession of Mr. W.L. Nash, the Secretary of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, having been bought in Egypt from a native dealer along with some very early uncial fragments of the Odyssey. Mr. Nash thinks it very probable that the whole ‘find’ comes from somewhere in the Fayyum.”1

The current webpage for the Nash Papyrus at the Cambridge Digital Library mentions no specific date of purchase: “Purchased from an Egyptian dealer in antiquities by Dr Walter Llewellyn Nash, and presented to the Library in 1903, the fragment was said to have come from the Fayyūm.”

Older versions of this page, however, do mention a date of purchase: “Purchased from an Egyptian dealer in antiquities in 1902 by Dr Walter Llewellyn Nash and presented to the Library in 1903, the fragment was said to have come from the Fayyum.” The date of 1902 occurs elsewhere in the literature. For example, Emanuel Tov writes that the Nash Papyrus “was discovered in Egypt in 1902,”2 but no reference is provided.

And there is some conflicting information. A different webpage for the Nash Papyrus was created in association with Cambridge University Library’s “Lines of Thought” online exhibition in 2016. This exhibition also included a page for the Odyssey papyrus (with zoomable digital images!). While the current version of the exhibition page lacks the Odyssey papyrus, an archived version of the page for the Odyssey papyrus gives this information about purchase: “In 1898 W. L. Nash, Secretary of the Society of Biblical Archaeology (SBA), acquired from a native Egyptian dealer in Egypt the papyrus fragments of the Hebrew Bible now known as the Nash Papyrus. …From that same dealer at the same time he also acquired eleven papyrus fragments bearing Greek text that he sent ‘for description’ to Francis Crawford Burkitt.”

The reference for this information is Larry Stone, The Story of the Bible (Thomas Nelson, 2010). There (p. 23), we read that the Nash Papyrus “was acquired from an Egyptian antiquities dealer in 1898.” I also find this date on the British Museum’s page for Nash and in the edition of the Nash Papyrus in CPJ 4 609 published in 2020 (“This papyrus was purchased in Egypt in 1898 by W. L. Nash”). But nowhere do I find references to any late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century documentation of either of this date or the 1902 date.

I can see how one could deduce from the earliest reports that both the Nash Papyrus and the Odyssey papyrus were purchased in 1902. Cook’s first report on the Nash Papyrus is dated 19 October 1902, and Burkitt’s first report on the Odyssey papyrus is dated July 1902.3 It is perhaps reasonable to assume that Nash purchased the pieces in the winter of 1901–1902 and sent them to Burkitt and Cook for analysis in early 1902.

The 1898 purchase date is still a bit of a mystery to me.

One item of bibliography that I failed to locate is cited as:

Reif, S.C. “The Nash Papyrus.” Cambridge 15 (1984) 41–45

I think the periodical must be Cambridge: The Magazine of The Cambridge Society, but I have not been able to track down the issue in question. If anyone has a copy, I would be grateful to see it.

  1. F.C. Burkitt, “The Hebrew Papyrus of the Ten Commandments,” Jewish Quarterly Review 15 (1903) 392–408, quotation at 392. ↩︎
  2. E. Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (2nd rev. ed.; Fortress, 1992), 118. ↩︎
  3. S.A. Cook, “A Pre-Masoretic Hebrew Papyrus,” Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 24 (1902) 272; F.C. Burkitt, “Fragments of Some Early Greek Mss. Written on Papyrus,” Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 24 (1902) 290–292. ↩︎
Posted in Antiquities Market, Nash Papyrus | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A Cambridge Papyrus of the Odyssey and the Nash Papyrus

Posted on August 3, 2026 by Brent Nongbri

In the last couple days, the Cambridge University Library has been posting about a papyrus in their collection that contains a passage from the Odyssey.

This is Cambridge University Library Add MS 4074 (TM 61188), containing some fragmentary lines of Book 12. What caught my eye about the post was the note on the tape that seals the glass frame: “Presented by F.C. Burkitt, M.A., 1903.” There are many sub-collections of papyri kept at Cambridge, but I was not aware of a “Burkitt” collection. In any event, a little digging revealed that these fragments are said to have been purchased together with the much more famous “Nash Papyrus” (Cambridge University Library MS Or.233), a Hebrew papyrus containing a version of the ten commandments now usually assigned to the second century BCE on the basis of palaeography. Burkitt published the Odyssey fragments in 1902, but he provided his most detailed statement of their purchase in an article on the Nash Papyrus:

“The recent history of the [Nash] Papyrus is involved in some obscurity. It came into the possession of Mr. W.L. Nash, the Secretary of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, having been bought in Egypt from a native dealer along with some very early uncial fragments of the Odyssey. Mr. Nash thinks it very probable that the whole ‘find’ comes from somewhere in the Fayyum. These Greek fragments must be as old as the second century A.D., and are probably much earlier: they contain portions of Odyssey XII. 279–304, and have been edited by the present writer with a facsimile in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology.”1

So, the papyrus was bought in Egypt in the first years of the twentieth century, although I’m not sure about the exact date and place of purchase. Walter Llewellyn Nash (1842–1920) was a physician and archaeological enthusiast. He was involved in different archaeological societies, attending the meetings of the Egypt Exploration Fund, becoming a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and acting as secretary of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. Francis Crawford Burkitt (1864–1935) held different professorships at Cambridge from 1903 to 1935, but during the period of the acquisition and publishing of the Odyssey fragments, Burkitt seems to have been an independent scholar. In his obituary for Burkitt, Kirsopp Lake wrote that Burkitt, having been denied a fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge, refused other offers: “He could afford to do so, as he was endowed with ample means, and he settled down in Cambridge to the life of a private scholar.”2 It’s not clear whether Nash simply gifted the Odyssey papyrus to Burkitt or whether Burkitt purchased the fragments from Nash and then donated them to Cambridge.

F.C. Burkitt in 1929; image source: National Portrait Gallery

The date of the Odyssey fragments is also an interesting question. In the classic article that redated the Nash Papyrus from the second century CE to the second century BCE, W.F. Albright made passing mention of the Odyssey fragments:

“I have consulted the two eminent papyrologists, Dr. H. Idris Bell of the British Museum and Dr. Herbert C. Youtie of the University of Michigan; both date them between 50 and 150 A.D. Dr. Bell writes: ‘Though usually reluctant to be very positive on questions of dating I feel very confident in this case that the papyrus is Roman, not Ptolemaic. I should date it, with less hesitation than usual, in the latter part of the first or the early part of the second century A.D.’ He goes on, however, to observe: ‘I doubt whether the date of the Odyssey fragments is really relevant to that of the Hebrew papyrus; unless the two can be shown to have been found together simultaneous acquisition proves nothing, since dealers often combine the most diverse pieces.'”3

I can’t really offer an independent assessment because I have not seen either the papyrus itself or a good digital image (I have not been able to find an image of this papyrus on the Cambridge University Library website, which is a bit strange, since they clearly have an image available for their social media accounts).

  1. F.C. Burkitt, “Fragments of Some Early Greek Mss. Written on Papyrus,” Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology 24 (1902) 290–292; F.C. Burkitt, “The Hebrew Papyrus of the Ten Commandments,” Jewish Quarterly Review 15 (1903) 392–408, quotation at 392. ↩︎
  2. K. Lake, “F.C. Burkitt,” Journal of Biblical Literature 55 (1936), 17–19, quotation at 17. ↩︎
  3. W.F. Albright, “A Biblical Fragment from the Maccabaean Age: The Nash Papyrus,” Journal of Biblical Literature 56 (1937) 145–176, quotation at 146. ↩︎
Posted in F.C. Burkitt, Nash Papyrus, Palaeography | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

A Roman Library in Spain and the “declamatio sarcophagus”

Posted on July 31, 2026 by Brent Nongbri

I’ve been thinking quite a bit in recent years about the places where Roman books were stored and used. So I was interested to see several news stories in the last couple days with headlines like “One of the Best Preserved Roman Libraries Discovered in Spain” and “Archaeologists Find Oldest Library in Iberian Peninsula.”

These stories concern the fourth-century phase of the Fuente Álamo villa in southern Spain and are based on a new article:

Antonio López García, Javier Martínez Jiménez, and Eduardo Cerrato Casado, “New Approaches to Identifying Roman Libraries: Two Late Antique Examples from Stobi (North Macedonia) and Fuente Álamo (Spain),” Journal of Mediterranean Archaeology 39 (2026)

The structure was excavated over a period of time between the 1980s and the early 2000s. As the article’s authors note, the space had been identified earlier as “an office or library,” which seems quite plausible.1 And indeed, the present study supports that identification with a different kind of analysis (“shape grammar,” a computational technique previously applied to Roman library architecture by Myrsini Mamoli). So far, so good, although perhaps not exactly the “discovery” the headlines indicated.

Overview of the possible library showing the room with an apse along with curved and square niches along the walls

The authors then introduce an artifact that is new to me, a piece in they call the “declamatio sarcophagus.” This damaged sarcophagus seems to have been found in the general area of the villa (its exact point of discovery appears to me to be unknown, but I may have missed some bibliography). The authors raise the possibility that the sarcophagus might be connected to the owner of the villa (or even depict the owner of the villa in the left panel). The authors’ illustration of the sarcophagus is below:

Leaving aside the authors’ proposed association of the sarcophagus with the villa, I must admit that I am a little puzzled by the authors’ description of the left panel of the sarcophagus:

“The sarcophagus is contemporary with the second phase of the Fuente Álamo villa (fourth century AD), when the apsed hall was in use. The left side of the main face shows a bearded man sitting on a chair in columnar frame with his feet resting on a footstool. He holds a scroll in his right hand and an open codex in his left hand. The man is addressing another bearded figure wearing a toga, in what has been described as a declamatio scene.”

I see the seated person on the left instead holding a roll, with one end of the roll in each hand, a fairly typical pose in sarcophagus reliefs. This was also the interpretation of Manuel Rodríguez de Berlanga in 1903:

“With his left arm extended and the right held close to the chest, the figure appears to be unrolling a papyrus roll to read it—a scroll rolled up at both ends.”2

It would be interesting if this sarcophagus did depict a figure holding both a roll and a codex, but I don’t think we have any images of codices here.

The relevant portions of the sarcophagus became separated from it at some point and have had a different modern display history. At one point, they were embedded in the wall of a museum (as the background of the inset image above seems to show. I am unsure whether all the pieces have been reassembled now. In any event, if anyone has better images of these parts or of the rest of the sarcophagus, I would be grateful to see them.

  1. C. Cosana et al., “Análisis de los morteros y pinturas murales de la villa romana de Fuente Álamo,” Antiquitas 30 (2018) 79–88, at 80: “una sala considerada como despacho o biblioteca de la vivienda.” ↩︎
  2. M. Rodríguez de Berlanga, Catálogo del Museo Loringiano (Málaga: Tipografía de Arturo Gilabert, 1903), 99-101, at 100: “Con la izquierda estendida y la diestra recogida cerca del pecho, figura estar desarrollando un volumen para leerlo, el cual aparece enrollado en ambos extremos.” ↩︎
Posted in Sculpture | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Michael Blanding’s The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby

Posted on July 19, 2026 by Brent Nongbri

When I began this blog back in 2017, the mysteries surrounding Hobby Lobby and its biblical manuscripts were really driving some aspects of my research. Over the last decade, there has been thorough reporting of on Hobby Lobby and its (mis)adventures in the antiquities trade. To name just three of the most prominent examples:

These are all substantial investigations. Is there really that much more to say?

It turns out that there is. Building on the research of these and other works, Michael Blanding’s new book, The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby (2026), makes a deep dive into the Green family and the role that it has come to play in American politics.

Blanding explains the three-way marriage of capitalism, a particular kind of Christianity, and the US government by telling the story of the Green family over multiple generations.

The key figure in Blanding’s story is David Green, founder of Hobby Lobby, and his lifelong effort to merge his desire for success in business with his evangelical Christian convictions. It’s a struggle that led him to declare that God had told him that He (God) was the real owner of Hobby Lobby, and that he (David) should act in accordance with this fact.

One manifestation of this mix of motivations is the Museum of the Bible. Roughly half the book deals with the development and execution of the Museum, and there is some new and quite interesting information to be found here. Back in 2017, Moss and Baden had noted that one of the factors that prompted the Green family to acquire biblical artifacts–Greek and Coptic papyri, Torah scrolls, cuneiform tablets and more–was the tax benefit that they could get by purchasing artifacts at low prices, having them appraised at higher values, and then donating the artifacts to their own Museum of the Bible:

“The magic ratio for the Greens was 1:3: for a given investment to be financially viable, they had to be able to write it off at three times the amount that they purchased it for. …The proposal, Carroll told us, was this: manuscripts would be acquired for a third or less of their projected eventual value. They would then be donated to a charitable organization— but this time the charitable organization would be their own, one that they control” (Moss and Baden, Bible Nation, p. 24).

Blanding has explored court records and discovered that the actual ratio seems to have been considerably higher, at least in some instances:

“Hobby Lobby made its first donation of 431 Torah scrolls to the museum, showing just how much of a tax write-off it could garner. The company had acquired the scrolls for $1.75 million over the previous two years but now had them appraised at $23 million, an increase of more than ten times the value” (Blanding, The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby, p. 186).

So, the tax relief from these donations was considerable, though perhaps not entirely legal. The court documents linked above accuse the various Green family trusts of “Substantial Valuation Misstatement” and “Gross Valuation Misstatement” in connection to their donations of artifacts (the appraiser named in the documents is Lee Biondi, who is also one of the sellers of so-called “Dead Sea Scroll” fragments that are widely regarded as fakes).

Blanding interviewed a number of people in preparation for the book, including me (one correction for the record here: I was not, in fact, “born in Norway,” p. 192), and also explored a number previously untapped resources. His footnotes include references to email correspondence between Scott Carroll and Johnny Shipman from all the way back in 2010, which shed light on the early days of the planning for the Museum of the Bible.

The book is well written and basically even-handed in its treatment of potentially divisive topics. Blanding makes his own views of various political issues clear, but his presentation of the views of the Green family are most frequently drawn from quotations of their own publications. I agree with The New York Times reviewer, Virginia Heffernan, who put it like this:

“Blanding unfurls this story with great sensitivity. The history of the Greens, who declined to talk to him for the book, is hard to tell in secular terms. The family tends to proceed by way of auguries, revelations and angelic visitations. For readers who might want to hold open the possibility that, for example, God did not speak to David Green from the skies and thus does not own Hobby Lobby, Blanding must convey both our shared reality and the fact that his protagonists live somewhere else.”

When I lecture about Hobby Lobby and the Museum of the Bible, especially to audiences outside the US, people are often puzzled by a story in which government, finance, and religion are so tightly interwoven. Reading Blanding’s book makes the combination of these elements in Hobby Lobby seem not just understandable but also, in a way, inevitable.

Posted in Antiquities Dealers and Collectors, Antiquities Market, Book Reviews, Green Collection, Lee Biondi, Scott Carroll | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Iconography of Jewish Scrolls in the Roman Era

Posted on June 11, 2026 by Brent Nongbri

A recent visit to the Jewish catacomb at Vigna Randanini got me thinking a little more about the iconography of Jewish scrolls (–thanks to Tony Keddie and the University of Texas at Austin for making the visit possible).

The inscription is CIJ 1 221 (JIWE 2 266):

CIJ I 221 (Vigna Randanini catacombs); image source: Brent Nongbri, June 2026

The text is straightforward:

CASTRICIUS
GRAMMATEUS
IULIA COIIUX (read CONIUNX)
MARITO SUO
BENE MERENTI
FECIT

Castricius the grammateus. Julia his spouse had this made for her well-deserving husband.

What is a little strange is the rectangular image below the writing. It has been variously interpreted (a ladder, a scroll case, a “schematic ark” for Torah scrolls), but it is now usually said to represent an unrolled scroll.1 This would be a fitting enough image for a grammateus, but it doesn’t really look very much like typical Jewish imagery of scrolls to me.

Maybe the most famous image of a scroll in a Jewish context in the Roman era comes from the decorations of the synagogue at Dura Europos:

Fresco in the Dura-Europos synagogue, figure reading a scroll; image source: C.H. Kraeling, The Excavations at Dura-Europos: The Synagogue (Yale University Press, 1956), Plate LXXVII

I’m aware of one inscribed image that is generally thought to represent an open scroll similar to this, a fragmentary plaque in the Vatican Museums with a menorah, below which seems to be a floating scroll with the two ends still partly rolled up:

CIL 1 478, fragmentary inscription showing part of a menorah and a partly unrolled scroll; Vatican Museums (Monteverde Catacombs); image: Brent Nongbri, 2017

Perhaps the artist of the image in the Castricius inscription was aiming at something like this, but I’m not sure. Jewish scrolls are more commonly depicted is as part of a scene of a Torah shrine with open doors. The clearest images are probably those found on glass, which show the end (frons) of the rolls with a spiral pattern, as in this example at the Israel Museum:


Glass base with gold decoration showing scrolls in the Torah shrine; Jerusalem, Israel Museum; image source: Fonds Françoise Foliot, preserved by Wikimédia France

In the gold/glass medium, artists occasionally added an element of three-dimensionality to the depiction, showing the depth of the roll in addition to the frons:, as in this example at the Met in New York, which shows both a set of scrolls in the shrine and what looks like a free-standing scroll immediately to the left of the shrine:

Glass base with gold decoration showing scrolls in the Torah shrine and a standing vertical scroll to the left of the shrine; New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; image source: The Metropolitan Museum 18.145.1a, b

The Torah shrine motif occurs in different media, for instance, in this terracotta lamp found at the synagogue at Ostia:

Terracotta lamp from the synagogue at Ostia showing a Torah shrine with scrolls (inv. 12501); image source: L. Benini and M. Perani, “Censimento e catalogo delle lucerne di epoca tardo romana conservate in Italia,” Materia giudaica 20-21 (2015-2016), p. 320

We also find this type of depiction in inscriptions, like this one now in the Naples Archaeological Museum:

CIJ 1 327, fragmentary inscription showing a Torah shrine with scrolls flanked by a menorah on both sides (Archaeological Museum, Naples, inv. 4521, said to be from Monteverde Catacombs); image source: Francesco Leone, La menorà: Culto storia e mito (Skira, 2017), p. 187

On the lamp and the inscription, the design is more schematic than in the detailed depictions on glass. The scrolls in the open cabinet are represented by simple circles (or circles with dots in their centers). The idea, however, is basically the same as the more detailed renditions in the glass bases. The depiction of rolls from other angles is less frequent (as least as far as I am aware). We already saw one instance of a freestanding partly open scroll (the Salutia inscription) and a freestanding closed scroll (the Met glass base). There is also a fresco in the Jewish catacomb at the Villa Torlonia that seems to show a roll with an index tag:

Fresco in the vault of the eastern acrosolium of cubiculum II showing a scroll with an index tag; image source: H.W. Beyer and H. Lietzmann, Die jüdische Katakombe der Villa Torlonia in Rom (De Gruyter, 1930), Tafel 4.

As far as I know, that is about the extent of the visual range of depictions of scrolls in Jewish sources: a spiral showing the frons or end, the closed roll showing the height of the scroll and perhaps some perspective with one or both of the ends depicted as well, and the partly open scroll shown in the Dura Europos image and the Salutia inscription.

What about other images in Jewish inscriptions that may more closely resemble the Castricius rectangle? The nearest parallel might be a rectangular object that is patterned with both vertical and horizontal lines that appears on another inscription in the Vatican Museums, inv. 30824:

Inscription showing a rectangular object, a lulav, and part of a menorah; Vatican Museums, inv. 30824; image source: Brent Nongbri, 2008

Of course, this image is also difficult to interpret. The most recent analysis wisely leaves it at “una griglia rettangolare.”2 So, given the lack of decent parallels for the image in the Castricius inscription, I am inclined to regard the image as an unidentified object until better comparative evidence is forthcoming.

  1. On the various interpretations, see the relevant entry in David Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe, Volume 2: The City of Rome (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 232-233 and Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Diaspora (Brill, 1998), 368-369. ↩︎
  2. Alessandra Negroni, “Le Iscrizioni,” in La catacomba ebraica di Monteverde: vecchi dati e nuove scoperte (Rotoform, s.r.l., 2013), 155-318, at 312. ↩︎
Posted in Inscriptions, Judaism, Voluminology | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

A New Article on P.Oxy. 7.1008 and 7.1009 (P15 and P16)

Posted on May 7, 2026 by Brent Nongbri

The latest issue of Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft contains an article I wrote on two papyrus folia from Oxyrhynchus. Here is the abstract:

P.Oxy. 7.1008 and 7.1009 (P15 and P16 in the INTF’s Kurzgefasste Liste) preserve portions of 1 Cor 7–8 and Phil 3–4. Since the time of their publication, these two fragmentary papyrus folia have had an ambiguous relationship. They are often considered parts of the same codex, but the INTF treats them as distinct manuscripts. A reconsideration of the published scholarship on the folia combined with access to improved digital images allows for a more compelling argument that these two folia were once part of the same codex and should be considered a single manuscript rather than two separate manuscripts.

The history of scholarship turned out to be quite interesting. These two folia received two different P.Oxy. numbers when Arthur S. Hunt published them in 1910. Hunt had stated that the two folia “probably…belonged to the same codex,” but assigned them separate numbers and pointed out that the script of 1009 was “rather smaller” and written in brown ink, while 1008 was written in black ink. But when Caspar René Gregory updated his running list of New Testament manuscripts in 1912, he incorporated these folia together under a single number, P15.

After Ernst von Dobschütz took over responsibility for the list, he assigned the pieces two different numbers, P15 and P16, in 1923 (the former P16 became P31, which it remains today). Just a year later, though, von Dobschütz referred to two pieces as a single manuscript again, P15 16. Later in the twentieth century, Kurt Aland came to consider the two pieces as coming from different manuscripts with different dates. This ambiguous treatment of these pieces has persisted for over a century.

My article revisits the question, provides a codicological analysis of the folia, and demonstrates that neither of Hunt’s observations should prevent us from identifying these pieces as two folia from the same codex: The writing on both pieces is actually the same size, and we have many examples of a single manuscript being copied using both black and brown ink. I quote from the article’s conclusion:

P.Oxy. 7.1008 and 7.1009 are two folia containing different parts of a collection known to circulate in the same codex (the Pauline letters); they are copied in the same script; they show compatible codicological features (letter size, line spacing, size of text block); and they were excavated at the same time in the same spot. The simplest explanation would be that we have two folia from a single codex. Hunt’s perception of differently sized letters proved to be unfounded. His concern about the different colors of ink on the two folia loses its force in the light of other papyrus codices which show the use of multiple kinds of inks. When all the available evidence is taken into consideration, these two folia should be recognized as part of a single manuscript and not as separate items.

In a way, this article forms a pair with a piece I published two years ago in Novum Testamentum that tried to make as thorough a case as possible that PSI XIV 1373 (P65) and P.Yale I 2 + II 86 (P49) are two folia from the same codex of the Pauline epistles.

If you don’t have institutional access to these articles, let me know, and I’m happy to share pdf files.

Posted in Codices, Codicology, Ink, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Palaeography | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

An Illustrated Papyrus in Florence

Posted on April 22, 2026 by Brent Nongbri

I’ve long been intrigued by a famous illustrated papyrus. You may have seen it on the cover of Lincoln Blumell and Thomas Wayment’s book, Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources (2015):

The front matter in the book identifies the illustration on the cover as “Christ on the Sea of Tiberias from Oxyrhynchus. Catalogue no. 8683 from the Egyptian Museum at Florence.” The papyrus does not, however, make an appearance within the text of the book itself because it falls outside the chronological scope of Blumell and Wayment’s collection of Christian materials (“everything from the second through the fourth century,” p. 8). The drawing seems to have been produced in the sixth century. The orientation of the scene in the drawing is “against” the vertical fibers of the papyrus. So, the drawing is most likely a reuse of the sixth-century document (a land lease) that is written along the fibers on the other side of the papyrus (some words in a similar script are also visible on the drawing at left).

The papyrus was purchased in Egypt in 1915 or 1916 by Guido Gentilli (1881-1916) for the Società Italiana per la ricerca dei papiri greci e latini in Egitto. It was, as far as I know, first published in 1925.1 It was then republished in 1927 as PSI 8 920.

Drawing on papyrus (Firenze, Museo Archeologico, inv. 8683); image source: Brent Nongbri 2026

The papyrus is not available for close study, but that’s because it’s part of the permanent display at the Museo Archeologico in Florence. Visitors can come in and see it in a glass case in a dark room alongside another illustrated papyrus from the Roman era (a drawing of cupid and Psyche, PSI 8 919) and some fantastic Coptic textiles.

From the time of its publication, the image has been connected to Matthew 8:23-26 and parallels, “the stilling of the storm.” The stern of a boat partly visible on the left sets the nautical theme, and the central figure with the halo is identified as a sleeping Jesus (in the words of one interpreter, “Jesus sleeps, with his head peacefully resting on his right hand”2). He is roused by a group of nervous disciples on the right.

This seems like a reasonable interpretation of the scene. There are a few odd details. What are we to make of the figure on the left, who seems to be in the water rather than in the boat?

Figure outside the boat, Firenze, Museo Archeologico, inv. 8683

And all the figures on the right are apparently bald and have a curved mark on their heads. The editor of PSI 8 920 explained these marks as “flames on the heads of the disciples” and even suggested that the remains of colored inks were still visible on their heads, but I can’t see anything like that (though, as I said, I’ve not been able to properly study the piece since it’s on display).3

Bald figures, Firenze, Museo Archeologico, inv. 8683

And then there’s the central figure with the halo. In part because of the shape of the surviving fragment, the head with the halo seems like the main focus of the scene. The eye is guided by the angles of the breakage to the encircled head.

Line drawing of PSI 8 920, from A. Minto, “Frammento di papiro scoperto ad Oxyrhynchos,” Bolletino d’Arte 5 (1925) 190-192.

But I wonder if we haven’t lost another depiction of the same figure on the broken right side of the papyrus. In later manuscript illuminations and iconography, a single image like this shows multiple actions of Jesus on the boat. Here is an illustration from the eleventh-century Codex aureus Epternacensis:

Codex aureus Epternacensis (Hs 156142, Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg), fol. 54r, detail

So, a sleeping Jesus in a similar pose on the left is just one part of the scene. The actual stopping of the winds to calm the sea is happening over on the other side of the boat. Perhaps something similar was shown in a portion of our papyrus that is now lost.

And finally: Given the parallel imagery, it seems certain that the illustrator was depicting a sleeping Jesus. But something about the way that the face is drawn (the arch of the brow? the position of the hand on the head?) evokes either a person who is deep in concentration or one who is perhaps feeling the “sudden recognition of a foolish blunder.” After all, for those of us of a certain age, this image really has just one, truly irresistible visual parallel:

  1. Antonio Minto, “Frammento di papiro scoperto ad Oxyrhynchos,” Bolletino d’Arte 5 (1925) 190-192. ↩︎
  2. Mario Naldini, Documenti dell’antichità cristiana: Papiri e pergamene greco-egizie della Raccolta Fiorentina (Florence: Le Monnier, 1965), 39: “Gesù dorme con la testa serenamente appoggiata sulla mano destra.” ↩︎
  3. PSI 8 920: “Sulla fronte dei discepoli sono le fiammelle che erano forse colorate in rosso: infatti sono rimaste ancora tracce violacee dell’ inchiostro svanito.” ↩︎
Posted in Illustrated Papyri | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Conservation of a Papyrus Roll with No Glass Frames

Posted on April 14, 2026 by Brent Nongbri

Some of the real workhorses of both my teaching and public presentations over the years have been a group of papyrus rolls in Berlin. They are a set of Greek documentary rolls from the second half of the second century CE that were bought in 1912 in an excellent state of preservation.

I use images of these manuscripts to provide illustrations of the papyrus roll as a three-dimensional object and also to show the differences between literary rolls, with their (usually) narrow columns and neat scripts, and these everyday documents with their broad columns and cursive writing.

For many years, I used an image of the roll that was found in the wonderful old journal, Jahrbuch der Einbandkunst (an image that also appears in lower resolution in the second edition of Schubart’s Das Buch, p. 53, fig. 14–so the photo must have been taken before 1921).

A well preserved papyrus roll (P.Berol. inv. 11651); image source: Jahrbuch er Einbandkunst 1937

More recently I’ve used color images from the public display of one of the rolls in the Ägyptisches Museum in Berlin:

Another well preserved papyrus roll (P.Berol. inv. 11642); image source: Brent Nongbri 2025

I’ve often thought that these rolls have held up remarkably well for being 2000-year old artifacts. But of course, nobody looks that good at that age without having a little work done.

Today I stumbled across a very interesting article that describes the process of conserving these rolls–“die Methode der doppelseitigen Chiffonierung,” double-sided application of a fine silk to hold the roll together, a practice championed by Rolf Ibscher (1906-1967), book conservator and son of the famous conservator, Hugo Ibscher (1874-1943) The roll described in the article is P.Berol. inv. 11651 (the one in the black and white image above), and the same process was applied to 11642, the roll in the color image above. The process has several steps.

First the roll was cut into pieces to make it more manageable, and damaged areas were repaired with Japanese paper in order to “eliminate the distracting gaps” in the papyrus. Then these papyrus and paper portions were dampened and flattened. A strip of plastic film was laid out and coated with rice starch (there is no mention of moistening the starch, but I imagine it must have been a thin paste). Then the silk mesh was placed on the rice starch to absorb it and be stretched to the proper level of tension. The plastic film was then used as a kind of applicator to press the silk and starch on to the dampened papyrus pieces. Once the silk was firmly attached to the papyrus, the plastic film was peeled away.

The process was then repeated on the other side of the papyrus sheets. All the parts were pressed for 24 hours until the all the material was dry. And then the gap-free, newly flexible roll was ready to go.

P.Berol. inv. 11651 after conservation; image source: Wolfgang Müller, Rolf Ibscher and Otto Werner Luke, “Zur Chiffonierung der Papyrusrolle P. 11651,” Forschungen und Berichte 6 (1964) 97-101.

While the papyrus may now be gap-free, there are a few gaps in the narrative. There is no discussion of how the cut up pieces of papyrus were reattached to one another. Nor is there any discussion of the degree to which the silk obscures physical features of the rolls like kolleseis (the ancient joins between sheets). But on the whole, it’s very nice to have this documentation of the conservation process. There are definite benefits to cutting rolls and mounting them between glass plates to make them easily (and safely) readable–see the fine images of P.Berol. inv. 11656, another papyrus roll purchased in 1912 that has been flattened. Yet, I can’t help feeling that it’s nice to have a few examples conserved in ways like this that help us to appreciate the three-dimensionality of these artifacts. But of course I may be biased here because I am not a specialist in the texts preserved on these rolls and will likely never need to consult them to check readings. I am not thrilled that a similar procedure was carried out on the bifolia of an important papyrus codex in a way that has rendered close study of the papyrus surface difficult, if not impossible. But these kinds of decisions always have benefits and drawbacks. And as I said, it’s very good to have even this little bit of documentation of a papyrus conservation process from the middle of the twentieth century.

Source: Wolfgang Müller, Rolf Ibscher and Otto Werner Luke, “Zur Chiffonierung der Papyrusrolle P. 11651,” Forschungen und Berichte 6 (1964) 97-101.

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The Provenance and Date of the Berlin Cretans

Posted on April 6, 2026 by Brent Nongbri

One of the reference points that used to come up very frequently in discussions of the earliest codices was a manuscript of Euripides–the Berlin Cretans, an isolated parchment folium that was published in 1907 as BKT V.2 XVII (P.Berol. inv. 13217).

The original editors, Wilhelm Schubart and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, assigned the script of the leaf to the first century CE, instantly making it the earliest surviving codex. The difficulty, however, was that they presented no securely dated parallel to make their dating convincing.

Plate accompanying the publication of the Berlin Cretans showing the two sides of the folium; image source: BKT V.2

In his classic book The Typology of the Early Codex (1977), Eric Turner devoted an appendix to trying to establish a more well-grounded date for this manuscript. Turner classified the script as a sloping variety of his “formal mixed” type and opted for a significantly later date in “the latter half of c. ii A.D. (c. A.D. 150-200).” Guglielmo Cavallo also weighed in on the question in 1985, expressing a preference for a date squarely in the third century (“La nascita del codice,” p. 120).

Absent in any of this discussion was the provenance of the folium. The original editors of the Cretans leaf did not, in 1907, mention anything about its origins. A lack of interest in such questions was not uncommon in those days. But in 1974, when Herwig Maehler published a large group of papyri in Berlin excavated under the direction of Otto Rubensohn at Hermopolis in the early twentieth century, he pointed out that Rubensohn’s notes contained short descriptions of the manuscript finds from the site.1 On 27 January 1905, several interesting finds are mentioned, including 40 complete documents and a parchment leaf from an octavo book.2 Maehler then made reference to a short 1905 article by Ludwig Borchardt, in which he reported briefly on the 1905 season at Hermopolis:

“Work for the Prussian Papyrus Expedition initially took place in Ashmunein [ancient Hermopolis], specifically in the eastern part of the town. Here, a large number—about 150 pieces—of complete business documents from the third and fourth centuries and a number—about 20 fragments—of literary works were found. Among the latter were several larger pieces from a codex of Homer dating from the 4th or 5th century and a parchment sheet containing 56 verses from Euripides’ Cretans.”3

As Maehler recognized, the parchment leaf found with the group of documents on the 27th of January must be the Berlin Cretans, which has 26 lines on each page, for a total of 52 verses. So, this parchment folium actually does have an archaeological context. It was found in the same location–on the same day–as a documentary archive. The easiest explanation is that the literary piece was thrown out at the same time as the archive.

What is more, subsequent study of the 40 complete documents revealed that they were in fact the archive of Flavius Taurinos containing items dating from 426 to 513 CE. That is to say, this parchment leaf was found in some kind of proximity to documents discarded in the sixth century. It is possible that this folium was a survival from a codex produced centuries earlier and saved with this collection. This was in fact what Maehler proposed in a later article:

“Given the circumstances of its discovery, it seems highly likely to me that [the Berlin Cretans] was part of these family archives. The style of the handwriting suggests a date towards the end of the second or, I believe, the beginning of the third century. The folio is damaged in the center but intact in its external dimensions. No other fragment of this parchment codex has been found; it therefore seems likely to me that it is an isolated folium, torn from the codex and preserved for a long time, perhaps because its owner realized its rarity, if other copies of this drama were now impossible to find.”4

[[Update 8 April 2026: Thanks to Lajos Berkes for pointing out to me a recent article that treats this archive and the literary material found with it: Jean-Luc Fournet, “The Library of the Taurinus Family (5th–6th c.): A Tentative Assessment and Interpretation,” Trends in Classics 15 (2023) 468-486]]

This is a reasonable explanation, but I do think there are other possibilities. As I noted, nobody has yet presented any truly compelling securely dated comparanda for the script of the Berlin Cretans. The three the pieces that Turner thought were the best parallels for the script were all undated:

  • P.Ant. 1 26 (TM 62997), a parchment roll(!) of Xenophon assigned to the third century
  • P.Ant. 1 27 (TM 59621), a parchment folium of Demosthenes, typically assigned to the second or third century
  • PSI 14 1383 (TM 60112), a parchment folium of Hesiod, typically assigned to the third century

It is perhaps notable that two of these three (P.Ant. 1 26 and P.Ant. 1 27) were both found in a trash mound at Antinoopolis that has a terminus post quem for deposition in the sixth century, a point discussed in the article linked here. And the third item, PSI 14 1383, has since been reassigned by Cavallo to “the early decades of the fourth century.”5 I wonder if it might be the case that all these items–the Berlin Cretans, P.Ant. 1 26 and 27, and PSI 14 1383–might be products of the fourth century that had a useful life of a couple centuries before being consigned to the trash heaps?

As Maehler mentioned, the Berlin Cretans was among the manuscripts that disappeared from Berlin after World War II. It has since reemerged in Warsaw (National Museum inv. 200600), a little bit worse for wear, with portions missing. Nevertheless, there is still plenty of marginal space for radiocarbon analysis that could shed some light on the question of dating this manuscript.

  1. BGU XII (Maehler, Papyri aus Hermupolis). ↩︎
  2. BGU XII, p. xvi: “am 27. 1. 1905 schließlich folgt der größte Fund ‘an unlitterar. Papyri … 40 vollständige Urkunden …Pergamentblatt aus einem Oktavbuch’.” ↩︎
  3. L. Borchardt, “Die diesjährigen deutschen Ausgrabungen in Ägypten,” Klio 5 (1905) 410-412, at 410: “Für das preußische Papyrus-Unternehmen wurde zuerst in Eschmunejn gearbeitet und zwar im Ostkôm daselbst. Hier wurde eine größere Anzahl–etwa 150 Stück–vollständiger Geschäftspapiere aus dem dritten und vierten Jahrhundert und eine Anzahl–etwa 20 Fragmente–literarischer Stücke gefunden. Unter letzteren waren mehrere größere Stücke einer Buchausgabe des Homer aus dem 4. oder 5. Jahrhundert und ein Pergamentblatt mit 56 Versen aus den Κρῆτες des Euripides.” ↩︎
  4. H. Maehler, “Élites urbaines et production littéraire en Égypte romaine et byzantine,” Gaia: Revue interdisciplinaire sur la Grèce Archaïque 3 (1998) 81-95, at 86: “Il me paraît très probable, en raison des circonstances de la découverte, qu’il faisait partie de ces archives familiales. Le caractère de l’écriture fait penser à une date vers la fin du IIe ou plutôt, je crois, au début du IIIe siècle. Le feuillet est endommagé au centre mais intact dans les dimensions extérieures. Aucun autre fragment de ce codex de parchemin n’a été trouvé; il me semble donc probable qu’il est un feuillet isolé, arraché du codex et conservé longtemps, peut-être parce que son possesseur se rendit compte de sa rareté, si d’autres exemplaires de ce drame étaient désormais introuvables.” ↩︎
  5. Guglielmo Cavallo, La scrittura greca e latina dei papiri: Una introduzione (Fabrizio Serra, 2008), 109: “Un altro frammento di codice membranaceo in stile severo, PSI XIV 1383, contenente il Catalogo delle donne esiodeo, va assegnato piuttosto ai primi decenni del IV secolo.” ↩︎
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An Early Latin Codex with a Clear Date of Production

Posted on March 28, 2026 by Brent Nongbri

One of the frustrating things about working with the earliest codices and codex fragments is the lack of securely dated examples. Palaeography can give a general range, and archaeological context or reuse can sometimes give us a decent terminus ante quem or terminus post quem, but before the era of the dated colophon, there is really not much in the way of securely dated material. One exception to this generalization is P.Oxy. 15 1814, a codex with a very narrow window of production.

P.Oxy. 15 1814, verso, upper portion; image source: Egypt Exploration Society and University of Oxford Sustainable Digital Scholarship

This fragmentary folium was once part of a large papyrus codex that contained the Justinian Code. The portion preserved here is a part of a table of contents or index of the main headings from Book One. What makes it special is that it comes from the first edition of the code, which was produced in 529 before being replaced by a revised edition late in the year 534. The text on the papyrus lacks the imperial pronouncements from the years 530-534 that characterize this portion of the second edition. What is more, the preface to the edition of 534 specified that only the revised edition should henceforth be copied and distributed: “it alone shall be consulted in all courts as of December 29…We permit no one hereafter to cite anything…from the first edition (ex prima editione) of the Codex of Justinian.” So the window when the Oxyrhynchus codex was produced is small, basically 529-534 CE.

Thus, the script of the papyrus can serve as a relatively fixed point of comparison for the Latin uncial (the so-called “B-R uncial”).

P.Oxy. 15 1814, recto, detail; image source: Egypt Exploration Society and University of Oxford Sustainable Digital Scholarship

It’s a pity that most of the Greek writing on the page is lost or obscured by damage, as in the example above.

The papyrus is also interesting from a codicological standpoint. It’s quite big. It is fragmentary, but its full dimensions seem to be preserved: The page was about 23 cm wide and 33 cm high, very roughly on par with the Louvre Cyril (about 21.5 cm wide and 35.5 cm high), or the Milan Josephus, (about 24 cm wide and 34 cm high), both also usually assigned to the sixth century. All in all, a very fortuitous survival.

Posted in B-R Uncial, Codicology, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Palaeography | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments