John de Monins Johnson (1882-1956) was in some ways a kind of successor to Grenfell and Hunt for a short period in the early twentieth century. Before taking up a position at Oxford University Press, he had training as a papyrologist under Hunt’s supervision. After Grenfell and Hunt stopped excavating for papyri in Egypt, Johnson led expeditions to Greek and Roman sites for the Egypt Exploration Fund for a number of years. In the winter of 1913-1914, he led excavations in Egypt at Antinoopolis, and his reports from the dig make for interesting reading. He was more meticulous about record keeping than Grenfell and Hunt, and he also made some interesting digressions in his reports. My attention was drawn especially to his account of the discovery of large amounts of blank papyrus in the rubbish mounds of Antinoopolis: “[Mound] N was remarkable throughout for what is often a feature of late mounds, the quantity of blank papyrus it provided. In this case sacks might have been filled.”

I was surprised to read Johnson’s description of what they did with all this blank papyrus and why they did it:

“This blank papyrus is carefully torn into small fragments before being given to the winds so that material shall not be added to the store of the papyrus forger. At the risk of a further digression a note may perhaps here be inserted on the methods of the latter. Most papyrologists are familiar with his work, fewer know the forger himself. Hufuta, an uneducated fellah of the Fayum, formerly of Hawara but now living and plying his trade in the Medina, is an amusing and not wholly unattractive character. In stature and appearance he resembles somewhat his notorious countertype, Islam Akhun, the forger of central Asian books, and his work, like Islam Akhun’s, has won the distinction of being published with facsimile in a serious book. His methods are roughly threefold. Blank sheets of papyrus from the mounds, cut into uniform pages and inscribed in red or black ink with a sequence of meaningless signs resembling somewhat pothooks and hangers, are sewn together and bound in thicker sheets of papyrus which are covered with mummy-cloth. The second method is similar but relies on skin in imitation of vellum as its medium, this being bound in skin with strips of mummy cloth or even with an elaborate arrangement of copper corners linked with wire and beads. By his third method, perhaps a more deceptive one, numerous tiny fragments of genuine inscribed papyrus, too small to find a sale, are glued together till they form a sheet, a strange literary mosaic in which the lines are incontinuous and Ptolemaic rubs shoulders with Byzantine, and this is then tightly rolled. The smell of the oil in which his productions are soaked before being buried is often a sufficient test for those who do not happen to be scholars.”

Items like Hufuta’s third type of forgery are pretty common in museums with Egyptological collections. Here is an example from the National Museum of Archaeology in Dublin:

The papyrus fragments in such rolls can be genuinely ancient, but they also sometimes contain ancient papyrus with modern writing. And the “rolls” themselves are modern productions. The World Museum in Liverpool offers another example:

A similar-looking roll was the vehicle for the published fake that Johnson mentions in the quotation above, P.Stras. 1 39. Apologies for the quality of the scan of the edition:

One of the pieces removed from the roll, P.Stras. 1 39A, is a nice example of the gibberish symbols that characterize fake papyri that have ended up in a number of collections over the years:

For a working list of known fake papyri from Egypt, see the helpful spreadsheet of Macquarie University’s “Forging Antiquity” project: http://www.forgingantiquity.com/forgeries.

Sources:

John de Monins Johnson, “Antinoë and its Papyri: Excavation by the Graeco-Roman Branch, 1913-14,”
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 1914, 168-181.

Friedrich Preisigke, Griechische Papyrus der Kaiserlichen Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek zu Strassburg (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1912).