Category Archives: Find Stories

A Marble Relief of a Priest of Cybele

Posted on July 5, 2018 by

It’s always a pleasant surprise to visit a familiar museum and find a “new” piece. It happened to me the other day at the Capitoline Museum. Earlier this year, there was an exhibition on Johann Joachim Winckelmann (actually, it was mainly … Continue reading →

Posted in Find Stories, Sculpture | 2 Comments

Excavating the Oxyrhynchus Philo Codex

Posted on May 14, 2018 by

In my previous post, I mentioned that the Oxyrhynchus Philo codex (LDAB 3540) was published in a number of different outlets. There are also some tantalizing hints about the archaeological context of the fragments. Here is the data on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Antiquities Market, Codices, Find Stories, Maurice Nahman, Oxyrhynchus Papyri | 6 Comments

A Working List of Funerary Sculpture Attributed to Oxyrhynchus

Posted on May 5, 2018 by

As I have been looking into a set of sculptures attributed Oxyrhynchus (in previous posts here and here), some patterns have emerged in terms of acquisition. It seems that the best thing to do is to make a list of … Continue reading →

Posted in Antiquities Market, Find Stories, Oxyrhynchus Sculpture, William Matthew Flinders Petrie | 2 Comments

The Tura Papyri: Archival Footage

Posted on December 27, 2017 by

In my previous post on the Tura Papyri, I mentioned that the books are said to have been discovered in 1941 during the clearing of quarries south of Cairo for use by the British military. The earliest detailed account of … Continue reading →

Posted in Find Stories, Tura Papyri | 1 Comment

The Tura Papyri

Posted on December 22, 2017 by

While many of the papyrus and parchment codices in the Fondation Martin Bodmer appear to be part of a single ancient find, several of these codices are known to have distinct origins. One of these is P.Bodmer LVII, a portion … Continue reading →

Posted in Antiquities Market, Bodmer Papyri, Find Stories, Tura Papyri | 2 Comments

Provenance and The Oxyrhynchus Papyri

Posted on December 13, 2017 by

Over at rougeclassicism there are a few questions posed about the provenance of the recently publicized identification of a Greek papyrus as The First Apocalypse of James. The papyrus is to be published in an upcoming volume of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri … Continue reading →

Posted in Antiquities Market, Find Stories, Oxyrhynchus Papyri | 4 Comments

Cartonnage (Mummy and Otherwise)

Posted on December 4, 2017 by

A question from a commenter on a recent post prompts me to write up a quick discussion of the history of the word “cartonnage” and its current use to describe both mummy casings and the covers of some ancient books. … Continue reading →

Posted in Book covers, Find Stories, Mummies, Mummy cartonnage, William Matthew Flinders Petrie | 1 Comment