Category Archives: Oxyrhynchus Papyri
Hobby Lobby Inc. vs Dirk Obbink
A couple days ago, the news broke that Hobby Lobby has sued Professor Dirk Obbink for over $7 million USD. The 10-page complaint (which can be seen here) does not paint a nice picture of Prof. Obbink, but that’s generally … Continue reading
An Informative Article on a (Different) Sappho Papyrus
When it comes to Sappho papyri, I’ve been reporting mostly bad news for the last couple years. I’m happy to have some good news now about a different papyrus of Sappho, one whose provenance and authenticity are not under any … Continue reading
Online Images of Early Christian Manuscripts at the Bodleian Library
In a previous post, I mentioned that the Bodleian Library had made available nice color digital images of the Hawara Homer papyrus roll. They have also added images of several early Christian manuscripts. I provide links to the images at … Continue reading
More Stolen Papyri to be Returned to the Egypt Exploration Society
Earlier today, the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) announced the discovery that more papyri “had been removed from the EES collection without authorisation.” This follows other related announcements over the last several months. The first announcement by the EES (25 June … Continue reading
Back When Single-quire Codices Were Strange
Since the discovery and publication of the Nag Hammadi codices, the single-quire codex format has become very familiar to papyrologists and historians of the book. It’s interesting, however, to recall that there was a time when the idea of an … Continue reading
New Article on Dirk Obbink in The Atlantic
Ariel Sabar has published a fascinating account of the saga of Professor Dirk Obbink and the Green Collection in The Atlantic. I encourage everyone to check out the whole story here. For me, the most interesting new details have to … Continue reading
An Update on the Case of the Stolen Oxyrhynchus Papyri
H/T Roberta Mazza: According to this article in The Oxford Blue, “Christ Church professor Dirk Obbink was arrested on 2nd March 2020 for alleged theft of ancient papyrus from the Sackler Classics Library in Oxford.” Further on, the article quotes … Continue reading
Recap of the SBL “First Century Mark” Session
A few days ago, I was fortunate to be a part of the a session dedicated to a “postmortem” on so-called “First Century Mark” at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego. Below is a … Continue reading
The Coptic Material from Oxyrhynchus
Several people have asked me why there are no Coptic pieces on the list of recently emerged papyri of dubious origins. I put that list online in the hopes of identifying more material that may have been stolen from the … Continue reading
News: Egypt Exploration Society Missing At Least 120 Papyri
I missed this news from a couple days ago. The Egypt Exploration Society has announced that they are missing at least 120 papyri from the Oxyrhynchus collection. Read the full announcement here.
