Derveni papyrus
The Derveni papyrus is an ancient Greek scroll and one of the oldest known literary writings in Europe. Their age is estimated to be at least 2,500 years.
The papyrus was found in 1962 in an ash heap - probably the remains of the cremation site - on the cover of grave A of the Derveni graves near the mountain pass of the same name in Macedonia . The scroll probably comes from the 2nd half of the 5th century BC. It contains the philosophical treatise of an unknown author on the birth of the gods, probably from the circle of the philosopher Anaxagoras .
In October 2006 the Greek philology professor Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki announced that the complete decryption of the document had been achieved. This could give new insights into the world of antiquity. According to Tsantsanoglou, the papyrus contains mystical and technical information about ceremonies of the time.
According to philologists and archaeologists, the text is very important for the concept of the afterlife in ancient Greece . The papyrus is the oldest surviving European manuscript.
The Derveni papyrus is kept in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki .
Since 2015, the Derveni papyrus has been part of the UNESCO World Document Heritage as the oldest surviving “book” in Europe .
Text output, translations, comments
- Mirjam E. Kotwick, Richard Janko (ed.): The Derveni papyrus. De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-041473-8 (Greek text with German translation, introduction and detailed commentary)
- Theokritos Kouremenos, George M. Parássoglou, Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou (eds.): The Derveni papyrus . Olschki, Firenze 2006, ISBN 88-222-5567-4 (critical edition with English translation and commentary)
literature
- Gábor Betegh : The Derveni Papyrus. Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2004, ISBN 0-521-80108-7
- André Laks , Glenn W. Most (Ed.): Studies on the Derveni Papyrus . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1997, ISBN 0-19-815032-6 ( Google Book Preview )
- Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou: The Papyrus of Derveni. In: Bernhard Zimmermann , Antonios Rengakos (Hrsg.): Handbook of the Greek literature of antiquity. Volume 2: The Literature of the Classical and Hellenistic Period. CH Beck, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-406-61818-5 , pp. 446-452
