Oxyrhynchos

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Oxyrhynchos in hieroglyphics
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Aa24 		O49

Per-medjed
Pr-mḏd
house of the meeting
Greek Oxyrhynchos
Map Oxyrhynchos.png
Location of Oxyrhynchos

Oxyrhynchos ( Latin Oxyrhynchus ; ancient Egyptian Per-medjed ; today: Al Bahnasa near Sandafa, near Bany Mazar) is a historic city in Egypt and an important archaeological site . It was the capital of the 19th Upper Egyptian Gau since the Saïten period .

Oxyrhynchos is one of the most important excavation sites in Egypt because excavations have been carried out continuously over the course of the 20th century and a large number of papyrus texts from the Hellenistic , Roman and Byzantine epochs of Egyptian history have been found. The papyrus fragments that have already been viewed and published include numerous previously unknown works from ancient Greece, for example by Archilochus and Menander , but also Christian writings such as the Gospel of Thomas .

History of the excavation site

Oxyrhynchus Papyrus (P. Oxy. I 29), dated between 75 and 125 AD. On it one of the oldest representations of Euclid's elements .

Oxyrhynchos is located about 160 km southwest of Cairo and about 11 km northwest of Bani Mazar , west of the main arm of the Nile on the Bahr Yusuf (Joseph Canal). The Josefskanal is an arm of the Nile that ends in the Moerissee and the Fayyum Basin . At the time of ancient Egypt , the city of Per-medjed was located in the same place , but it was not until the conquest by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. Chr. Gained in importance. The Greek conquerors re-founded it under the name Oxyrhynchon Polis ("Pointy Nose City"). The Greek name is derived from a species of fish native to the river, the pointed nosed pike ( Mormyrus kannume ), which was sacred to the Egyptians.

In Hellenistic times, Oxyrhynchos was a prosperous city in the region and the third largest city in Egypt. After the Christianization of Egypt, it was best known for the large number of its monasteries and churches. Although it gradually began to decline in importance during the Roman and Byzantine periods , Oxyrhynchos remained an important city. In AD 641, Egypt was conquered by the Arab empire of the caliphs . As a result, the canal system supplying the city was no longer maintained, so that the city lost its importance. However, many Arabic manuscripts were also found here.

Today there is the city of Al Bahnasa , which was partly built on the ruins of the ancient Oxyrhynchos.

For over a thousand years, the residents of Oxyrhynchos dumped their waste in several neighboring locations outside the city limits. It is thanks to the fact that the city was built on a canal and not on the Nile that these garbage dumps were not regularly flooded during floods. When the canals later dried up, the water table also fell and never rose to its original level. In addition, it hardly ever rains in the area west of the Nile, so that the waste mounds of Oxyrhynchos, covered with layers of sand, lay undisturbed, dry and forgotten for almost a thousand years.

At the time of the Greek and Roman rule over Egypt, Oxyrhynchos was the capital and administrative center of the Gaus Oxyrhynchites . Therefore, large amounts of official documents were found in the garbage heap: results of censuses, accounting and tax documents, invoices, receipts, certificates, licenses of all kinds and a multitude of other sources on administrative, military, religious, economic and political matters. Offices were regularly tidied up, their documents collected in wicker baskets and thrown away. Waste paper from private individuals was also found.

Because papyrus was expensive, it was often reused. For example, a document can have invoices on the front and the Homer text of a school child on the back . It could also be reused by scraping off the upper layers of a papyrus ( palimpsest ).

From the papyri of Oxyrhynchos, therefore, the life in the city and civilization as a whole can be reconstructed very comprehensively.

The area of ​​the actual city of Oxyrhynchos has never been excavated, as the modern Egyptian city largely stands on it. It is believed that a large number of public buildings must have been in Oxyrhynchos, including two smaller harbors, a theater for up to eleven thousand spectators, a hippodrome , four public baths and a gymnasium . The latter was an important center for the cultural and social life of the city during the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The existence of many military buildings, such as barracks , is very likely, as it is known that a military garrison maintained a military garrison in the city during the Roman and Byzantine periods has been. We also know of temples for the gods Zeus - Amun , Hera - Isis , Serapis , Atargatis - Bethnnis and Osiris , as well as Greek temples for the gods Demeter , Dionysus , Hermes and Apollon , and Roman temples for the gods Jupiter and Mars . In the Christian era, Oxyrhynchos was the seat of a bishopric and there are still old Coptic church buildings in the city today .

Excavations at Oxyrhynchos

Grave sculpture from Oxyrhynchos

In 1882, Egypt was still officially part of the Ottoman Empire but was de facto under British rule, and British archaeologists began systematically exploring the country. Since Oxyrhynchos was not an ancient Egyptian city of major importance, it was not until 1896 that the two young papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt started digging here. Grenfell wrote: "My first impression when examining the excavation site was not very promising, the rubbish heaps were nothing more than rubbish heaps." But they soon realized what they had found here. The unique circumstances of the place, combined with the climate, have resulted in an incomparable archive of the ancient world in Oxyrhynchos. “The river of papyri soon became a torrent,” Grenfell recalled. "You could only remove the soil layer with a shoe and you could often open a new layer."

Both were fellows at Queen's College at the University of Oxford and, as classically educated Englishmen, were primarily interested in classical literature. They hoped to find lost plays, stories, and philosophical treatises by ancient Athenians. They knew that Aristotle 's Constitution of Athens in 1890 had been discovered on Egyptian papyri, and the hope of more such finds spurred them and their followers as they sifted through mountains of rubbish over the next century.

Oxyrhynchos was an ordinary district capital and not a center of learning. Most of its residents had little interest in literature or philosophy. In addition, copies of the classics were rare and expensive in antiquity, and it is therefore very unlikely that such works have found their way onto the garbage heap. Therefore, so far hardly any literary works have been found; most were copies of the well-known standard works such as those by Homer, on which the Hellenistic education was based.

Of the many thousands of papyri that Oxyrhynchos have excavated so far, only around ten percent are literature. The rest consisted of public and private documents. For example, parts of the archive of the late Roman Apions family were found. Even so, Grenfell and Hunt found enough to maintain their hope of finding more. In the first year of the excavations they found parts of some lost pieces of Sophocles , such as the Ichneutae and many other books and fragments, including parts of a supposedly unknown Christian gospel. These discoveries attracted public attention, and Grenfell and Hunt sent articles and photos to newspapers in Great Britain emphasizing the importance of their work; this in the hope of donations to continue their excavations.

Aside from the years of World War I , Grenfell and Hunt dedicated the rest of their lives to digging at Oxyrhynchos. Every winter, when the climate became more comfortable for the English, they watched hundreds of Egyptian workers as they searched the garbage pots and dug up tightly packed piles of papyri mixed with earth. The finds were sighted, partially cleaned, and shipped to Grenfell and Hunt's base in Oxford. During the summer they cleaned, sorted and translated the finds. They compared the finds of the year and put complete texts together from the dozen of fragments and excerpts. In 1898 they published the first results of their findings. They worked closely together and looked over each other's work; they published the results together. Grenfell fell ill in 1921 and died in 1926, and Hunt continued to work on the finds with others until his death in 1934.

When the Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie visited Oxyrhynchos in 1922, he found the remains of colonnades, remains of the theater and parts of the necropolis; Today only a single column remains, everything else was used as building material for modern buildings. Nevertheless, there have always been and are excavations in the city area. Between 1928 and 1932 Evaristo Breccia excavated some houses in the city. In 1982 excavations were carried out in the actual city area by the Egyptian Antiquities Service . A Kuwaiti mission also dug here from 1985 to 1987, but its work mainly focused on the medieval city. A Catalan excavation mission has been working here since 1992. Unfortunately, little of this work in the urban area has been published, so that it is difficult to get an idea of ​​the results achieved.

The city is considered to be the place where numerous late antique grave sculptures were found, which, however, mostly came to light during illegal robbery excavations.

Finds in Oxyrhynchos

Greek literature

A number of important Greek texts have been unearthed in Oxyrhynchos. These included poems by Pindar , fragments of Sappho and Alkaios , as well as larger parts of Alkman , Ibykos and Korinna . A significant part of Sophocles Ichneutai was found as well as parts of Euripides ' Hypsipyle and larger parts of comedies by Menander . In addition to literary works, what is probably the oldest and most complete diagram of Euclid's elements of geometry was found . Another important find is the historical work Hellenika Oxyrhynchia , the author of which has not yet been clearly identified, although several authors have been considered (including Kratippus of Athens and Theopompus ). A biography of Euripides by Satyros von Kallatis has been unearthed, as has an epitome of some of the lost books of Titus Livius , one of the most important Latin historians.

In April 2005 the University of Oxford announced that their joint project with Brigham Young University in Utah , which uses an infrared technology developed from satellite imaging, was extremely successful. Many previously missing, incomplete or unknown works by authors such as Sophocles , Lucan , Euripides , Hesiod , Ovid , Aeschylus and Archilochus have been made legible. Presumably works from the early Christian Church are now also accessible. The scientists hope to be able to make a large part of the approximately 400,000 previously illegible ancient texts in the possession of the library of the University of Oxford , including 100,000 from Oxyrhynchos, legible. Enthusiastic classical scholars already speak of the “ Holy Grail of Antiquity ” and the beginning of a “second renaissance ”.

The classical author who has been, so to speak benefited from the finds in Oxyrhynchus most was the Athenian playwright Menander ( 342 -291 v. Chr.), Whose comedies were very popular in Hellenistic times and are therefore often found much in papyrus fragments could. Menander's pieces that have been found in whole or in part include Misoumenos , Dis Exapaton , Georgos , Epitrepontes , Karchedonios , Kolax , Leukaia , Perinthia and Samia . It is precisely the pieces that were found in Oxyrhynchos that are responsible for the increase in significance that Menander can book among classical philologists and specialists for Greek theater - this is also due to his writing style, which is much more pleasing than the dramatists of earlier centuries.

Early Christian texts

Among the Christian texts that have so far been found in Oxyrhynchos, the Gospel of Thomas (papyrus no. 655) occupies a prominent position. It is also known as the Words of Jesus and is believed to date from the second or third century AD. It is believed, however, that it goes back to a much older oral tradition from the middle of the first century AD. Some scholars see parts of the Gospel of Thomas as authentic traditions of the life of Jesus. Even marginalized Christian groups believe, contrary to the widespread doctrine of the official churches, that this gospel describes traditions and elements from Jesus' life much more genuinely than it does through the canonical texts of the New Testament .

Other texts from Oxyrhynchos include the Apocalypse of Baruch (chapters 12-14 from the fourth or fifth centuries, papyrus No. 403), the Gospel of Hebrews (third century, papyrus No. 655), The Shepherd of Hermas (third or fourth century, papyrus No. . 404) and a work by Irenaeus (third century, POxy 405 ). Many early Christian songs, prayers and letters were also found. Papyrus No. 840, found in 1905, is one of the oldest early Christian texts. It contains a parchment sheet of less than 63 square centimeters in size written on both sides, which probably belonged to a small codex that was rolled up as an amulet around the neck. On 45 lines he describes some episodes of Jesus' appearance in Jerusalem , including a dispute with the high priest about the purity laws (cf. Mk 7; Mt 23). He teaches Jesus about the ablutions that his disciples did not perform, whereupon he sounds a woe over him and all the blind because he does not see that outer purity can go hand in hand with inner wickedness. The badly damaged ending probably spoke of baptism as cleansing from all sins . Joachim Jeremias dated this text to the 1st century and assumed that it could have been written parallel to or even before the oldest known Gospel text, the Gospel according to Mark.

Current excavations

The excavations at Oxyrhynchos have been going on since the 1930s, only interrupted by World War II and the Suez Crisis in 1956. For the past 20 years, it has been directed by Oxford Professor Peter J. Parsons . Since 1898, 69 volumes (most recently in 2005) of the series The Oxyrhynchus Papyri have been published by the University of Oxford and the Egyptian Exploration Society - these volumes are now irreplaceable basic material for all Egypt research between the 4th century BC. They are also of essential importance for studies of the early Christian church, since Christian documents were found in Oxyrhynchos in much more original versions than elsewhere. However, since only 5,000 of the estimated 400,000 papyrus fragments found in Oxyrhynchos have been published, it can be assumed that dozens more volumes of the Oxyrhynchus papyri will appear in the next few decades.

Since the days of Grenfell and Hunt, expectations of the finds have changed. It is no longer about the discovery of lost great literature, but about a deeper understanding of social, economic and political life in antiquity. Much work on Egyptian and Roman social and economic history and on the history of Christianity would not have been possible without the documents found in Oxyrhynchos.

In 1966 the excavations at Oxyrhynchos and the publication of the papyri were formally taken over by the British Academy. There they are jointly supervised as the main field of research by the University of Oxford and University College London under the direction of Peter Parsons. Funding for the digs came from the British Academy until 1999 and has been funded by the British Arts and Humanities Council until 2005. The papyri are now housed in the Oxford Sackler Library together with the indexes, archives and photographs . Around 2000 pieces have so far been framed under glass, the rest stored in boxes.

The focus of the project today is primarily on the publication of the large material archive: By 2003, around 4,700 finds had been translated, processed and published. It is planned to publish approximately one volume of the materials each year. A wide range of topics is published in each volume. The editors include not only established scholars, but also papyrology and doctoral students.

Texts

  • The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Egypt Exploration Society, London 1898 ff., ISSN  0306-9230 . The volumes appear as part of the Graeco-Roman memoirs series . Volume LXXIII was published in 2009.

literature

Web links

Commons : Oxyrhynchos  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rainer Hannig: Large Concise Dictionary Ägyptisch-Deutsch: (2800-950 BC) von Zabern, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3-8053-1771-9 , p. 1142.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Helck , Eberhard Otto: Lexicon of Egyptology: Megiddo-Pyramiden -1982. -XXXII p. - 1272 col. (= Lexicon of Egyptology , Volume 4). Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1982, ISBN 3447022620 , page 326.
  3. ^ One of the oldest extant diagrams from Euclid . (More information on the Euclid papyrus) On: math.ubc.ca ; last accessed on May 1, 2014.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on September 22, 2005 .

Coordinates: 28 ° 32 '  N , 30 ° 39'  E