OPES – Oslo Papyri Electronic System

Background and Physical Properties

Material:

Papyrus

Connections:

–

Size:

4.1 x 5.5 cm.

Lines:

5

Publication side:

Recto

Palaeographic description:

One hand. Book hand but not elegant. Vertical stroke ends marked with serifs. Whole groups of letters being joined at the bottom by continuous ornamental bars. Thin pen. Black ink.

State of preservation:

Medium brown colour. Torn all around. Upper margin at 2.7 cm but the upper layer is peeled off partly. Beginnings and ends of lines are lost. The back is blank and has soil and salt crystals.

Content

Date:

Ist century BCE

Origin:

Behnasa (ancient Oxyrhynchus), Egypt

Language:

Greek

Genre:

Literary

Author:

Homer

Title / Type of text:

Homer, Iliad 3.458-4.1/ Epic poetry

Content:

The fragment belongs to the top of a column. It preserves the end of book 3 of the Iliad (3.458-461) and the first line of the following book (4.1). The beginning of Iliad 4.1 is broken off, so that it is uncertain whether the transition between books was marked at all. The last line (Iliad 4.1) could be a versus pendens.

Subjects:

Literature Epic poetry Homer Iliad Homeric book division

Named people:

–

Named places:

–

English translation:

–

Provenance:

Oxyrhynchus, Egypt

Acquisition:

Purchased by Leiv Amundsen from Ali Mahmud Derballah (Behnasa) at Beni Masar

Acquisition year:

1929

Editions

• Eitrem, S. and Amundsen, L., P.Oslo III, 1936, no. 68, pp. 6-8, picture: Plate IIIa

Further Literature

Catalogues

TM 61157 / LDAB 2296 / M-P3 00705.000 / Allen Sutton West P339 (=West, M. L. (2001). Studies in the text and transmission of the Iliad (p. 100). München)

Discussions

• Bingen, J. (1961). "[Rev.] William Lameere, Aperçus de paléopraphie homérique. A propos des payrus de l' Iliade et de l' Odyssée des collections de Gand, de Bruxelles et de Louvain. Bruxelles-Anvers, Éditions Érasme et Standaard-Boekhandel, 1960".Cronique d' Égypte, 36, p. 217.
• West, S. (1963). Reclamantes in Greek papyri. Scriptorium, 17.2, pp. 314-315.
• West, S. (1967).The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer (pp. 23 and 283). Köln, Opladen.
• Schironi, F. (2010). To Mega Biblion : Book-Ends, End-Titles and Coronides in Papyri with Hexametric Poetry. American Studies in Papyrology, 48. The American Society of Papyrologists. On the ambiguous evidence for the signalling of book-end through the presence of marginal sign(s), end-title and/or reclamans; see database no. 8 pp. 100-101, and passim (index p. 253).