OPES – Oslo Papyri Electronic System

Background and Physical Properties

Material:

Papyrus

Connections:

–

Size:

7.8 x 14.7 cm

Lines:

21

Publication side:

Recto (Verso: unpublished)

Palaeographic description:

Upright, semi-literary informal hand. Quickly penned. A fair number of cursively drawn letters. No ligatures, but some letters reach the letters following (see e.g. the central epsilon in l. 8). Medium pen. Black ink.

State of preservation:

Medium brown papyrus. Extensively damaged fragment held together at three places by tape in modern times. It preserves remains from one column of text. Part of the upper margin (2.3 cm) is preserved. A rectangular area of approx. 4 x 5 cm is missing from the upper right corner. The straight left edge probably runs along the left end of a right-over-left kollesis (the right end of the posterior sheet is visible on the back, approx. 2 cm from the edge). Parts of the text are difficult to read because of scattered damage especially in the lower right portion. In many places the ink is bleached. The back contains the remains of a much abraded text written with black ink and a thicker pen. Its type cannot be identified.

Content

Date:

2nd century CE

Origin:

Unknown, Egypt

Language:

Greek

Genre:

Literary

Author:

Unknown

Title / Type of text:

Sibylline Oracle / Hexameter verse

Content:

Remains of 21 lines of hexameter verse first identified by Crönert (1928) as an example of a Sibylline oracle. Two other papyrus fragments (P. Köln II 467, published by Gronewald in 2010, and P.Macquarie inv. 586(1)), discovered to be parts of the same papyrus assigned to the 2nd cent. BCE (published together by Gronewald in 2011), overlap with the Oslo fragment. The comparative edition of the three fragments fills out many of the previous gaps in the text. While the wording of the Oslo, Köln and Macquarie fragments do not coincide with any part of the later manuscript tradition, their subject matter is close to parts of the third Sibylline oracle. Ll. 1-6 is a list of empires close to the one described at Sib. Or. 3.159-161, while ll. 9-19 tells of the rulers of Egypt leading up to the prophesized seventh king of Egypt, as well as the aftermath to his reign, as seen in Sib. Or. 3.608-615. The final two lines (20-21) seem to be the beginning of a new oracle. They are marked off with a coronis in the left margin of the Köln fragment, while the left margin of the Oslo fragment is broken away.

Subjects:

Sibylline Oracle

Named people:

–

Named places:

Egypt Nile Babylon Acheron Amathus

English translation:

For an English translation see CPJ IV 614, pp. 263-264.

Provenance:

Unknown, Egypt

Acquisition:

Purchased by Eitrem in Egypt

Acquisition year:

1920

Editions

• Eitrem S., Symbolae Osloenses 5(1), 1927, p. 38
• Crönert, W., Symbolae Osloenses 6(1), 1928, pp. 57-59, picture: p. 58
• Eitrem, S. and Amundsen, L., P.Oslo II, 1931, pp. 27-29 (no. 14), picture: Plate I

Further Literature

Catalogues

TM 63208 / LDAB 4413 / M-P3 1331.1 / J.van Haelst 581

Discussions

• Körte, A. (1932). “707. Sibyllinisches (?) Orakel.” Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete, 10, p. 25.
• Tarn, W. W. (1932). “Alexander Helios and the Golden Age” (see p. 144n.3). The Journal of Roman Studies, 22(2), pp. 135-160.
• Van Haelst, J. (1976). Catalogue des papyrus littéraires juifs et chrétiens (= 581, p. 484). Paris.
• Collins, J. J. (1987). “The Development of the Sibylline Tradition” (see. p. 424 with n.14). In W. Haase (Ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II, vol. 20.1, pp. 421-459, Berlin.
• Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents. (1997). “P.Macquarie inv. 586(1) and the Sibylline Tradition.” Newsletter, 4, p. 6.
• Gauger, J.-D. (1998). Sibyllinische Weissagungen (see p. 367n. 55). Düsseldorf.
• Pickering, S.R. and Barker, D.C. (1998). A Handbook to the Macquarie Papyri (= HB 3, p. 20). Sydney.
• Schiano, C. (2005). Il secolo della Sibilla: momenti della tradizione cinquecentesca degli “Oracoli sibillini” (p. 10). Bari.
• Gronewald, M. (2010). “Sibyllinische Orakel (= P.Köln XII 467).” In C. Armoni, M. Gronewald, J. Lundon, K. Maresch, F. Reiter, & G. Schenke (Eds.), Kölner papyri, vol. 12, pp. 1-17, Paderborn.
• Gronewald, M. (2011). “P.Macquarie inv. 586 (1), ein neues Fragment zu P.Köln XII 467: Sibyllinische Orakel.” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 177, pp. 57-62.
• Van Minnen, P. “From Posidippus to Palladas: what have literary papyri done for us?” (see p. 252). The Journal of Juristic Papyrology, 43, pp. 243-261.
• Mugridge, A. (2016). Copying Early Christian Texts. A Study of Scribal Practice (= catalogue number 447). Tübingen.
• Jacobs, D. (2020). “A Sibylline Oracle: The Seventh King.” In N. Hacham, & T. Ilan (Eds.), Corpus Papyrorum Judaicarum, vol. 4, pp. 261-265, Berlin.
• Valverde, L. A. (2021). “Serie RRC 489 de Marco Antonio, en parte con Lépido” (see p. 99). Revista numismática OMNI, 15, pp. 85-103.