![]() ![]() ![]() These manuscripts were written in Greek, the language commonly used in Egypt during this period. private letters, shopping lists and tax forms, with a small proportion of a literary nature, but also discovered were several early copies of the New Testament. The vast majority of the papyri record everyday life e.g. Traditionally, only grand, official documents carved in stone have survived from the classical world, but the Oxyrhynchus archive is unusual and unparalleled as it contained what the classical sites of Greece and Italy could not preserve - paper. The historical significance of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri There, beneath the drifted sand, they discovered a thousand years' worth of papyri which had been preserved in ideal conditions because of the town's location - it hardly rains in this part of Egypt, and although Oxyrhynchus was situated near a canal, it did not suffer from the annual flooding which was commonplace on the banks of the Nile. Little attention was given to Oxyrhynchus as an ancient site of importance until the late 1890s when Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt, two young papyrologists of the 'Egypt Exploration Society', began to dig up the rubbish mounds. However, its history has been preserved within the refuse of its inhabitants, discovered in enormous mounds outside the town. Although it was a prosperous city during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, little remains of Oxyrhynchus today. Oxyrhynchus was an ancient town in the north of Egypt (situated near the modern town of al-Bahnasa), approximately 160km southwest of Cairo on one of the Nile's canals. Unlike the modern day paper that we use, papyrus was a thick, strong and durable material. ![]() It was made from the pith of the papyrus, a plant which used to grow on the banks of the river Nile. Papyrus is an ancient writing material from Egypt. ![]()
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