Moving Ahead About Two Thousand Years

Our cuneiform tablets, cones, and bulla are the oldest objects held by the Special Collections & Rare Books unit in the Archives and Special Collections Department of the University of Minnesota Libraries. They may be the oldest items held by the University Libraries, although our colleague and University Archivist, Erik Moore, might disagree. (Perhaps Erik will share, at some time, his contention on the oldest item in our collections.)

If we move ahead in time by about two millennia we arrive at the next items on display: papyri fragments and ostraka. An ostracon is a potsherd used as a writing surface; papyrus sheets were made from a plentiful wetland plant growing along rivers in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The papyri fragments come from Egypt, from the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus (Greek: Ὀξύρρυγχος) located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Cairo. 

For over 120 years, archaeologists have excavated in and around the ancient rubbish sites of this city. Their digging uncovered numerous historically significant (and everyday) texts from about the third century before the common era into the time of Roman rule. Rediscovered texts include pieces from the Gospel of Thomas, Euclid's mathematical text, The Elements, and plays from the Greek dramatist, Menander.

Our papyri fragments and ostraka are of a more ordinary type. Here are their descriptions and a few images.

Papyrus Fragment 3 

Description: Text of Uncertain Character in Hieroglyphics, verso: blank. 
Accesson number: 554187
Date of Acquisition: January 6, 1933. Erik von Scherling (dealer).






Papyrus Fragment 5 

Date: III century CE. 
Description: recto: Receipt for the Return of Some Marriage Goods, verso: blank. 
Accession number: 762403
Publication: K. A. Worp in BASP 44 (2007), no. 2 (http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0599796.0044.001:05) 
Date of Acquisition: December 22, 1937. Erik von Scherling (dealer).






Papyrus Fragment 4

Date: 89-93/4 CE. 
Description: Declaration to a Strategus of the Oxyrhynchite Nome, verso: blank.
Accession number: 762402
Publication: K. A. Worp BASP 44 (2007), no. 1 (http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0599796.0044.001:05) 
Date of Acquisition: December 22, 1937. Erik von Scherling (dealer).



Papyrus Fragment 12

Date: 120/1 CE. 
Description: recto: Receipt for the Price of Green Fodder, verso: blank.
Accession number: 1381984
Dealer: Erik von Scherling (G63)
Publication: K. A. Worp in BASP 44 (2007), no. 4 (http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0599796.0044.001:05) 
Date of Acquisition: in or after 1952




Ostrakon 1

Date: 4th to 5th Century CE
Description: Receipt, Red Pottery
Accession number: 554185
Publication: K. A. Worp in BASP 44 (2007), no. 11 (http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0599796.0044.001:05)
Date of Acquisition: January 6, 1933. Erik von Scherling (dealer).


Ostrakon 2

Description: Text of Uncertain Character in Hieroglyphics
Accession number: 554186
Date of Acquisition: January 6, 1933. Erik von Scherling (dealer).