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What Have Literary Papyri Done for Us? Peter van Minnen From Posidippus to Palladas: what have literary papyri done for us? The Journal of Juristic Papyrology 43, 243-261 2013 243_261 VanMinnen OK TD_011_041 Ch1 11/08/15 13:09 Page 243 PAPYROLOGY AD 2013 27th International Congress of Papyrology pp. 243–261 Peter van Minnen FROM POSIDIPPUS TO PALLADAS: WHAT HAVE LITERARY PAPYRI DONE FOR US? he title of my report on recent progress in literary papyrology sug- Tgests two things. First, that my report will cover progress made 1 between 2001, the date of publication of the Posidippus papyrus, and 2 2013, the date of publication of the Palladas papyrus. Second, that I will focus on Greek literary texts written from the early Ptolemaic period (Posidippus) to the late Roman period (Palladas), more particularly epigrams. While I will indeed try to cover progress made between 2001 and 2013, I will by no means limit myself to early Ptolemaic and late Roman epigrams. What about papyri with Greek literary texts written before the Hellenistic period? What about Greek poetry other than epigrams? What about Greek prose? What indeed about literary texts in languages other than Greek? There has been much progress since Fried- 3 4 helm Hoffmann and Heike Behlmer reported on Hieratic, Demotic, and Coptic literary papyri at the papyrological congress in Vienna in 2001. 1 G. Bastianini & C. Gallazzi, Posidippo di Pella, Epigrammi (P. Mil. Vogl. viii 309), Milano 2001. 2 K. W. Wilkinson, New Epigrams of Palladas: A Fragmentary Papyrus Codex (P.CtYBR inv. 4000) [= American Studies in Papyrology 52], Durham, NC 2012 [sic]. 3 F. Hoffmann, ‘Die ägyptischen literarischen Texte. Ein Forschungsüberblick’, [in:] B. Palme (ed.), Akten des 23. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses, Wien, 22.–28. Juli 2001 [= Papyrologica Vindobonensia 1], Wien 2007, pp. 279–294. See now also F. Hoffmann, 243_261 VanMinnen OK TD_011_041 Ch1 11/08/15 13:09 Page 244 244 PETER VAN MINNEN But why bother with anything other than Greek? That is where the last word in my title comes in: what have literary papyri done for us – who are we? Well, most of us are Greek documentary papyrologists who believe that our research on Greek documentary papyri is enriched by literary papyri. To understand the society that produced the Greek documentary papyri, we need the Greek literary papyri and the papyri in other languages that it also produced. My task is therefore more comprehensive than that 5 of others who are reporting on progress in literary papyrology but also (a lot) more superficial. I will focus on what literary papyri (and ostraca, etc.) can tell us about the people and society that produced them. That socie- ty is Graeco-Roman Egypt with an occasional step backward or forward in 6 7 time. I will not include literary papyri from Derveni, Herculaneum, and 8 9 10 Qumran, let alone Daphni near Athens and Rhodes. The only comprehensive resource for literary papyri in any language is the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (www.trismegistos.org/ldab). It currently (2013) records over 16,500 ancient books, and of these over 11,600 are from Egypt. Of these again almost 1,900 are parchments, 900 ‘Hieratic and Demotic literature’, [in:] Christina Riggs (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt, Oxford 2012, pp. 543–562. 4 Heike Behlmer, ‘Recent work on Coptic literary (and semi-literary) texts (1997–2000)’, [in:] Palme (ed.), Akten des 23. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses (cit. n. 3), pp. 25–37. 5 G. Cavallo on Greek and Latin palaeography and ‘bibliology’ (pp. 277–312) and J. Danielewicz on Archaic Greek lyric and Hellenistic epigrams (pp. 263–275). 6 T. Kouremenos, G. M. Parássoglou, & K. Tsantsanoglou, The Derveni Papyrus [= Studi e testi per il Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini 13], Firenze 2006. 7 Most noteworthy new editions: W. B. Henry, Philodemus, On Death [= Writings from the Greco-Roman World 29], Atlanta, GA 2009; R. Janko, Philodemus, On Poems, Books 3–4, Oxford 2010; D. Armstrong & J. A. Ponczoch, ‘[Philodemus], On wealth (PHerc. 1570 cols. VI–XX, pcc. 4–6a): new fragments of Empedocles, Menander, and Epicurus,’ Cronache Ercolanesi 41 (2011), pp. 97–138; and G. Leone, Epicuro, Sulla natura libro II [= La scuola di Epicuro 18], Napoli 2012. 8 See especially E. Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert [= Studies on the Texts from the Desert of Judah 54], Leiden 2004. 9 M. L. West, ‘The writing tablets and papyrus from Tomb II in Daphni’, Greek and Roman Musical Studies 1 (2013), pp. 73–92. 10 Αναστασία ∆ΡΕΛΙΩΣΗ-ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙ∆ΟΥ & Ν. ΛΙΤΙΝΑΣ, ‘!οδιακ' 'στρακο µε ερωτικ' επ. - γραµµα’, 0υ2ιµ3νη 10–12 (2009–2011), pp. 135–155. 243_261 VanMinnen OK TD_011_041 Ch1 11/08/15 13:09 Page 245 FROM POSIDIPPUS TO PALLADAS 245 ostraca, and 200 wooden tablets, leaving over 8,600 papyri. They date from 400 bc to ad 900 with a few outliers. The first issue I want to address, however briefly, is the what of these books. Not all these 11,600 ‘books’ are in fact books. Many are single ‘sheets’ with a school exercise or a liturgical text. Many are so fragmentary that it is hard to tell. When the text continues on the other side, a fragment must come from a book in codex form. If the text on the back is not a continuation of the text on the front, we have a problem. Is P. Oxy. viii 1075 (the end of Exodus) and P. Oxy. viii 1079 (the beginning of Revela- tion) a fragment of a reused roll (so the editor) or of a codex (so Brent 11 Nongbri )? If the former, the text on the back of the roll would not have been written immediately following but long after the text on the front, and one should be able to tell this from the writing on the back: the back of reused rolls is damaged from use, and writing on it is a struggle. If the latter, the writing on the back should not show signs of struggle. What Nongbri raises as an alternative possibility can be definitely settled with the papyrus in hand, and I have no doubt that the editor was right. So, not one codex, but one opisthograph roll. 12 For codices we can rely on the foundational work of Eric Turner, which includes early Coptic codices. William Johnson has now added a 13 ‘volume’ on Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus. His dataset is much less comprehensive than Turner’s, but he pushes the study of the scribes who produced a number of related Oxyrhynchus literary papyri even further 14 than the same Turner in another pioneer study. This takes us to the next issue I want to address, the where. Here I can also be brief. Oxyrhynchus – what else, for Greek literary papyri? Tebtunis and Soknopaiou Nesos – what else, for Demotic literary 11 B. Nongbri, ‘Losing a curious Christian scroll but gaining a curious Christian codex’, Novum Testamentum 55 (2013), pp. 77–88. 12 E. G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex [= Haney Foundation Series 18], Philadel- phia, PA 1977. 13 W. A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus, Toronto 2004. 14 E. G. Turner, ‘Scribes and scholars in Oxyrhynchus’, [in:] H. Gerstinger (ed.), Akten des VIII. Internationalen Kongresses für Papyrologie, Wien 1955 [= Mitteilungen aus der Papyrussammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek ns 5], Wien 1956, pp. 141–146, 243_261 VanMinnen OK TD_011_041 Ch1 11/08/15 13:09 Page 246 246 PETER VAN MINNEN papyri? In my article on the literary papyri from these two villages from 15 1998, I identified the Egyptian priests of Tebtunis and Soknopaiou Nesos as the owners of the Hieratic, Demotic, and (most) Greek literary papyri found there. This takes us to the next issue I want to address, how- ever briefly, the who. Do the Hieratic and Demotic papyri from Tebtunis perhaps derive, not from private owners, the priests, but from an institution, the Egypt- ian temple? Some, maybe, but the majority no doubt derive from the pri- vate libraries of the Egyptian priests of Tebtunis, who deposited the books they no longer needed within the temple enclosure rather than ‘throwing 16 them away’. The presence of many copies of the same texts, often enter- taining narratives rather than religious texts, sometimes written on the back of Greek documents, shows that we are dealing with mostly private 17 books. So, we cannot peek into the ‘Tebtunis Temple Library’, or even the library of a single priest, but (even better) we can use the thousand plus texts as a window into ‘the’ reading culture of the bi-literate popula- tion of Tebtunis, that is, its Egyptian priests. But there is a caveat: these Egyptian priests owned a variety of Greek literary papyri as well. In Teb- tunis some of these have been found in the debris of their houses, along with some Hieratic and Demotic literary papyri. Most papyrologists assume that ‘Greeks’ owned the far more numer- ous Greek literary papyri found in cities. If these also mainly derive from private libraries, the difference rather than the overlap with what we find reprinted in A. K. Bowman et al. (eds.), Oxyrhynchus: A City and Its Texts [= Graeco-Roman Memoirs 93], London 2007, pp. 256–261. 15 P. van Minnen, ‘Boorish or bookish? Literature in Egyptian villages in the Fayum in the Graeco-Roman period’, Journal of Juristic Papyrology 28 (1998), pp. 99–184. 16 In my article I drew a parallel with what Eastern Christians, Jews, and Arabs do with the (sacred) books they no longer need – they take them to a ‘holy place’ to deposit them rather than ‘throwing them away’.
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