Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 69 | Hacker News Reader

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 69

en.wikipedia.org

20 pointsbenbreen5 comments

If this seems unremarkable on its own, take a look at the entire cache it was discovered in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri

Highlights:

Only an estimated 10% are literary in nature. Most of the papyri found seem to consist mainly of public and private documents: codes, edicts, registers, official correspondence, census-returns, tax-assessments, petitions, court-records, sales, leases, wills, bills, accounts, inventories, horoscopes, and private letters.

Since 1898, academics have collated and transcribed over 5,000 documents from what were originally hundreds of boxes of papyrus fragments the size of large cornflakes. This is thought to represent only 1 to 2% of what is estimated to be at least half a million papyri still remaining to be conserved, transcribed, deciphered and catalogued. The most recent published volume was Vol. LXXXVI, released on 30 November 2021.

Reminds me of "Rainbows End". In that book, book scanning was done by throwing books into wood chippers and blowing the fragments through ducts filled with cameras. All the fragments were then reconstructed automatically.

"Administrative documents assembled and transcribed from the Oxyrhynchus excavation so far include:

    - The contract of a wrestler agreeing to throw his next match for a fee.[4]
    - Various and sundry ancient recipes for treating haemorrhoids, hangovers and cataracts.[5]
    - Details of a grain dole mirroring a similar program in the Roman capital.[6]"

Amazing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri#Administrat...

Related topic: Novgorod birch bark letters.

Although the language is different, it's another example of informal writing from a time and place where such findings are rare.

I thought this was about Payrus software for a second

(isis-papyrus.com)

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