Oxyrhynchus - the dustbin of history

Guardian Unlimited (Khaled Diab)

Our collective memory of the past is mostly confined to grand figures and epic events, while the vast majority of humanity ends up in the wastelands of oblivion.

Thanks to nearly half a million papyrus fragments uncovered in Hellenic Egyptian rubbish dumps which are being gradually decoded, however, we are, quite literally, salvaging fragments of ordinary people's lives from the dustbin of history.

The rubbish dumps in question belonged to the provincial but thriving Egyptian city of Oxyrhynchus (City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish), about 100 miles south of modern Cairo, which was established during the pharaonic New Kingdom and became Hellenised in Ptolemic times, but was eventually reduced to a single standing column.

Most of the unearthed documents, discovered by two Victorian archaeologists, date from the time when Egypt was part of the Roman empire, and include a treasure trove of lost classics and non-canonical gospels.

Peter Parsons, an archaeologist who spent two decades leading the team deciphering the papyri, has written a book that offers a fascinating reconstruction of life in Oxyrhynchus.

For me, the mundane aspects of ordinary life highlighted in correspondences and letters in the book are among the most enthralling of all the finds because they reveal both how familiar and how different that lost world is.

"... Write to me about your health and what you need from here," Achillion exhorts his brother, Hierakapollon. "If you do this, you will have done me a favour: for we shall have the impression, through our letters, of seeing one another face to face."

See the above page for the full story, which has attracted 19 comments so far. The book referred to, by Peter Parsons is City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish - Greek Papyri Beneath the Egyptian Sand Reveal a Long Lost World (2007). I've had it sitting on my book shelf for around a year - I'm glad that this post appeared because I had forgotten I had it and I've now excavated it and am looking forward to reading it. I posted links to a couple of reviews about the book last year, by William Dalrymple in New Statesman and Tom Holland on the Guardian.