I list the papyri that can be assigned to that find, arranged alphabetically,
withadespota(works of which the author is not known) and various miscel-
laneous works added at the end. A few preliminary comments will be useful.
I follow the consensus opinion on the production of literary works on
papyrus rolls as it has emerged in the past few years. Briefly put, the
consensus holds that most literary works were prepared, probably on
commission, by professional, trained scribes. One scribe would copy the
text from a master copy, perhaps correcting some of his own mistakes as he
went. Before the papyrus was turned over to the purchaser, it was often
checked against the master copy by a second scribe, thediorthotes. Both the
original scribe and thediorthoteswere, naturally enough, sometimes very
careful, sometimes not careful at all, and usually somewhere in between.
Annotations could be included in the text: the purchaser might ask the
original scribe to include whatever notes were already in the master copy,
or a second scribe could be commissioned to add notes, or they might be
added at some later stage.
55
(More on this later.) The ‘‘Comments’’ col-
umn of table 10.3 gives a brief summary of the kind of annotations to be
found in each manuscript. By ‘‘gloss’’ I mean a definition or clarification,
usually by means of a synonym, of a single word or phrase, and by ‘‘exegetic
note’’ I mean a more extensive note, one that explains the material at hand,
for example by elaborating on a myth, providing background information,
or drawing on similar passages elsewhere. I mention the corrections done
by adiorthotesonly in cases in which those are theonlyadditions.
This concentration was found by Grenfell and Hunt over a period of
weeks (January to March 1906) in one particular mound, a part of the
dump of ancient Oxyrhynchus that is (or was in 1906) known as the koˆm
Ali El Gamman. The list of manuscripts found at that time is based on
that of Funghi and Messeri Savorelli 1992b, 77 n. 16, but with both
additions and deletions; in the appendix, I give the evidence that shows
that each of these papyri was a part of this ‘‘second find,’’ as well as the
P.Oxy. numbers of each manuscript.
Obviously, the collection includes manuscripts that were written over a
considerable arc of time, from as early as 130B.C. (no. 16, Ibycus) through
the first centuryA.D. (nos. 1, 7, 8, 10, and 28) to aroundA.D. 200 (nos. 9,
12, 15, and 23, with others written in the middle or second half of
the second centuryA.D.). No single scribe predominates, even if we con-
sider a limited period of time. For example, many of the manuscripts in
the collection were produced in the middle or the latter half of the second
century, and within this period we find copies made by at least five, and
surely several more, professional scribes: scribe A5 (nos. 5, 13); scribe
A11 (no. 30), scribe A20 (nos. 4, 18, and 19), scribe A32 (no. 2), and
- For the process of production, with much more detail, see Johnson 2004, 157 60
(scribes and commissions), Turner 1980, 93 6 (editing and correcting), and McNamee 2007.
Kleberg 1989, 45 54, working more with literary than papyrological evidence, and primarily
with evidence from the city of Rome, presents a very similar picture.
Papyrological Evidence for Book Collections and Libraries 255