Strata: One Man’s Trash, an Archaeologist’s Treasure

Is the cure for your illness in the Oxyrhynchus papyri? Maybe if you have an eye disease, fever, ulcers or hemorrhoids. In the 80th volume of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 2014), Marguerite Hirt, David Leith and W. Benjamin Henry published the largest collection of medical papyri to date. The volume, including manuscripts of Hippocrates, Dioscorides and Gallen, provides insight into what these Greco-Roman writers believed about medicine.

The Oxyrhynchus papyri, named after the ancient city (modern El-Bahnasa, Egypt) where they were dumped, were discovered by two Oxford graduate students who followed local rumors about Greek manuscripts and excavated an ancient trash heap.^a They uncovered more than 500,000 papyri between 1897 and 1907. Works by Herodotus, Plato and Livy have been found alongside a large collection of Christian apocrypha. One hundred years have passed since the initial discovery, and less than 10 percent of the papyri have been translated. In all probability more treasure will arise from this trash.