The biggest papyrus scrolls discovery

Huge number of papyrus scrolls fragments had been discovered at the beginning of the 1900 , by 2 British schoolasrs in a city called El Bahnasa , Per-Medjed , in ancient times .160 km south of Cairo In ancient times a species of mormyrus fish was worshipped there in a local cult. The ‘sharp-nosed fish’ is reputed to have been one of the three species of Nile fish who, according to legend, ate the phallus of Osiris when the god’s body was cut into pieces by his brother Seth.

Plutarch tells of a dispute which broke out between this town and its neighbour, Cynopolis, who worshipped a dog – each community being accused of killing and eating each other’s sacred emblems.

Per-Medjed was called Oxyrhynchus (or Oxyrhynchonpolis) by the Greeks who named their town after the sacred fish.

Oxyrhynchus was a large and sophisticated town during Roman times,

It is thought to have housed as many as 6000 people during its prominence, and a few structures have been revealed from this period, including part of a colonnade and a substantial Roman theatre. Textural evidence tells us that there was also a gymnasium, public baths and about twenty temples.

In 1896 ,Arthur Hunt and Bernard Grenfell who were to make the name of Oxyrhynchus famous.The two archaeologists from Oxford discovered, in the town’s rubbish mounds, a large quantity of papyri scrolls

ranging from the Roman conquest to the early Islamic period. Between 1896 and 1906, Oxyrhynchus yielded an impressive collection of texts for Grenfell and Hunt, mostly written in Greek but also in Latin, Coptic and Arabic. Literary works included plays and poetry, several previously lost classical works, as well as known texts of Plato. Fragmentary Christian texts were also found, including a collection of Logia, or sayings of Christ, some which do not appear in the gospels. Other discarded manuscripts found in the rubbish dumps consisted of letters and texts which shed an important light on daily life in Roman Egypt. Details of political, financial and religious concerns have been revealed in this, one of the largest and most important finds of papyri in Egypt. Together Grenfell and Hunt went on to edit and publish many volumes of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri for the Egypt Exploration Fund.