Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. Hi, my name is Joe McCormick, and this
Speaker 1: is the Artifact, a short form series from Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind, focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments
Speaker 1: in time. You can learn a lot from looking at trash.
Speaker 1: There's a city in Egypt on the western side of
Speaker 1: the Nile Valley. Today it's called Albanasa, but during the
Speaker 1: Roman period it was known as Oxyrynchus. Although lots of
Speaker 1: people might not recognize the name, Oxyrynchus is without a doubt,
Speaker 1: one of the most important sources of original, handwritten ancient
Speaker 1: manuscripts in the entire world, and nearly all of these
Speaker 1: manuscripts trace back to crusty pits where, for hundreds of years,
Speaker 1: in layer upon layer, people through their trash. Usually, unless
Speaker 1: they're carved into stone, written documents are relatively quick to decay,
Speaker 1: but the dry conditions at Oxyrynchus kept these trash pits
Speaker 1: largely protected from natural degradation and safely guarded. Thousands of
Speaker 1: archaeologically precious papyrus documents across the ages. Beginning in the
Speaker 1: eighteen nineties, a pair of British scholars named Bernard Grenfell
Speaker 1: and Arthur Hunt led an effort to excavate the ancient
Speaker 1: garbage dumps of Oxyrrincus and discovered a bonanza of written
Speaker 1: documents from roughly the third century to the seventh, including
Speaker 1: everything from the plays of Menander and poetry of Sappho
Speaker 1: to passages from a non canonical early Christian work that
Speaker 1: would later be identified as the Gospel of Thomas. It's
Speaker 1: been estimated that about ten percent of the documents are literary,
Speaker 1: meaning things like plays and poetry, with much of the
Speaker 1: rest being the paper record of daily life, letters, contracts,
Speaker 1: census rolls, receipts, lists of offerings for ritual sacrifice. The
Speaker 1: garbage Library of Oxyrrincus offers a diverse and fascinating view
Speaker 1: into life in Egypt through the Roman period and after.
Speaker 1: And today I wanted to talk about a couple of
Speaker 1: the papyri unearthed there that caught my attention. One sordid
Speaker 1: document discovered at Oxyrrincus dates to the year two sixty
Speaker 1: seven CE, and it has been described as one of
Speaker 1: the world's earliest proofs of bribery in an athletic competition
Speaker 1: known as Papyrus Oxyrincus fifty two O nine. It's a
Speaker 1: contract between the ambitious father of a young wrestler named
Speaker 1: n Cantonus and the trainers of another young wrestler named Demetrius,
Speaker 1: stipulating that Demetrius must lose an upcoming wrestling match ton
Speaker 1: Cantonus on purpose. If Demetrius fulfilled his promise to quote
Speaker 1: fall three times and yield, n Cantonus's father would pay
Speaker 1: him three thousand, eight hundred drachmas. According to several authors,
Speaker 1: this was roughly the price of a donkey at the time,
Speaker 1: but there's a heavy penalty for backing out. According to
Speaker 1: a short piece in Archaeology Magazine by Jason Urbanus, in
Speaker 1: the agreement also threatens that if Demetrius were to betray
Speaker 1: the agreement and win the match, his party would owe
Speaker 1: eighteen thousand drachmas, which by the earlier metric is about
Speaker 1: four point seven donkeys, so a strong distincentive. Why would
Speaker 1: so much wealth be on the line to fix a
Speaker 1: wrestling match between two teenagers? Speaking to Owen Jaris for
Speaker 1: article in Life Science, the translator of the papyrus, Dominic
Speaker 1: Rathbone of King's College, London, explains the context in the
Speaker 1: ancient world, the winners of athletic competitions would often be
Speaker 1: given a cash reward or would be honored with a
Speaker 1: life time pension from their hometown, but the competitions were
Speaker 1: also winner take all. There was no such reward for
Speaker 1: being a runner up. Add that to the fact that
Speaker 1: entering an athletic competition was usually expensive in itself, since
Speaker 1: you had to pay your trainers for their services as
Speaker 1: well as for accommodations, food, and travel, you could easily
Speaker 1: end up in debt. So if you had doubts about
Speaker 1: your ability to win an upcoming competition, it made financial
Speaker 1: sense to take the bribe and practice cafebe. Greek writers
Speaker 1: from the period do speak about bribery and corruption in
Speaker 1: athletic games, but this papyrus is the first to provide
Speaker 1: direct proof. Rathbone also points out a quixotic aspect of
Speaker 1: the contract, the fact that it exists at all. If
Speaker 1: one side didn't honor the deal, who would enforce the contract.
Speaker 1: It's an agreement to cheat, so it's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: the contract being used in court to force one side
Speaker 1: or the other there to honor their word. Another interesting
Speaker 1: manuscript from Oxyrrincus caught my attention, not because of what
Speaker 1: was written on it, but because of how it ended
Speaker 1: up in the trash. According to Princeton professor Anna Marie
Speaker 1: Liondike and her two thousand ten articles Sacred Scriptures as
Speaker 1: Trash Biblical Papyri from Oxyrynchus, it's often hard to figure
Speaker 1: out how or why a written text from the ancient
Speaker 1: world ended up in a garbage dump, especially in the
Speaker 1: case of religious literature, which you would assume was believed
Speaker 1: to be holy. In some cases, books were discarded because
Speaker 1: of natural wear and tear, possibly after the text they
Speaker 1: contained had been freshly recopied onto new media. Other times,
Speaker 1: generational changes in language or education level could make existing
Speaker 1: books relatively useless. It's hard to get much out of
Speaker 1: a book if you can't read it, but in some
Speaker 1: very rare instances we can actually detect the final use
Speaker 1: of a manuscript. This brings us to the Syncus Papyrus
Speaker 1: number forty thirty three. In terms of contents, it's a
Speaker 1: manuscript of an ancient commentary on the poetry of Homer,
Speaker 1: which was immensely popular and widely studied throughout the ancient Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: Liondyke explains that when these ancient papyri are excavated from
Speaker 1: garbage dumps. They usually take the form of crumpled up
Speaker 1: dry lumps, so before you can transcribe and translate the
Speaker 1: writing on them, you have to flatten them out. To
Speaker 1: do this, scholars apply moisture to the dried out fibers
Speaker 1: of the papyrus and then pull and rub them until
Speaker 1: they assume the correct shape. Some experts do this with
Speaker 1: their fingers. To quote from lion Dyke regarding Papyrus three quote,
Speaker 1: whether it was the vapors let loose when this homer
Speaker 1: piece was dampened, or more substantial organic remains stuck to it,
Speaker 1: the conservation of that papyrus must have been a surprisingly
Speaker 1: unpleasant task for its editor. J. Spooner notes that this
Speaker 1: text was last used as toilet paper, or what I
Speaker 1: would call toilet papyrus. Liondyte notes that in most cases
Speaker 1: the exact circumstances that led to the trashing of a
Speaker 1: document are not quite so obvious, but it's a clear
Speaker 1: reminder that even in an age when literature had to
Speaker 1: be laboriously reproduced by hand, one copy at a time,
Speaker 1: readers are always going to be facing their own priorities.
Speaker 1: Tune into new editions of the Artifact every Wednesday, hosted
Speaker 1: by either Robert or myself. As always, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.