WEBVTT - The Artifact: Wiping With Homer 0:00:03.279 --> 0:00:05.640 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of 0:00:05.640 --> 0:00:11.360 iHeart Radio. Hi, my name is Joe McCormick, and this 0:00:11.560 --> 0:00:14.840 is the Artifact, a short form series from Stuff to 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:19.280 Blow Your Mind, focusing on particular objects, ideas, and moments 0:00:19.280 --> 0:00:24.880 in time. You can learn a lot from looking at trash. 0:00:25.520 --> 0:00:28.120 There's a city in Egypt on the western side of 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:32.920 the Nile Valley. Today it's called Albanasa, but during the 0:00:33.040 --> 0:00:37.400 Roman period it was known as Oxyrynchus. Although lots of 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:41.680 people might not recognize the name, Oxyrynchus is without a doubt, 0:00:41.720 --> 0:00:46.320 one of the most important sources of original, handwritten ancient 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:50.520 manuscripts in the entire world, and nearly all of these 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:55.200 manuscripts trace back to crusty pits where, for hundreds of years, 0:00:55.640 --> 0:01:04.360 in layer upon layer, people through their trash. Usually, unless 0:01:04.360 --> 0:01:08.280 they're carved into stone, written documents are relatively quick to decay, 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:12.080 but the dry conditions at Oxyrynchus kept these trash pits 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:17.080 largely protected from natural degradation and safely guarded. Thousands of 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:22.240 archaeologically precious papyrus documents across the ages. Beginning in the 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:25.880 eighteen nineties, a pair of British scholars named Bernard Grenfell 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:29.160 and Arthur Hunt led an effort to excavate the ancient 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:32.760 garbage dumps of Oxyrrincus and discovered a bonanza of written 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:36.880 documents from roughly the third century to the seventh, including 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:40.800 everything from the plays of Menander and poetry of Sappho 0:01:41.080 --> 0:01:44.600 to passages from a non canonical early Christian work that 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:48.840 would later be identified as the Gospel of Thomas. It's 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:52.480 been estimated that about ten percent of the documents are literary, 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:56.080 meaning things like plays and poetry, with much of the 0:01:56.120 --> 0:02:01.560 rest being the paper record of daily life, letters, contracts, 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:07.440 census rolls, receipts, lists of offerings for ritual sacrifice. The 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:11.800 garbage Library of Oxyrrincus offers a diverse and fascinating view 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:14.919 into life in Egypt through the Roman period and after. 0:02:15.400 --> 0:02:17.520 And today I wanted to talk about a couple of 0:02:17.520 --> 0:02:22.119 the papyri unearthed there that caught my attention. One sordid 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:25.840 document discovered at Oxyrrincus dates to the year two sixty 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:28.960 seven CE, and it has been described as one of 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:33.520 the world's earliest proofs of bribery in an athletic competition 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:37.880 known as Papyrus Oxyrincus fifty two O nine. It's a 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:42.560 contract between the ambitious father of a young wrestler named 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:48.120 n Cantonus and the trainers of another young wrestler named Demetrius, 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:52.799 stipulating that Demetrius must lose an upcoming wrestling match ton 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:58.560 Cantonus on purpose. If Demetrius fulfilled his promise to quote 0:02:58.760 --> 0:03:02.799 fall three times and yield, n Cantonus's father would pay 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:07.040 him three thousand, eight hundred drachmas. According to several authors, 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:10.000 this was roughly the price of a donkey at the time, 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:14.240 but there's a heavy penalty for backing out. According to 0:03:14.280 --> 0:03:17.600 a short piece in Archaeology Magazine by Jason Urbanus, in 0:03:19.000 --> 0:03:22.720 the agreement also threatens that if Demetrius were to betray 0:03:22.880 --> 0:03:25.920 the agreement and win the match, his party would owe 0:03:26.000 --> 0:03:30.520 eighteen thousand drachmas, which by the earlier metric is about 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:35.520 four point seven donkeys, so a strong distincentive. Why would 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:37.720 so much wealth be on the line to fix a 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:42.520 wrestling match between two teenagers? Speaking to Owen Jaris for 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:47.920 article in Life Science, the translator of the papyrus, Dominic 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:52.640 Rathbone of King's College, London, explains the context in the 0:03:52.720 --> 0:03:56.280 ancient world, the winners of athletic competitions would often be 0:03:56.360 --> 0:03:59.520 given a cash reward or would be honored with a 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:03.760 life time pension from their hometown, but the competitions were 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:07.480 also winner take all. There was no such reward for 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:10.320 being a runner up. Add that to the fact that 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:14.880 entering an athletic competition was usually expensive in itself, since 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.960 you had to pay your trainers for their services as 0:04:17.960 --> 0:04:21.640 well as for accommodations, food, and travel, you could easily 0:04:21.800 --> 0:04:24.960 end up in debt. So if you had doubts about 0:04:24.960 --> 0:04:28.960 your ability to win an upcoming competition, it made financial 0:04:29.000 --> 0:04:33.359 sense to take the bribe and practice cafebe. Greek writers 0:04:33.400 --> 0:04:36.320 from the period do speak about bribery and corruption in 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:39.960 athletic games, but this papyrus is the first to provide 0:04:40.000 --> 0:04:44.719 direct proof. Rathbone also points out a quixotic aspect of 0:04:44.760 --> 0:04:48.839 the contract, the fact that it exists at all. If 0:04:48.880 --> 0:04:52.960 one side didn't honor the deal, who would enforce the contract. 0:04:53.360 --> 0:04:56.599 It's an agreement to cheat, so it's hard to imagine 0:04:56.600 --> 0:04:59.600 the contract being used in court to force one side 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:02.680 or the other there to honor their word. Another interesting 0:05:02.680 --> 0:05:05.800 manuscript from Oxyrrincus caught my attention, not because of what 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:08.520 was written on it, but because of how it ended 0:05:08.600 --> 0:05:12.520 up in the trash. According to Princeton professor Anna Marie 0:05:12.680 --> 0:05:16.360 Liondike and her two thousand ten articles Sacred Scriptures as 0:05:16.440 --> 0:05:21.400 Trash Biblical Papyri from Oxyrynchus, it's often hard to figure 0:05:21.440 --> 0:05:24.320 out how or why a written text from the ancient 0:05:24.360 --> 0:05:27.640 world ended up in a garbage dump, especially in the 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:31.279 case of religious literature, which you would assume was believed 0:05:31.279 --> 0:05:35.159 to be holy. In some cases, books were discarded because 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:38.200 of natural wear and tear, possibly after the text they 0:05:38.240 --> 0:05:42.600 contained had been freshly recopied onto new media. Other times, 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:46.760 generational changes in language or education level could make existing 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:49.720 books relatively useless. It's hard to get much out of 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:52.480 a book if you can't read it, but in some 0:05:52.640 --> 0:05:56.599 very rare instances we can actually detect the final use 0:05:56.760 --> 0:06:01.000 of a manuscript. This brings us to the Syncus Papyrus 0:06:01.040 --> 0:06:05.159 number forty thirty three. In terms of contents, it's a 0:06:05.200 --> 0:06:08.880 manuscript of an ancient commentary on the poetry of Homer, 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:13.640 which was immensely popular and widely studied throughout the ancient Mediterranean. 0:06:14.400 --> 0:06:18.320 Liondyke explains that when these ancient papyri are excavated from 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:21.840 garbage dumps. They usually take the form of crumpled up 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:26.000 dry lumps, so before you can transcribe and translate the 0:06:26.080 --> 0:06:29.240 writing on them, you have to flatten them out. To 0:06:29.320 --> 0:06:32.960 do this, scholars apply moisture to the dried out fibers 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:35.679 of the papyrus and then pull and rub them until 0:06:35.720 --> 0:06:39.000 they assume the correct shape. Some experts do this with 0:06:39.040 --> 0:06:45.240 their fingers. To quote from lion Dyke regarding Papyrus three quote, 0:06:45.800 --> 0:06:48.719 whether it was the vapors let loose when this homer 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:52.840 piece was dampened, or more substantial organic remains stuck to it, 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:56.360 the conservation of that papyrus must have been a surprisingly 0:06:56.480 --> 0:07:00.840 unpleasant task for its editor. J. Spooner notes that this 0:07:01.000 --> 0:07:04.760 text was last used as toilet paper, or what I 0:07:04.800 --> 0:07:09.239 would call toilet papyrus. Liondyte notes that in most cases 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:12.200 the exact circumstances that led to the trashing of a 0:07:12.280 --> 0:07:15.520 document are not quite so obvious, but it's a clear 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:18.800 reminder that even in an age when literature had to 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:22.800 be laboriously reproduced by hand, one copy at a time, 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:26.080 readers are always going to be facing their own priorities. 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:38.640 Tune into new editions of the Artifact every Wednesday, hosted 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.960 by either Robert or myself. As always, you can email 0:07:42.040 --> 0:07:53.800 us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:56.400 Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. 0:07:56.760 --> 0:07:59.080 For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart 0:07:59.160 --> 0:08:01.880 Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:02.600 favorite shows.