Reading Ancient Mail isn’t Snooping, Right?
Late in the fall of 1896, Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt, scholars fresh from Oxford took the steamer to Cairo. They wanted to become Famous Archaeologists during a period when the British were fascinated by ancient Egyptian artifacts. So fascinated that said artifacts were disappearing from Egypt like sliced grapes from a toddler’s plate.
They decided to dig at Oxyrhynchus, a city 100 miles south of Cairo and around 10 miles west of the Nile. The city (or what’s left of it) sits on a low rise, high enough to ride out the yearly flooding of the Nile. High and dry.
At first there wasn’t much to find. The site had been picked clean by grave robbers, archeologists, and locals looking for stone to build houses and barns.Finally, on January 11, 1897, they checked the trash heaps scattered around the city. And there, among shards of broken pottery, they struck gold. Letters, poems, books, bills–one papyri after another, many of them complete, preserved for nearly 2000 years by the dry Egyptian climate. Eventually they sent more than 500,000 papyri back to England, so many that we still haven’t deciphered them all.
Thanks to their discovery, we can learn that peoples attempts to comfort the mourning have always been awkward:
October 28, 100-200BC Trene to Taonnophris and Philo, good cheer! I was as much grieved and shed as many tears over Eumoerus as I shed for Didymas, and I did everything that was fitting, and so did all my friends… But still there is nothing one can do in the face of such trouble. So I leave you to comfort yourselves. Goodbye.
And that little boys have always considered themselves full grown men worthy of going anywhere and doing anything the adults are doing.
100-200BC Theon to his father Theon, greeting. It was a fine thing of you not to take me with you to the city! If you won’t take me with you to Alexandria I won’t write you a letter or speak to you or say goodbye to you; and if you go to Alexandria I won’t take your hand nor ever greet you again. That is what will happen if you won’t take me. Mother said to Archelaus, “It quite upsets him to be left behind(?).” It was good of you to send me presents… on the 12th, the day you sailed. Send me a lyre, I implore you. If you don’t, I won’t eat, I won’t drink; there now!
You’ve got to admire the way young Theon pulls his mom into the crossfire.
Or, listen to this whine resounding across the centuries:
100-200 BC. Corbolon to Heraclides, greeting … I wonder that you did not see your way to let me have what I asked you to send by Corbolon, especially when I wanted it for a festival. I beg you to buy me a silver seal and to send it me with all speed. Take care that Onnophris buys me what Irene’s mother told him … I had the large cheeses from Corbolon. I did not however want large ones, but small. Let me know of anything that you want and I will gladly do it. Farewell.
PS. Send me an obol’s worth of cake for my nephew.
Want to snoop on the ancients yourself? You can find several hundred of the translated papyri here. Please drop me an email if you find anything particularly interesting, especially if it sounds like a good plot point for a future book.
