are renumbered by their editor (the same is true when groups of poets are edited together). Not only can such systems of numeration be complicated by the addition, over time, of new discoveries to the corpus, but competing volumes or editions may assign different numbers to the same fragment! This companion has elected to use the enumeration of Campbell’s Loeb editions, but much has changed since they were first published: for Sappho and Alcaeus, scholars frequently cite the editions of either Lobel-Page (= LP) or Voigt (= V.); for elegy, the editions of West or Gentili-Prato compete. Sometimes it is not the editor but the title of an edition which provides an identifying acronym, e.g., Page’s Poetae Melici Graeci (= PMG) or Supplementum Lyricis Graecis (= SLG), Davies’ Poetarum Melicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (= PMGF), and Lloyd-Jones’ Supplementum Hellenisticum (= SH). For these, and other common abbreviations, see the Abbreviations and Standard Editions in this Companion.
Digital Resources
Papyrology has long been in the vanguard of digital humanities: the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri (= DDbDP) was established in 1982 (i.e., before the creation of the World Wide Web!); the Heidelberger Gesamtverzeichnis der griechischen Papyrusurkunden (= HGV) was launched in 1988, and in the mid-1990s, the Advanced Papyrological Information System (= APIS) was conceived and developed out of the Duke Papyrus Archive. Papyrologists now collectively curate papyri.info (http://papyri.info), which aggregates data and metadata from these and other resources. An equivalent portal for literary papyri (dubbed DCLP) was launched in December 2017 and has since been incorporated into papyri.info. But there are other important digital corpora of data and metadata about literary texts, which warrant mention in this chapter inasmuch as papyri can also be identified according to their unique systems of enumeration:
M.-P.3: Catalogue des papyrus littéraires grecs et latins3 (http://cipl93.philo.ulg.ac.be/Cedopal/MP3/dbsearch_en.aspx). This catalog is the online third edition of the Greek and Latin Literary Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt, edited by Pack and Mertens. Literary papyri are frequently identified by their Mertens-Pack (or M.-P.3) number.
TM: Trismegistos (http://www.trismegistos.org) aims to catalog metadata about all ancient texts on papyrus (and other media)—big data for the papyrological world. It assigns a unique, stable identifier to every record in the database (823,217 texts as of April 2020).
LDAB: Leuven Database of Ancient Books, now part of the Trismegistos catalog (http://www.trismegistos.org/ldab). This database collects basic information on literary texts from antiquity (16,561 items as of April 2020).
The various systems of enumeration both digital and archival can be used in tandem: for the purpose of illustrating the overlap, consider the cases of a codex from Berlin containing Sappho and the famous Lille Stesichorus.
| Berlin Sappho | Lille Stesichorus | |
| Inventory Number | P.Berol. inv. 9722 | P.Lille inv. 111c + 73 + 76a–c |
| editio princeps | BKT 5.2, no. XIII 2 (pp. 10–18) | • CRIPEL 4 (1976): 287–303 • cf. ZPE 26 (1977): 1–6 • cf. ZPE 26 (1977): 7–36 |
| Other Critical Editions | • Frr. 92–97 V.• Frr. 92–97 LP | • PMGF 222b • Fr. 97 F |
| TM | 62713 | 62787 |
| M.-P.3 | 1451 | 1486.1 |
| LDAB | 3901 | 3975 |
In the former case, six fragmentary poems of Sappho from a single codex have as many possible identifying numbers (LDAB 3901 = M.-P.3 1451 = TM 62713, etc.); so too in the latter case, where several separately inventoried fragments from a single poem are reunited under an individual number (PMGF 222b = fr. 97 F = LDAB 3975 = M.-P.3 1486.1, etc.). Encountering a TM or M.-P.3 number in the course of one’s research should not startle; knowing the different names for something is akin to mastering it—πολυωνυμία is not only a property of gods!
The Editorial Process
The editor’s most important tasks—namely, the production of an accurate transcription (i.e., “good readings”), as well as attributing the work to a particular poet—are the basis for all further research. But fulfilling these responsibilities depends on further wide-ranging, synthesizing analyses, including of dialect (de Kreij, this volume), of meter (Battezzato 2009; D’Angour, this volume), of palaeography, of diction, and of physical layout. The last can be particularly challenging: a group of small fragments is like a jigsaw puzzle, but with papyri there are inevitably missing or otherwise ill-fitting pieces! (Figure 7.2) In general, the larger the scrap(s) and the more extensive the amount of text available for analysis, the more richly it can be understood.
Figure 7.2 P.Oxy. 25.2430; fragments of Simonides (= fr. 519). (Courtesy of The Egypt Exploration Society and the University of Oxford Imaging Papyri Project.)
The order in which various aspects of the process are presented below in no way reflects a standardized technique: every papyrus is unique, and yields insights on its own terms as its readings are confirmed and its text stabilized. A papyrologist invariably wears many hats in the course of completing the job (Youtie 1963; Turner 1968: 54–73), but all responsible editions will include some combination of the following.
Origins/Provenance
Papyri are archaeological objects, and are therefore best understood in their archaeological and historical contexts, to the extent that these can be reconstructed: from archaeological find spot, to use (and reuse) in antiquity and modern ownership or collecting history. But due especially to philology’s tendency to privilege the text above all else, papyrology—and especially literary papyrology—has long been weak on archaeology. Early excavations such as those of the famed Oxford “Dioscuri” (Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt), for example, prioritized the extraction and accumulation of papyri. While attempts were made to organize texts that were uncovered together where possible, the “torrent” of papyri Grenfell and Hunt were uncovering on a daily basis at al-Bahnasa precluded any sort of detailed inventory or accounting of find-spots, let alone a more scientific recording of stratigraphy. (Figure 7.3) We are not much better served on this front by the reality of a lively antiquities market: purchased papyri were accompanied by the dealer’s word, which could (but need not) be well informed. There are exceptions (see, e.g., Claytor and Verhoogt 2018) but the principal methods of acquisition during the heyday of discovery regularly make the analysis of a papyrus in its archaeological context impossible. Documentation is frequently frustrating or nonexistent.
Figure 7.3 Excavating for papyri at Oxyrhynchus (al-Bahnasa). (GR.NEG.048, courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society.)
Such historical limitations notwithstanding, every editio princeps should include a frank and thorough accounting of a papyrus’ provenance, an all-encompassing term under whose umbrella the object’s history (from antiquity to the present) is meant: its ancient context, the circumstances of its discovery, and its modern ownership or collecting history. Where documentation exists in the form of receipt(s) for sale, archaeological notebook(s), or institutional acquisition/inventory report(s), it should also be reported.
