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Derveni papyrus
Oldest surviving European manuscript (c. 340 BC)
Oldest surviving European manuscript (c. 340 BC)
Field
Value
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name
Derveni papyrus
location
Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki
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image
Derveni-papyrus.jpg
caption
Fragments of the Derveni papyrus
Type
Papyrus roll
Date
, from a late 5th century BC original
Place of origin
Macedonia
Language(s)
Ancient Greek
Dedicated to
Size
266 fragments
Format
26 columns
Condition
Fragmentary, charred from funeral pyre
Contents
Commentary on a hexameter poem ascribed to Orpheus
Discovered
1962
| Language(s) = Ancient Greek
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The Derveni papyrus is an Ancient Greek papyrus roll that was discovered in 1962 at the archaeological site of Derveni, near Thessaloniki, in Central Macedonia. A philosophical treatise, the text is an allegorical commentary on an Orphic poem, a theogony concerning the birth of the gods, produced in the circle of the philosopher Anaxagoras. The roll dates to around 340 BC, during the reign of Philip II of Macedon, making it Europe's oldest surviving manuscript. The poem itself was originally composed near the end of the 5th century BC, and "in the fields of Greek religion, the sophistic movement, early philosophy, and the origins of literary criticism it is unquestionably the most important textual discovery of the 20th century." While interim editions and translations were published over the subsequent years, the manuscript in its entirety was first published in 2006.
Discovery
The roll was found on 15 January 1962 at a site in Derveni, Macedonia, northern Greece, on the road from Thessaloniki to Kavala. The site is a nobleman's grave in a necropolis that was part of a rich cemetery belonging to the ancient city of Lete. It is the oldest surviving manuscript in the Western tradition, the only known ancient papyrus found in Greece proper, and possibly the oldest surviving papyrus written in Greek regardless of provenance. However, this has made it extremely difficult to read, since the ink is black and the background is black too; in addition, it survives in the form of 266 fragments, which are conserved under glass in descending order of size, and has had to be painstakingly reconstructed. Many smaller fragments are still not placed. The papyrus is kept in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki.
Content
In total, twenty six columns of text survive today. The main part of the text is a commentary on a hexameter poem ascribed to Orpheus, which was used in the mystery cult of Dionysus by the "Orphic initiators". Fragments of the poem are quoted, followed by interpretations by the main author of the text, who tries to show that the poem does not mean what it literally says. The poem begins with the words "Close the doors, you uninitiated", a famous admonition to secrecy, also quoted by Plato. The interpreter claims that this shows that Orpheus wrote his poem as an allegory. The theogony described in the poem has Nyx (Night) give birth to Uranus (Sky), who becomes the first king. Cronus follows and takes the kingship from Uranus, but he is likewise succeeded by Zeus, whose power over the whole universe is celebrated. Zeus gains his power by hearing oracles from the sanctuary of Nyx, who tells him "all the oracles which afterwards he was to put into effect." At the end of the text, Zeus rapes his mother Rhea, which, in the Orphic theogony, will lead to the birth of Demeter. Zeus would then have raped Demeter, who would have given birth to Persephone, who marries Dionysus. However, this part of the story must have continued in a second roll which is now lost.
The Derveni papyrus, [[Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki
The interpreter of the poem argues that Orpheus did not intend any of these stories in a literal sense, but they are allegorical in nature.
The first surviving columns of the text are less well preserved, but talk about occult ritual practices, including sacrifices to the Erinyes (Furies), how to remove daimones that become a problem, and the beliefs of the magi. They include a quotation of the philosopher Heraclitus. Their reconstruction is extremely controversial, since even the order of fragments is disputed. Two different reconstructions have recently been offered, that by Valeria Piano and that by Richard Janko, who notes elsewhere that he has found that these columns also include a quotation of the philosopher Parmenides.
Language
The text of the papyrus contains a mix of ancient Greek dialects. It is written mainly in a mixture of Attic and Ionic Greek; however, it also contains a few Doric forms. In some instances, the same word appears in different dialectal forms, such as cμικρό- and μικρό ((s)mikro; 'small,' an example of s-mobile); ὄντα and ἐόντα ((e)onta; 'real', masc. acc. sing.); νιν and μιν (nin/min; 'him/her/it', masc. acc. sing.).
Recent reading
The full surviving text was not officially published for 44 years after its discovery, although three partial editions were issued. A team of experts was assembled in 2005 led by A. L. Pierris of the Institute for Philosophical studies and Dirk Obbink, director of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri project at the University of Oxford, with the help of modern multispectral imaging techniques by Roger MacFarlane and Gene Ware of Brigham Young University, to attempt a better approach to the edition of a difficult text. However, results of this initiative were not published or made available to other scholars. The papyrus was finally published by a team of researchers from Thessaloniki (Tsantsanoglou et al., below), and they provided a complete text of the papyrus based on an analysis of the fragments, with photographs and translation.
T. Kouremenos, G.M. Parássoglou, K. Tsantsanoglou (eds.,) The Derveni Papyrus, Studi e testi per il Corpus dei papiri filosofici greci e latini, vol. 13 Casa Editrice Leo S. Olschki 2006 Subsequent progress was made in reading the papyrus by Valeria Piano and Richard Janko, who developed a new method for taking digital microphotographs of the papyrus, a technique that permitted some of the most difficult passages to be read for the first time. Examples of these images are now in the public domain. A version of Janko's new text is available in an edition by Mirjam Kotwick, while an English edition is in preparation.
Significance
The Derveni papyrus fragments in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki, with the UNESCO dedication in the middle of the panel
In 2015 the Derveni papyrus was added by UNESCO to the Memory of the World International Register where it is described as the oldest known European book. According to UNESCO:The Derveni Papyrus is of immense importance not only for the study of Greek religion and philosophy, which is the basis for the western philosophical thought, but also because it serves as a proof of the early dating of the Orphic poems offering a distinctive version of Presocratic philosophers. The text of the Papyrus, which is the first book of western tradition, has a global significance, since it reflects universal human values: the need to explain the world, the desire to belong to a human society with known rules and the agony to confront the end of life.
(2014). "'Riddles over Riddles': 'Mysterious' and 'Symbolic' (Inter)textual Strategies. The Problem of Language in the Derveni Papyrus". University of Basel.
Piano, Valeria. (2016). "P. Derveni III–VI: una reconsiderazione del testo". Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.
Piano, Valeria. (2016). "Il Papiro di Derveni tra religione e filosofia". Leo S. Olschki.
Janko, Richard. (2016). "Parmenides in the Derveni Papyrus". Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.
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