The Oxyrhynchus Papyri: From ancient trash to historical treasure

Imagine that, 1,500 years from today, an archaeologist finds the remnants of your garbage in a dump. They might find your shopping lists, receipts, insurance contracts, bank statements, your will, personal letters to family and friends, and maybe even pages from a journal therapy course. Perhaps they might find religious or spiritual writings, a few old newspapers, and a few torn pages from your favourite thriller or romance novels. Such a scenario should give you a flavour of what Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt found in their excavation of a site at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt between 1896 and 1907. Here, within a city rubbish dump, the archaeologists found a seemingly inexhaustible trove of