The Lost Odyssey: the oldest fragment of the Odyssey was shown in the USA

The oldest known fragment of Homer's Odyssey has been re-exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The papyrus, created in Egypt around 285-250 BC, contains part of the XX book of the poem and three lines missing from the extant standard version of the work. This was reported by Popular Science magazine on August 19.

Three lines that are not in the modern Odyssey

According to the description of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the height of the papyrus is 19.1 cm. The ancient Greek text has been preserved on the sheet, inked with ink, which was usually made from lamp soot diluted in water. A pointed reed or a bronze pen was used for writing.

The papyrus contains fragments of lines 41-68 from the XX book of the Odyssey. In this part of the poem, Odysseus, who has returned to Ithaca, prepares to deal with Penelope's suitors who have seized his house. The hero doubts that he will be able to resist them, but the goddess Athena promises to help him and puts him to sleep.

Three lines of papyrus are missing from the accepted version of the poem today. According to Sean Hemingway, curator of the Department of Greek and Roman Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this indicates the existence of several versions of the famous work.

As Hemingway explained, the Iliad and The Odyssey originally existed as oral poems. Storytellers performed them in different parts of the ancient Greek world, could change individual episodes, add details and build a narrative in their own way. Therefore, a single and unchanging version of the epic was not formed immediately.

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Most researchers believe that the poems were created between the 8th and the middle of the 7th century BC, and finally written down around the middle of the 6th century BC. At the same time, the question of authorship and the time of the text's appearance remains the subject of scientific debate. Modern experts consider the Odyssey not only as the work of a single author, traditionally called Homer, but also as the result of a long development of the oral poetic tradition.

According to the University of Chicago Library, the oldest surviving papyri with Homer's works date back to the 3rd century BC. Over a thousand manuscripts of his works have survived to this day, but most of the early evidence are small fragments.

How the unified version of the poem appeared

At the time of the creation of the papyrus, Egypt was ruled by the Ptolemaic dynasty. At the beginning of the 3rd century BC, a famous library was founded in Alexandria, which became the main center for storing and studying Homeric texts in the Hellenistic world.

Her collection included lists of poems brought from various ancient Greek cities, including Chios, Argos and Sinope. Alexandrian scholars compared versions, noted discrepancies, and tried to create a unified text of Homer's works. Gradually, one edition began to be perceived as the main one, and alternative lines and variants ceased to be reproduced by scribes.

The papyrus from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was made even before the final consolidation of such a tradition. Therefore, it serves as a material proof that in the III century BC the Odyssey could have existed in several editions at once.

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The fragment was discovered in 1902 during excavations of the ancient settlement of Khibeh in Egypt. According to the first scientific description in The Hibeh Papyri, it lay among the rubble behind the northern wall of the city, near the burial site of the sarcophagi. Unlike many other papyri from Khibeh, the sheet was not used to make the burial cardboard of the mummy.

In 1909, the Egypt Exploration Fund donated the find to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The artifact received the inventory number 09.182.50. For many years it has not been shown to visitors, but now the museum has included the papyrus in the permanent exhibition.

The features of the new museum installation allow us to view the fragment from two sides. The structure of the leaf is clearly visible on the reverse side: during its manufacture, strips of papyrus stalks were laid perpendicular to each other, creating a kind of weaving. Hemingway called the preservation of such an early fragment of the book an exceptional rarity.