Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 221

Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 221 (P. Oxy. 221 or P. Oxy. II 221) contains Homeric scholia by an unknown author, written in Greek. It was discovered in Oxyrhynchus, Egypt. The manuscript was written on papyrus in the form of a roll. It is dated to the second century. Frederic G. Kenyon dated it to the first century or the first half of the second century. Currently it is housed in the British Library (Department of Manuscripts, 1184) in London.^[1]

Description

The document was written by an unknown copyist. The

This papyrus was unique at the time of its discovery in being datable by both physical evidence and textual evidence. Thus, Grenfell and Hunt state that "we have here for the first time an almost contemporary specimen of a first century commentary on the Iliad." The point, then, is that the quotations from Homer in the text must accurately reflect the state of available manuscripts of the Iliad in the first century, unlike previously known collections of scholia, whose manuscripts were copied many centuries after the texts were written, which makes it impossible to know whether the Homeric quotations were corrupt.[2]

Furthermore, the papyrus contains a number of previously unknown quotations from ancient Greek authors, including Hesiod, Pindar, Alcaeus, Sophocles, and Aristotle.^[2]

See also

• Oxyrhynchus Papyri
• Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 220
• Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 223

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: B. P. Grenfell; A. S. Hunt (1899). Oxyrhynchus Papyri II. London: Egypt Exploration Fund.

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