Discovery and Acquisition In 2002 a group of more than 20 papyri was on the market. They belonged to a private collector outside Egypt. We do not know how and when the papyri became his property. But only after acquisition by the Cologne Papyrus Collection could these ancient documents of… Read more
“The New Sappho” actually comprises a group of papyrus fragments, quotations, and testimonia for Sappho’s poetry dating back more than two millennia. Scholars who were amazed to learn that Sappho had “composed a new poem” when Edgar Lobel published it a half-century ago—she had, after all, been dead for over… Read more
Papyrological finds, no matter how momentous for papyrologists and other specialists studying the ancient world, ordinarily do not make international headlines. Yet M. L. West’s 2005 article in the Times Literary Supplement announcing the apparent recovery of a virtually intact poem by Sappho, only the fourth to have survived almost… Read more
