The Charioteer Papyrus (

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

Egypt Exploration Society The Egypt Exploration Society (EES) is a British non-profit organization founded in 1882 for the purpose of financing and facilitating the exploration of significant archeological sites in Egypt and Sudan, founded by writer Amelia Edwards and coin ...

, s.n.) is a 5th-century fragment of an illustration from an unknown work of literature. It is one of the finest surviving fragments of ancient book illustration. Unlike other surviving illustrated fragments of

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'' or ''papyruses'') can a ...

, such as the '' Romance Papyrus'' and the ''

Heracles Papyrus The Heracles Papyrus ( Sackler Library, University of Oxford, Pap. Oxyrhynchus 2331) is a fragment of a 3rd-century Greek manuscript of a poem about the Labours of Heracles. It contains three unframed colored line drawings of the first of the ...

,'' which have illustrations that are little more than mere sketches, the ''Charioteer Papyrus'' is sensitively drawn and finely colored. It shows portions of six

chariot A chariot is a type of vehicle similar to a cart, driven by a charioteer, usually using horses to provide rapid Propulsion, motive power. The oldest known chariots have been found in burials of the Sintashta culture in modern-day Chelyabinsk O ...

eers in the red or green

tunic A tunic is a garment for the torso, usually simple in style, reaching from the shoulders to a length somewhere between the hips and the ankles. It might have arm-sleeves, either short or full-length. Most forms have no fastenings. The name deri ...

s of their factions. It is unlikely that it served as an illustration for the

chariot race Chariot racing (, ''harmatodromía''; ) was one of the most popular Ancient Greece, ancient Greek, Roman Empire, Roman, and Byzantine Empire, Byzantine sports. In Greece, chariot racing played an essential role in aristocratic funeral games from ...

at the games at the funeral of

Patroclus In Greek mythology, Patroclus (generally pronounced ; ) was a Greek hero of the Trojan War and an important character in Homer's ''Iliad''. Born in Opus, Patroclus was the son of the Argonaut Menoetius. When he was a child, he was exiled from ...

in the ''

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; , ; ) is one of two major Ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odyssey'', the poem is divided into 24 books and ...

'', since the number of charioteers is wrong.E. G. Turner, "The Charioteers from Antinoe", ''The Journal of Hellenic Studies'' 93 (1973), pp. 192–195. It undoubtedly served an illustration for a literary work and was once bound as a

codex The codex (: codices ) was the historical ancestor format of the modern book. Technically, the vast majority of modern books use the codex format of a stack of pages bound at one edge, along the side of the text. But the term ''codex'' is now r ...

. There are only a few letters of text on the illustrated side of the fragment, but on the back are the first letters of thirteen lines of writing. There is not enough to identify the work. The language and alphabet are

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

, and the style might indicate an origin in

Egypt Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...

References

Further reading