The Derveni papyrus is an

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

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 ...

roll that was discovered in 1962 at the archaeological site of Derveni, near

Thessaloniki Thessaloniki (; ), also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, Salonika, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece (with slightly over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area) and the capital cit ...

, in

Central Macedonia Central Macedonia ( ; , ) is one of the thirteen Regions of Greece, administrative regions of Greece, consisting the central part of the Geographic regions of Greece, geographical and historical region of Macedonia (Greece), Macedonia. With a ...

. A

philosophical Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

treatise, the text is an

allegorical As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughou ...

commentary on an Orphic poem, a

theogony The ''Theogony'' () is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogy, genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Homeric Greek, epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 1,022 lines. It is one ...

concerning the birth of the gods, produced in the circle of the philosopher

Anaxagoras Anaxagoras (; , ''Anaxagóras'', 'lord of the assembly'; ) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae at a time when Asia Minor was under the control of the Persian Empire, Anaxagoras came to Athens. In later life he was charged ...

. The roll dates to around 340 BC, during the reign of

Philip II of Macedon Philip II of Macedon (; 382 BC – October 336 BC) was the king (''basileus'') of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedonia from 359 BC until his death in 336 BC. He was a member of the Argead dynasty, founders of the ...

, making it Europe's oldest surviving

manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...

. The poem itself was originally composed near the end of the 5th century BC, and "in the fields of Greek religion, the sophistic movement, early philosophy, and the origins of literary criticism it is unquestionably the most important textual discovery of the 20th century." While interim editions and translations were published over the subsequent years, the manuscript in its entirety was first published in 2006.

Discovery

The roll was found on 15 January 1962 at a site in Derveni, Macedonia, northern

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

, on the road from

to Kavala. The site is a nobleman's grave in a necropolis that was part of a rich cemetery belonging to the ancient city of Lete. It is the oldest surviving manuscript in the Western tradition, the only known ancient papyrus found in Greece proper, and possibly the oldest surviving papyrus written in Greek regardless of provenance. The archaeologists Petros Themelis and Maria Siganidou recovered the top parts of the charred papyrus scroll and fragments from ashes atop the slabs of the tomb; the bottom parts had burned away in the funeral pyre. The scroll was carefully unrolled and the fragments joined together, thus forming 26 columns of text. It survived in the humid Greek soil, which is unfavorable to the conservation of papyri, because it was carbonized (hence dried) in the nobleman's funeral pyre. However, this has made it extremely difficult to read, since the ink is black and the background is black too; in addition, it survives in the form of 266 fragments, which are conserved under glass in descending order of size, and has had to be painstakingly reconstructed. Many smaller fragments are still not placed. The papyrus is kept in the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki.

Content

In total, twenty six columns of text survive today. The main part of the text is a commentary on a

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek as well as in Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of s ...

poem ascribed to

Orpheus In Greek mythology, Orpheus (; , classical pronunciation: ) was a Thracians, Thracian bard, legendary musician and prophet. He was also a renowned Ancient Greek poetry, poet and, according to legend, travelled with Jason and the Argonauts in se ...

, which was used in the mystery cult of

Dionysus In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; ) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus ( or ; ...

by the 'Orphic initiators'. Fragments of the poem are quoted, followed by interpretations by the main author of the text, who tries to show that the poem does not mean what it literally says. The poem begins with the words "Close the doors, you uninitiated", a famous admonition to secrecy, also quoted by

Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...

. The interpreter claims that this shows that Orpheus wrote his poem as an allegory. The theogony described in the poem has Nyx (Night) give birth to

Uranus Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a Supercritical fluid, supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or Volatile ( ...

(Sky), who becomes the first king.

Cronus In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Cronus, Cronos, or Kronos ( or ; ) was the leader and youngest of the Titans, the children of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (mythology), Uranus (Sky). He overthrew his father and ruled dur ...

follows and takes the kingship from Uranus, but he is likewise succeeded by

Zeus Zeus (, ) is the chief deity of the List of Greek deities, Greek pantheon. He is a sky father, sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Zeus is the child ...

, whose power over the whole universe is celebrated. Zeus gains his power by hearing oracles from the sanctuary of Nyx, who tells him "all the oracles which afterwards he was to put into effect." At the end of the text, Zeus rapes his mother Rhea, which, in the Orphic theogony, will lead to the birth of

Demeter In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Demeter (; Attic Greek, Attic: ''Dēmḗtēr'' ; Doric Greek, Doric: ''Dāmā́tēr'') is the Twelve Olympians, Olympian goddess of the harvest and agriculture, presiding over cro ...

. Zeus would then have raped Demeter, who would have given birth to

Persephone In ancient Greek mythology and Ancient Greek religion, religion, Persephone ( ; , classical pronunciation: ), also called Kore ( ; ) or Cora, is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She became the queen of the Greek underworld, underworld afte ...

, who marries Dionysus. However, this part of the story must have continued in a second roll which is now lost. The Derveni Papyrus

The interpreter of the poem argues that Orpheus did not intend any of these stories in a literal sense, but they are allegorical in nature. The first surviving columns of the text are less well preserved, but talk about occult ritual practices, including sacrifices to the

Erinyes The Erinyes ( ; , ), also known as the Eumenides (, the "Gracious ones"), are chthonic goddesses of vengeance in ancient Greek religion and mythology. A formulaic oath in the ''Iliad'' invokes them as "the Erinyes, that under earth tak ...

(Furies), how to remove daimones that become a problem, and the beliefs of the

magi Magi (), or magus (), is the term for priests in Zoroastrianism and earlier Iranian religions. The earliest known use of the word ''magi'' is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius the Great, known as the Behistun Inscription. Old Per ...

. They include a quotation of the philosopher

Heraclitus Heraclitus (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Achaemenid Empire, Persian Empire. He exerts a wide influence on Western philosophy, ...

. Their reconstruction is extremely controversial, since even the order of fragments is disputed. Two different reconstructions have recently been offered, that by Valeria Piano and that by Richard Janko, who notes elsewhere that he has found that these columns also include a quotation of the philosopher

Parmenides Parmenides of Elea (; ; fl. late sixth or early fifth century BC) was a Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic ancient Greece, Greek philosopher from Velia, Elea in Magna Graecia (Southern Italy). Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Veli ...

Language

The text of the papyrus contains a mix of

ancient Greek dialects Ancient Greek in classical antiquity, before the development of the common Koine Greek of the Hellenistic period, was divided into several varieties. Most of these varieties are known only from inscriptions, but a few of them, principally Aeolic ...

. It is written mainly in a mixture of

Attic An attic (sometimes referred to as a '' loft'') is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building. It is also known as a ''sky parlor'' or a garret. Because they fill the space between the ceiling of a building's t ...

and Ionic Greek; however it also contains a few Doric forms. In some instances, the same word appears in different dialectal forms, such as and ; and ; and .

Recent reading

The full surviving text was not officially published for forty-four years after its discovery (though three partial editions were issued). A team of experts was assembled in 2005 led by A. L. Pierris of the Institute for Philosophical studies and Dirk Obbink, director of the

Oxyrhynchus Papyri The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrology, papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient Landfill, rubbish dump near Oxyrhync ...

project at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, with the help of modern multispectral imaging techniques by Roger MacFarlane and Gene Ware of

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU) is a Private education, private research university in Provo, Utah, United States. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is the flagship university of the Church Educational System sponsore ...

, to attempt a better approach to the edition of a difficult text. However, results of this initiative were not published or made available to other scholars. The papyrus was finally published by a team of researchers from

(Tsantsanoglou et al., below), and they provided a complete text of the papyrus based on an analysis of the fragments, with photographs and translation. Subsequent progress was made in reading the papyrus by Valeria Piano and Richard Janko, who developed a new method for taking digital microphotographs of the papyrus, a technique that permitted some of the most difficult passages to be read for the first time. Examples of these images are now in the public domain. A version of Janko's new text is available in an edition by Mirjam Kotwick, while an English edition is in preparation.

Significance

Derveni Papyrus - Fragments on display in the Archaelogical Museum of Thessaloniki

In 2015 the Derveni papyrus was added by UNESCO to the Memory of the World International Register where it is described as the oldest known European book. According to UNESCO:

The Derveni Papyrus is of immense importance not only for the study of Greek religion and philosophy, which is the basis for the western philosophical thought, but also because it serves as a proof of the early dating of the Orphic poems offering a distinctive version of Presocratic philosophers. The text of the Papyrus, which is the first book of western tradition, has a global significance, since it reflects universal human values: the need to explain the world, the desire to belong to a human society with known rules and the agony to confront the end of life.

References

Sources

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External links

The Derveni papyrus at ''The iMouseion Project''

"The Derveni Papyrus – A conversation with Richard Janko"
, ''Ideas Roadshow'', 2013 {{DEFAULTSORT:Derveni Papyrus 4th-century BC manuscripts 1962 archaeological discoveries Presocratic philosophical literature Greek religion texts Religion in ancient Macedonia Philip II of Macedon Greek-language papyri Orpheus Archaeological discoveries in Macedonia (Greece) Memory of the World Register Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki