Hard-coded id of currently selected item: . JSON version of its record is available from Blacklight on e.g. ??

Metadata associated with selected item should appear here...

Papyrus 126

Record Id:

040-002104506

Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:

032-002104451

MDARK:

ark:/81055/vdc_100000000173.0x000322

LARK:

SLARK:

Format:

ISAD(G)

Reference (shelfmark):

Papyrus 126

Title:

‘Harris Homer Codex’ (P.Lond.Lit. 5 ro., TM 61277, LDAB 2419, MP³ 634), Tryphon, Ars grammatica (P.Lond.Lit. 5 vo., P.Lond.Lit. 182 TM/LDAB 110341, MP³ 1539), and Accounts (TM 91831)

Scope & Content:

Single-quire codex of 18 folios, containing Iliad II 101-493; III 1-491; IV 1-40 on the right-hand pages, with end-titles, additions and corrections, and numbers of lines to the page and of lines of the books at the bottom. Some of the pages originally left blank were reused to host Tryphon’s Ars Grammatica, quoting lines from Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, and some accounts.

Papyrus 126(1) recto:

Left-hand page: Tryphon’s Ars Grammatica (upside down in relation to the text on the right);

Right-hand page: Homer, Iliad II.101-149;

Papyrus 126(2) recto:

Left-hand page: Tryphon’s Ars Grammatica (upside down in relation to the text on the right);

Right-hand page: Homer, Iliad II 150-198 (line 168 omitted);

Papyrus 126(3) recto:

Left-hand page: Tryphon’s Ars Grammatica, with author and title at the end (upside down in relation to the text on the right);

Right-hand page: Homer, Iliad II 199-247 (line 206 omitted);

Papyrus 126(4) recto: Homer, Iliad II 248-304 (lines 270-271 added at the top of the column; 289-290 added at the bottom);

Papyrus 126(5) recto: Homer, Iliad II 305-354;

Papyrus 126(6) recto: Homer, Iliad II 355-405;

Papyrus 126(7) recto: Homer, Iliad II 406-457;

Papyrus 126(8) recto: Homer, Iliad II 458-493, with coronis, end-title with ornamentation; numbers 1-6 presumably to indicate books of the Iliad contained in the codex; number of lines of Homer, Iliad II (491 given in place of 493); and numbers of lines to the page. The Catalogue of the Ships and of the Trojans (Iliad 494-877) are omitted;

Papyrus 126(9) recto: Homer, Iliad III 1-54;

Papyrus 126(9) verso: Homer, Iliad III 55-110 (line 94 omitted);

Papyrus 126(8) verso: Homer, Iliad III 111-159;

Papyrus 126(7) verso: Homer, Iliad III 160-210;

Papyrus 126(6) verso: Homer, Iliad III 211-262 (line 235 added at the top);

Papyrus 126(5) verso:

Left-hand page: Accounts (unpublished);

Right-hand page: Homer, Iliad III 263-317 (line 272 added at the top);

Papyrus 126(4) verso: Homer, Iliad III 318-367;

Papyrus 126(3) verso: Homer, Iliad III 368-417 (line 405 added at the top);

Papyrus 126(2) verso: Homer, Iliad III 418-461, with coronis, end-title, and number of lines to the page and total number of lines of the book.

Papyrus 126(1) verso: Homer, Iliad IV 1-40.

Collection Area:

Western Manuscripts

Project / Collection:

Greek Manuscripts
Papyri Collections

Hierarchy Record Ids:

032-002104451
040-002104506

Is part of:

Papyrus 1-3136 : Papyri

Papyrus 126 : ‘Harris Homer Codex’ (P.Lond.Lit. 5 ro., TM 61277, LDAB 2419, MP3 634), Tryphon, Ars grammatica (P.Lond.Lit. 5 vo., P.Lond.Lit.…

Hierarchy:

032-002104451[0044]/040-002104506

Container:

View / search within Archive / Collection: Papyrus 1-3136

Record Type (Level):

File

Extent:

9 sheets of a papyrus codex, dark-stained, housed in 9 glass frames named Papyrus 126(1), Papyrus 126(2), Papyrus 126(3), Papyrus 126(4), Papyrus 126(5), Papyrus 126(6), Papyrus 126(7), Papyrus 126(8), Papyrus 126(9). The sheets were folded in half to form two leaves, making a single-quire codex of 18 folios (36 pages); the holes of the binding are still visible. The codex belong to Turner’s group ‘aberrant I’ (‘much higher than broader’). The codex was at first only written on the right-hand pages, and later reused to host additional writing on the left-hand pages. Each of the right-hand pages bear one column of 48-54 lines, the column measuring 255 x 125 mm. Upside-down in relation to the first text on the right side, further texts were added on the left-hand pages of Papyrus 126(1) recto, Papyrus 126(2) recto, Papyrus 126(3) recto; 21 additional lines were written upside down in relation to the text on the right-hand page in Papyrus 126(5)verso.

Digitised Content:

Languages:

Greek, Ancient

Scripts:

Greek

Start Date:

0250

End Date:

0299

Date Range:

2nd half of the 3rd century

Era:

Access:

Please request the physical items you need using the online collection item request form.

Digitised items can be viewed online by clicking the thumbnail image or digitised content link.

Readers who have registered or renewed their pass since 21 March 2024 can request physical items prior to visiting the Library by completing
this request form.
Please enter the Reference (shelfmark) above on the request form.

If your Reader Pass was issued before this date, you will need to visit the Library in London or Yorkshire to renew it before you can request items online. All manuscripts and archives must be consulted at the Library in London.

This catalogue record may describe a collection of items which cannot all be requested together. Please use the hierarchy viewer to navigate to individual items. Some items may be in use or restricted for other reasons. If you would like to check the availability, contact our Reference Services team, quoting the Reference (shelfmark) above.

User Conditions:

Physical Characteristics:

Materials: Papyrus.

Dimensions: Sheet: 295 x 260 mm; Page: 295 x 130 mm; housed in nine glass frames named Papyrus 126(1), Papyrus 126(2), Papyrus 126(3), Papyrus 126(4), Papyrus 126(5), Papyrus 126(6), Papyrus 126(7), Papyrus 126(8), Papyrus 126(9) measuring x mm.

Script: Homer’s text: Medium-sized, angular, mixed style hand, with a slant to the right, overall bilinear and regular, rather coarse; with lectional signs by the original scribe (accents, apostrophes, middle and high stops, quantity marks, breathings, hyphen, diaeresis); paragraphus marks for new section; with corrections, some of which are by a second, cursive hand. Tryphon’s text: Thin cursive hand; accounts: Cursive hand.

Custodial History:

Origin: Egypt.

Provenance: El-Maabde, Egypt. Formerly part of the collection of Anthony Charles Harris (b. 1790, d. 1869); allegedly found by Harris himself in 1854 in the Crocodile Pit at Ma’abdeh, but already in his possession in 1850 (Nongbri 2017). Purchased with Papyrus 127(A) and Papyrus 127(B-D) from Frederick George Hilton Price (b. 1842, d. 1909) on 13 October 1888.

Former External References:

P.Lond.Lit. 182
P.Lond.Lit. 5 ro.
P.Lond.Lit. 5 vo.

Publications:

Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts in the British Museum in the Years 1888-1893 (London: British Museum 1894), p. 391.

Recto

F. G. Kenyon, Classical texts from papyri in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum 1891) pp. 81-92, with pl. vi.

Greek Papyri in the British Museum I (London: British Museum 1893), p. xix, no. 126.

H. Oldfather, The Greek Literary Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt (Madison: University of Wisconsin 1923), pp. 27, 85, no. 473.

H. J. M. Milne, Catalogue of the Literary Papyri in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum 1927), p. 2, no. 5.

W. R. Dawson, ‘Anastasi, Sallier, and Harris and Their Papyri’, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 35 (1949), pp. 158-166.

E. G. Turner, ‘Early papyrus codices of large size’, in Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Papyrologists, Oxford, 24-31, July, 1974 (London: Egypt Exploration Society 1975), pp. 309-312 (p. 310)

E. G. Turner, The typology of the early codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1977), no. 106, pp. 21, 106, and passim.

C. H. Roberts, T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London-Oxford: Oxford University Press 1983), p. 21.

E. G. Turner, P. J. Parsons, Greek manuscripts of the ancient world (London: University of London, Institute of Classical Studies 1987), pp. 40-41, no. 14.

U. Horak, Illuminierte Papyri, Pergamente und Papiere (Wien: A. Holzhausen 1992), p. 230, no. 28.

K. A. Worp, ‘A note on the provenances of some Greek literary papyri’, The Journal of Juristic Papyrology 28 (1998), pp. 203-218 (p. 212).

M. L. West, Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad (München-Leipzig: K.G. Saur 2001), p. 88, w1.

A. Benaissa, ‘Iliad 3.228 and the Papyri’, Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete 54 (2008), pp. 5-6.

G. Cavallo, La scrittura greca e latina dei papiri: una introduzione (Pisa: Serra 2008), p. 110.

F. Schironi, ‘Book-Ends and Book-Layout in Papyri with Hexametric Poetry’, in T. Gagos, A. Hyatt, Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth International Congress of Papyrology, Ann Arbor, July 29-August 4 2007 (Ann Arbor: Scholarly Publishing Office, The University of Michigan Library 2010), pp. 695–704 (p. 703 no. 42).

F. Schironi, To mega biblion: book-ends, end-titles, and coronides in papyri with hexametric poetry (Durham, N.C.: American Society of Papyrologists 2010), pp. 168-171, no. 42.

B. Nongbri, ‘The Crocodile Pit of Maabdeh, Florence Nightingale, and the British Museum's Acquisition of the Harris Homers’, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 54 (2017), pp. 207-217.

A. Jördens, ‘Codices des Typs C und die Anfänge des Blätterns’, in A. Krauß, J. Leipziger, F. Schücking-Jungblut (eds.), Material Aspects of Reading in Ancient and Medieval Cultures (Berlin: De Gruyter 2020), pp. 115-148 (p. 126, n. 48).

Verso

F. G. Kenyon, Classical texts from papyri in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum 1891) pp. 109-116.

Greek Papyri in the British Museum I (London: British Museum 1893), p. xix, no. 126.

H. Oldfather, The Greek Literary Texts from Greco-Roman Egypt (Madison: University of Wisconsin 1923), no. 1120.

H. J. M. Milne, Catalogue of the Literary Papyri in the British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum 1927), p. 2, no. 5; p. 150, no. 82.

W. R. Dawson, ‘Anastasi, Sallier, and Harris and Their Papyri’, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 35 (1949), pp. 158-166.

E. G. Turner, The typology of the early codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1977), no. 106, pp. 21, 106, and passim.

A. Wouters, The grammatical papyri from Graeco-Roman Egypt. Contributions to the study of the ' Ars grammatica ' in Antiquity (Brussel: Paleis der Academiën 1979), no. 2, with pll. i-iii.

D. M. Schenkeveld, ‘Studies in the History of Ancient Linguistics: I. ΣΥΝΔΕΣΜΟΙ ΥΠΟΘΕΤΙΚΟΙ and o ean ΕΠΙΖΕUΚΤΙΚΟΣ’, Mnemosyne 35 (1982), pp. 248-268.

C. H. Roberts, T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London-Oxford: Oxford University Press 1983), p. 21.

K. A. Worp, ‘A note on the provenances of some Greek literary papyri’, The Journal of Juristic Papyrology 28 (1998), pp. 203-218 (p. 212).

Material Type:

Archives and Manuscripts

Legal Status:

Not Public Record(s)

Names:

Harris, Anthony Charles, Egyptologist
Homer, epic poet, ? 8th century BC,
see also http://isni.org/isni/000000036354151X
Tryphon, of Papyrus 126

Places:

El-Maabde, Egypt