Papyri by century, findspot and surface — the other great document class · 埃及之纸草文献
Papyri by century. The dry sand of Egypt preserves what stone could not — a curve that climbs through Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt to a 2nd-century peak, thins in the 5th, then revives as the tax-rolls and letters of Byzantine and early-Islamic Egypt.
The great findspots: Oxyrhynchus’ rubbish-mounds, the villages of the Fayum (Arsinoites), Thebes. “Unknown” is the unprovenanced market trade.
Papyrus carried literature and law; the humble ostracon — a potsherd — carried the receipts and tax-tickets of daily life. Wood, parchment and linen round out the surfaces.