A Homer papyrus was sold today through Aguttes Auction House, France, for 35,000 euros. The papyrus, a fragment with lines from the beginning of the Iliad, is an old friend of us as it is linked with Dr Scott Carroll, Director of the Green Collection from 2009 to 2012, and now CEO of his own business, the Manuscripts Research Group, and connected with various other entities. The Iliad papyrus surfaced in a video of a presentation given by Carroll at an evangelical Christian charity event of 2016. The video is still available on Youtube (below), and was reported also by Brent Nongbri in his blo ..read more

Would you like to see plenty of “Biblical” antiquities of unknown provenance including some forgeries too? Then download the two pdf brochures that a Mr Brandon Witt is circulating to institutions and individuals for sale (the second version seems to imply that some items have been indeed sold). The Ancient Word_48_BW (2)Download The Ancient Word_2022_BWDownload Many of the pieces seem related with Scott Carroll and other evangelical dealers/collectors/morons. Cuneiform tablets, the usual Ptolemaic papyrus from cartonnage, a post-2002 Dead Sea scroll fragment and late antique parchments. Real ..read more

Classics for All, a charity that many of us know and appreciate for its work in schools, has launched a new initiative. An auction of antiquities, among other things, to raise funds: https://auctions.roseberys.co.uk/m/view-auctions/catalog/id/540 There are even two professors in archaeological related subjects joining the auction (lot 33 and 41). I would like to express my personal dismay for the many ethical issues surrounding the antiquities market and the troubling involvement of academia with it; not to mention the vague provenance provided for the pieces on sale. This initiative seems to ..read more

I have had a very hard time reading the new book of Ariel Sabar on the Jesus Wife fragment saga. (I call it fragment on purpose as the definition of Gospel is misleading, in my opinion). Don’t get me wrong. The author has done a great job and has transformed materials from years of extensive and meticulous research into a gripping tale. I definitely recommend you to buy and read the volume. However, this is also a painful reading for the old and new findings and stories it displays. As many of the actors and spectators of the saga have already commented in social media and other conversations ..read more

The Coptic Galatians fragment at the time of his eBay Mixantik offering in 2012 Is the newest-new Sappho a forgery? As the entangled tale of the origin of the new Sappho fragments is finally coming to light, I have heard increasing voices on Twitter and elsewhere wondering if those papyri are authentic or not. I must confess that I am playing with the idea of a forgery since a while. I have just finished my chapter on the Sappho papyri for the book I am writing, The Secret Life of Manuscripts, and delved into the most amazing world of Sappho papyrology and attributions, so I needed to consid ..read more

It was in the air, and finally it has become official yesterday: Mr Steve Green has announced that ca. 11,500 items in the ownership of Hobby Lobby and the Museum of the Bible are going to be repatriated. About 5,000 papyri and other antiquities are heading back to Egypt. The decision has huge implications, most are positive and other can be positive if some further action will be taken. In line with the character of the family and their business (including MOTB), the statement released yesterday is full of rhetoric with the aim to contain damage: I have enough negativity to deal with at the m ..read more

Mr Yakup Eksioglu, who according to information circulated by Mike Holmes is the source of the Green Sappho and many other papyri in that collection, has recently commented on two of Brent Nongbri’s posts concerning the newest-new Sappho news. The Turkish gentleman asks if we are interested in knowing the provence of the Sappho fragments (of course we are!) and denies that there are shady aspects in the history of those papyri (scroll down the comments here and here). Since he is in the mood of speaking, I’d like to hear what he has eventually to say about some other papyri that I think also c ..read more

Letter to Brill on the Museum of the Bible’s Dead Sea Scrolls Fragments: A Positive Outcome ..read more

  Last Thursday, The Guardian published a riveting report of the ongoing papyri crisis. Charlotte Higgins has written a compelling and remarkably clear piece, finding her way through the intricacy of the events. From my point of view, the most interesting part is the revelation that my colleague Mike Sampson will soon publish an article about a Christie’s private-treaty sale brochure that an anonymous academic source passed to him. As Mike has kindly shown me some of his material in advance, I went back to a conversation I entertained with Christie’s from 28 November 2014 to 15 January 2015. I ..read more

Variant Readings The latest issue of Journal for the Study of the New Testament contains a group of articles that emerged from an SBL session in 2015 arranged by Roberta Mazza on problems of dating ancient manuscripts. In addition to Roberta’s introductory essay, which discusses some of her work on the Rylands collection, there are articles by Malcolm Choat (“Dating Papyri: Familiarity, Instinct and Guesswork”) and by the Ancient Ink Laboratory at Columbia University and New York University (“Dating Ancient Egyptian Papyri through Raman Spectroscopy: Concept and Application to the Fragmen ..read more