LOST GREEK TRAGEDIES REVIVED

How a scholar discovered passages from a great Athenian playwright on a discarded papyrus

- BENJAMIN LEONARD

In the necropolis of the ancient Egyptian city of Philadelphia, archaeologists unearthed a third-century A.D. pit grave (right, in foreground) next to an earlier mausoleum (background). A papyrus containing passages from two lost tragedies by the fifth-century B.C. Greek playwright Euripides (shown in a marble portrait, left) was found in the grave.

SINCE THE LATE NINETEENTH century, archaeologists have recovered troves of administrative documents and personal archives in the ancient city of Philadelphia, on the northeastern edge of Egypt's Fayum region. Yet only around 30 papyri featuring excerpts of literature have been found there. When archaeologist Basem Gehad of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities began excavating the city's necropolis in 2017, he had no idea that he would discover one of the most significant pieces of lost ancient literature to have been found in at least 60 years.

In 2022, Gehad unearthed a third-century A.D. pit grave in the Roman section of the necropolis. The grave contained the mummified body of a woman, and, on a ledge above her remains, a mummified child. In a corner of the pit, the team found three roughly folded papyri, two of which record information about trees for the city's temples and a list of names connected to Roman loans.