Chapter 4. Derveni and Ritual Fritz Graf The Ohio State University In many respects, the derveni papyrus remains as intriguing as it appeared in 1964 when Stylianos Kapsomenos published the first choice morsels to whet the appetite of the scholarly community, or when, in 1968, Walter Burkert proposed the first thorough interpretation of the text known at the time and anchored the commentary firmly in… Read more
Chapter 5. Divination in the Derveni Papyrus Sarah Iles Johnston The Ohio State University In this paper I will look at column V of the papyrus and then, more briefly, at column VI, in hopes of better understanding two issues. First, in what sorts of divinatory practices did the author of the Derveni Papyrus (hereafter the “Author”) engage, and what did he imagine those practices… Read more
Chapter 6. How to Learn about Souls: The Derveni Papyrus and Democritus Walter Burkert University of Zurich The derveni papyrus has been called the most important discovery for Greek philology in the twentieth century: a burned papyrus scroll from the fourth century BC, one-third of which has been preserved in a carbonized state. The discovery was made nearly fifty years ago, and I myself have… Read more
Chapter 7. Unlocking the Orphic Doors: Interpretation of Poetry in the Derveni Papryus between Presocratics and Alexandrians [1] Jeffrey Rusten Cornell University Prelude: Reader 1: The Owner of the Derveni Papyrus The urge to attach an author’s name to the Derveni Papyrus is natural for everyone who reads it, which should remind us of why pseudepigrapha were so popular… Read more
Chapter 8. The Derveni Papyrus and the Bacchic-Orphic Epistomia [1] Yannis Z. TzifopoulosAristotle University of Thessaloniki The entire corpus of the epistomia [2] and the Derveni Papyrus (P.Derv.) betray certain similarities—to state the most obvious ones: both are {135|136} associated, one way or another, with Orpheus; both are discovered in a burial context;… Read more
Chapter 9. The Derveni Papyrus between the Power of Spoken Language and Written Practice: Pragmatics of Initiation in an Orpheus Poem and Its Commentary [1] Claude Calame École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris Translated by Nicholas Snead For us, ever since the second quarter of the sixth century BCE, Orpheus sings. Indeed, in its depiction of the… Read more
Chapter 10. “Riddles over Riddles”: “Mysterious” and “Symbolic” (Inter)textual Strategies: The Problem of Language in the Derveni Papyrus Anton Bierl University of Basel 1. Introduction The official and authoritative editio princeps of the Derveni Papyrus by Kyriakos Tsantsanoglou and George M. Parássoglou, with translation, papyrological apparatus, and photographs, and the first full commentary in English by Theokritos Kouremenos, has given our knowledge a secure… Read more
Chapter 11. Reading the Authorial Strategies in the Derveni Papyrus [1] Evina Sistakou Aristotle University of Thessaloniki If the commentary included in the Derveni Papyrus were a literary text, one could legitimately read it from a formalistic viewpoint. As this is not the case, scholars have justly focused on the religious-initiatory and the exegetical-allegorical aspects of this peculiar commentary on… Read more
Chapter 12. The Orphic Poem of the Derveni Papyrus David Sider New York University Although there are some few places where I argue for something new, the chief aim of this essay is to present a text and provisional commentary on the Orphic poem (OP) contained within the Derveni Papyrus. [1] I draw my knowledge of the readings of the… Read more
Chapter 13. The Garland of Hippolytus [1] Richard Hunter Trinity College, University of Cambridge One of the most celebrated euripidean passages is the dedicatory address and prayer which Hippolytus offers to Artemis as he places a garland at her statue, immediately after the hymn which he and his fellow-huntsmen have sung to her as they enter. σοὶ τόνδε πλεκτὸν στέφανον… Read more
