Franco Ferrari
Università dell’Aquila

On January 15, 1962, the remains of the Derveni Papyrus were unearthed from a cist grave in northern Greece. Anton Fackelmann, curator of the papyrus collection of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna and the world’s leading expert in the handling of carbonized papyri, began work on the find. During the summer of that year, Fackelmann, working alone, succeeded in unrolling the fragments of the papyrus.

First he cut the scroll apart lengthwise, producing two symmetrical hemicylinders. Then he detached each of the layers of the two halves, placing them under seven pieces of glass (A–G). Beneath two additional pieces of glass (H and I), he arranged many fragments that he described in his report to the museum of Thessaloniki as “countless small pieces (down to a postage stamp) lying all around haphazardly” (see KPT, 5). These fragments consisted of about eighty bits of papyrus that had been labeled as “unplaced” on plates 28–30 of the editio princeps, in addition to the pieces placed by the first editors throughout the first twenty-six columns.

The outer parts of the roll—those that match the present columns I–VI, referring to prophecy and rites (prayers, offerings and libations)—had been reassembled on the basis of fragments from hemicylinders F and G, with occasional additions of pieces from the H and I groups. In turn, hemicylinder G consisted of two minor sections: “great G” and “small G” (Gg and Gp, respectively, in Figure 1).

In this configuration, each alternation of an F and a G section recomposes one circumference, or volute, of the roll, decreasing in size as we move from the outer (with a width of 9.8 cm) to the inner sections of the scroll and down to its {53|54} midollo, or marrow. It is specifically on this basis that Tsantsanoglou (1997) reassembled these columns for the first time. His arrangement has been repeated in the editio princeps (KPT) with the exception of a change concerning G 7, which we will examine presently.

Therefore, one cannot say, as Janko (2008) has claimed, that Tsantsanoglou and Parássoglou ignored the procedures applied to the unrolling of burnt scrolls, wherein, as with the Herculaneum papyri, the bark must be cut into halves before the layers can be separated. Janko rightly noted, however, that the Greek editors made an unfortunate error in their edition, putting the piece G 7 in column II between two other fragments of the G type. In this way they mistakenly placed three sections of the G type in direct sequence.

Moreover, the fact that G 7 belongs to the “Great G” series is corroborated by its formal congruence with a piece from the “small G” series, namely G 20, in that G 20 and G 7 create a “small G/great G” set (gG): hence, the possibility {54|55} of reading, as I did in Ferrari 2011a:42–43, ἐλ̣[π]ίδι “to the hope” at line 4, ὧδ̣’ ἐ̣π̣έθηκε “he added in this way” at line 5, and μ̣[υ]σ̣τῶν “of the mystae” at line 7 (Figure 2). The actual fiber congruence between G 7 and the G 17/G 8 complex at the end of the first column can be explained at least as well as in the editio princeps if, with Janko (2008), we place G 7 at the beginning of the first rather than the second column (but at the height established by the first editors).

Another change to the arrangement established by the first editors concerns the upper margin. In a comparison of plates 5 and 6 of the editio princeps, it is clear that the first line of G 1 in KPT is in fact the second line of the column (additionally, some ink traces can perhaps be identified in the photograph of the untouched stalk in KPT, plate 1). Therefore, if for practical reasons one would prefer to keep KPT’s numbering, one should add a line “0” at the beginning of each column.

In short, except for the unavoidable transfer of G 7 from the second to the first column and the insertion of a new line on the beginning of every column, the arrangement laid out by the first editors is trustworthy. As I hope to have proved in a new edition of columns I–VI, it allows a plausible re-creation of the argument developed by the anonymous Derveni author (henceforth D).

On the other hand, as I have already mentioned, some fragments belonging to the H and I groups might be assigned to the first columns. According to the first editors, these pieces include H 7 in column II, H 46 and H 8 in column IV, H 2 in column V, and H 18 and H 28 in column VI. Janko (2008) also adds I 70 in column VI along the left edge of G  2 (1.10).

First I would like to complete what I wrote in Ferrari 2010, where I suggested this reconstruction of column IV 0–4, starting with the fact that in column IV 4 (= fr. G 4.1) the sequence of letters ΟΥΤ in ]μμάνει̣ν̣; ἆρ’ οὐ τ.[ is shared on the upper-line level by the traces of the first three letters of an unplaced piece, F 14.4. In addition, another unplaced fragment, F 17, matches very well with H 46 and F 15, as well as sharing the epsilon of ἐὼν in 1.1 (Figure 6):

The intellectual D charged with this controversy must have been Democritus of Abdera, born around 460 BC. In D’s opinion, Democritus had altered the basic principles of the traditional faith and cult. He had stated which of those principles should govern prayers and had refused to accept any unfortunate aspect of human existence as anything more than a chance accident. Actually, Democritus considered eidola and phantoms, perceived by common people as godlike phenomena, to be mental images (cf. Lucretius 5.1173–1174), atom clusters coming from the mind of man or beast and able to move through the air. He did not, however, underrate their impact. As we read in 68 B 166 DK (= Sextus Empiricus Adversus mathematicos 9.19), he prayed that he would encounter only benevolent eidola in his daily life (εὔχετο εὐλόγχων τυχεῖν εἰδώλων).

According to Democritus, the wise man (the ἀνὴρ εὐλόγιστος of 68 B 236) can hope that the eidola disseminated through the air do not interfere with his peace of mind (cf. Epicurus Letter to Herodotus 49). If they do, however, he cannot recover his mental or bodily health by entreating the gods (68 B 234). This sole Democritean argument allows D to state that Democritus altered (μεταθείς) religious habits and beliefs by arguing that the harmful aspects of life did not depend on the gods, but on atomic determinism.

My reconstruction entails two facts that seem to be at odds with the general principles established by the first editors:

1. The first line of the column is actually immediately above the line identified by KPT as the first.
2. The fragment F 14 in fact belongs within a G section.

The first point presents no problem since, as we saw above, the editio princeps fails to recognize that the actual first line of every column is directly above the line it misidentifies as the first.

On the second point, until recently I believed I had overcome the obstacle by acknowledging that, in accordance with Fackelmann’s report and Tsantsanoglou’s clarifications (KPT, 4–5), the G series includes two different typologies. First are the fragments which allowed Fackelmann to reassemble the outer volutes of the roll: the pieces F 1–9, D 1–11, and E 1–13 (Fackelmann’s “third type”) alternating with the pieces G 1–21 (Fackelmann’s “fourth type”). Second are the fragments F 10–20, H 1–68, and I 1–97, which comprise the “countless small pieces lying all around haphazardly” that we recalled above. {59|60}

In column IV, lines 5–9, D names Heraclitus as one who, like Orpheus, spoke as a hierologos, giving credence to broadly accepted feelings or opinions (κοινά) at the expense of idiosyncratic ones (ἴδια). The quotation (perhaps a little free, as I have shown in Ferrari 2011b) encompasses what were thought to be two separate Heraclitean fragments (22 B 3 and B 94 DK), as two different authors quote them. Thus we can suppose that these fragments initially belonged to a single statement. {60|61}

In spite of the papyrus gaps, the Heraclitean quote has been adequately recovered through other evidence. The differences between the first editors on one side and Janko (2002) and Bernabé (2007) on the other concern the formal shape of the passage rather than the substance of the argument (col. IV 5–11, with Sider’s ἱερο]λόγωι in line 6, my supplement περιό]δ̣ου in line 7, and Lebedev’s θύο̣υ̣[σι in line 11; the other supplements are by the first editors).

D himself (rather than Heraclitus) reminds his audience that some people (their identity is lost in the gaps of the papyrus) offer sacrifices to the sun in order to prevent it from defying its own physis by changing size. The identity of this people can be recovered through a neglected palaeographic datum: two tiny fragments, so far left unplaced (I 62 and I 80), can be put together using both their shape and the trend of their fibers. The resulting larger piece fits easily between G 4 and H 8 (Figure 8).

My last issue concerns the beginning of column VI, which deals with rituals (spells, offers, libations) undertaken both by magi and by mystae.

Here is the text of lines 1–3 as it was established by the first editors:

Thus, if the daimones can be identified with the daêvas of Persian religion, a supplement such as τ̣ὰ̣[ς ψυχὰς (KPT) is not a suitable name for these beings, who should be designated in a more specific way than with the generic word “souls.” But, precisely that, the Iranian loan ἀρτάδες with the explanation in the Hesychius’ gloss οἱ δίκαιοι “(the souls of) the Right ones,” occurred at the end of line 1 if one places the piece I 24 in the upper right corner of this column (Figure 9). The fiber consistency between G 2 and I 24 is striking, and the reading τ̣ὰ̣[ς ἀ]ρ̣τά̣δ̣α̣[ς is corroborated by the obvious supplement ἐμ[πο]δ̣ώ̣ν in the following line (already suggested by KPT on the basis of ἐμπο[δών in line 3).

Therefore, we may have identified the correct word for the recipients of the libations and sacrifices of the Persian people. {65|}