On June 13 and 14, 2024, the Center for Hellenic Studies hosted 15 scholars from across the globe to compare their research on one of the most significant discoveries in Greek tragedy in nearly 60 years. In 2022, a team of archaeologists at the necropolis of Philadelphia in Egypt, led by Basem Gehad of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, unearthed from a simple grave a papyrus that contained almost 100 lines of Ino and Polyidus, otherwise lost plays by Athenian tragedian Euripides.
Yvona Trnka-Amrhein, Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Colorado Boulder identified the text as Euripides’ Polyidos. She brought in her colleague, John Gibert, Professor of Classics and expert in Greek Drama, to help edit the text. Together they determined that the papyrus also contained Euripides’ Ino. While working on the first edition of the papyrus, Gehad, Gibert, and Trnka-Amrhein invited a team of experts to explore further all its many dimensions.
As of August 27, 2024, the first edition has now been published in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik (vol. 230, pp. 1–40). Please check your academic library for access, though ZPE makes the tables of contents of its forthcoming and recently published volumes available here.
Trnka-Amrhein and Gibert have organized a public-facing event, the Ninth Annual Celia M. Fountain Symposium, to introduce the discovery widely to non-specialists and specialists alike. The event will take place in person and via Zoom on September 14, 2024, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Mountain Daylight Time (GMT/UTC-6). It is free and open to the public. Further details and general information about the papyrus and its contents are available here.
Conference Proceedings
When the conference proceedings are published, they will be, like all CHS publications, online and open access (as well as available as a modestly priced print book). However, this will take time. Since many participants have made time-sensitive contributions to understanding the new text, the Center is disseminating the conference proceedings in two forms on a page dedicated to the findings. You can find this page here.
First, as a Repertory of Conjectures, which presents all suggested improvements to the text that came to the notice of the editors before publication of the first edition. Please consult the Editors’ note that prefaces the repertory for guidance in using it.
Second, as pre-prints. Each pre-print bears a date stamp and will not be updated on this site. The conference organizers have given participants free rein to post whatever they like without editorial intervention. The form their contributions take in the eventual volume may differ, but you may consider the pre-prints in the public domain and therefore citable.
Conference Participants:
Luigi Battezzato, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Laura Carrara, Università di Pisa
Lyndsay Coo, University of Bristol
James Diggle, University of Cambridge
Patrick Finglass, University of Bristol
Basem Gehad, Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities
John Gibert, University of Colorado Boulder
Ioanna Karamanou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Rebecca Lämmle, University of Cambridge
Donald Mastronarde, University of California, Berkeley
Brian McGing, Trinity College Dublin
Chiara Meccariello, University of Exeter
Douglas Olson, University of Minnesota
Yvona Trnka-Amrhein, University of Colorado Boulder
Naomi Weiss, Harvard University
