Tombs in ancient Oxyrhynchus

The ancient site of Oxyrhynchus, south of modern Cairo, is best known for the papyrus remains that were discovered back in 1897 (see: City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish by Peter Parsons). It took many years to start deciphering the many bits and pieces, a process that is still ongoing, as detailed in my earlier post, Get involved with Oxyrhynchus.
 
This work is full of surprises. For instance, the 1922 reconstruction and translation of a poem by Sappho of Lesbos, who lived circa 630-570 BC. By 2005, the missing part of this poem had been found on a papyrus held at the University of Cologne. It is wonderful and unique to finally have a complete poem by one of the greatest lyric poetesses of antiquity.
 
By now, it transpires that 80 volumes of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri have been published, thanks to the relentless efforts of Professor Peter Parsons of the University of Oxford. The documents have largely contributed to a better understanding and knowledge of the history of Egypt and Rome.
 

More than a hundred years after the site was discovered, excavations are carried out by the Institute of Ancient Near East Studies of the University of Barcelona. It is hard to believe that Oxyrhynchus once was the third-largest city in Egypt, as it boomed under the Ptolemies, who ruled after the death of Alexander. It was Christianized with the rest of Egypt, as testified by the many churches and monasteries that were built. During Roman and Byzantine occupation, however, the city gradually declined. Life changed dramatically after the arrival of the Muslims in 641 AD, and Oxyrhynchus was eventually abandoned.

 
The discovery of the papyrus garbage dump slowly revived the general interest in this forgotten city. Since 2020, Spanish archaeologists have concentrated their efforts on the city’s necropolis. Each excavation season has its own harvest of tombs and grave goods. In 2023, for instance, six funerary complexes from Persian (Sassanid), Roman, and Coptic times and 16 individual tombs were discovered.
 

Last year, in 2024, a collection of 52 mummies from Ptolemaic times was exposed. Thirteen of the bodies had golden tongues in their mouth, a clear sign of preparation for the afterlife, and one had a gold plate on its fingernails. Precious gifts like scarabs, amulets of Egyptian gods, and a terracotta statuette of the god Harpocrates (the Greek and Roman version of the Egyptian child-god Horus) were also retrieved. Another tomb counted three burial chambers whose walls were covered with texts and colorful funerary scenes depicting several Egyptian gods. Also, four limestone sarcophagi have been found.

 
This all sounds very promising as the finds in Oxyrhynchus give new insights into life and death during Ptolemaic and Roman times.

[Pictures from the Universitat de Barcelona]

About petrified trees in Greece

It never occurred to me that petrified trees were ever found in Greece, as I am only aware of the remains that exist in an around the National Petrified Forest in northeastern Arizona, U.S.A.

During my travels through the Greek province of Thrace, I was surprised to find the fossilized remains of a 20 million-years-old oak tree. This 22-meter-long specimen at Tychero is carefully fenced and protected – rightfully so, of course. Expressing my astonishment, I was further informed that a far greater number of petrified trees had been exposed on the island of Lesbos.

At the time, I secretly wondered whether Alexander had seen this tree or other such bits when he marched through the area before crossing the Hellespont. This is not the kind of information one can find in a history book, and even writers from antiquity would not have bothered about it. But the question remained in the back of my head.

I did not think further about these trees, till I came across an article in the Archaeological News Network showing an exquisite picture of two petrified tree trunks of respectively 21 and 23 meters recently uncovered on the island of Lesbos. These are coniferous trees, possibly belonging to the sequoia tree family.

[Picture from the Archaeological News Network]

A petrified tree is one of the wonders that nature creates. The petrifying process is triggered by volcanic eruptions when mudflows cover the landscape. All organic material which is then enclosed in this layer of lava slowly fossilizes. What happens is that each and every molecule of the tree, from its leaves and seeds to the trunk and roots is preserved and that is what we see today. Some trees remain standing, others fall over, but all of them create a fairy-tale world in a wide range of colors, ranging from green and black to yellow and red. A most spectacular view!