Peter Jones
The Sands of Egypt
City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish: Greek Lives in Roman Egypt
By Peter Parsons
Weidenfeld & Nicolson 288pp £20
The Molesworth Self-Adjusting Thank-You Letter (‘Dear Aunt/Uncle/Stinker, Thank you very much for the train/tractor/germ gun. It was lovely/useful/not bad’ and so on) has proved a blessing to schoolchildren for many years now, but the principle is at least 1,700 years old. For the desert sands of an ancient Greek town in Egypt have yielded a model ‘Letter of Consolation’, datable to about AD 300: ‘--- to ---, be of good heart. When the terrible news was signified to me about the deceased ---, how I was distressed …’, etc.
It is just one of the thousands of items recovered a hundred years ago from a garbage-tip in the ancient Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchos, ‘sharp-nosed’, named after its sacred fish (modern el-Behnesa). Peter Parsons, Emeritus Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford and one of the world’s leading papyrologists, has been
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk