Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

Language, Alphabet, and Literacy 59
Despite the importance of literacy in Greek society, much more
information and learning was passed down by word of mouth than
is the case in our society. At all periods and places, there was a ready
audience for recitals of all sorts, not just musical but also literary.
The historian Herodotos, for instance, first promulgated his work
through oral recitation in Athens, and oral recitation remained a
popular form of communication throughout antiquity.
PAPYRI
The commonest Greek writing material was cyperus papyrus, a
plant that grows in the swamps of Lower Egypt, which had been
used for writing in Egypt and Mesopotamia from 3000 b.c.e.
onward. The Greeks called this plant biblos, from which the word
bible derives. Stalks of papyrus were laid out in parallel horizontal
strips, over which a second layer was placed vertically. The strips
were then pressed flat and pounded with a flat stone so that they
bonded together with their natural juices. A papyrus roll was read
by unfolding with the right hand and rerolling with the left hand.
To reread the roll, therefore, the reader (or more probably a slave)
had to unroll the papyrus all the way back to the beginning.
The earliest surviving Greek papyrus, a commentary on the
Orphic poems (see p. 191), dates from the fourth century b.c.e. It
was found at Derveni, near Thessaloniki, in Macedonia. It is the
only surviving papyrus to come from mainland Greece, and the
reason it survived is because it was carbonized. The overwhelming
majority of papyri came to light in Egypt, whose dry soil provides
ideal conditions for their preservation, and postdate Alexander’s
conquest of that country. The largest cache has been retrieved
from the rubbish dumps of a town called Oxyrhynchos (the name
means “the city of the sharp-nosed fish”), situated about 100 miles
south of modern Cairo. Oxyrhynchos has so far yielded over 50,000
papyri.
To date, some 30,000 papyri have been edited. They include birth
certificates, death certificates, lists of various kinds, receipts, marriage
contracts, wet-nurse contracts, complaints to officials, tax
returns, lawsuits, and last, but by no means least, private letters.
They shed invaluable light on many aspects of the social, cultural,
legal, and economic life of Greeks living in Egypt and of Egyptians
who adapted to the Greek way of life (see Evans, Daily Life in the
Hellenistic Age, 2008, in this series). One of the most interesting revelations
the papyri provide is the degree to which Hellenistic Egypt