PREFACE

ALL the theological and most of the classical and the non-literary papyri in this volume were discovered in our second excavations at Oxyrhynchus in 1903, described in the Archaeological Report of the Egypt Exploration Fund, 1902-3, pp. 5-9, and more briefly in the Archiv für Papyrusforschung original: "Archive for Papyrology", III. pp. 139-40. The rest came from the original Oxyrhynchus find of 1897. Owing to the comparatively small space here available for non-literary documents and the discovery in 1903 of a group of papyri, mostly of the early Augustan period, which is rarely represented, we have published all these together with a selection of documents belonging to the next three centuries, instead of limiting the documents to the third century, as foreshadowed in the preface to Part III.

In editing the classical pieces, we have, as usual, availed ourselves largely of the most generous and valuable assistance of Professor Blass, to whom is due much of the reconstruction and interpretation of the new classical fragments and the identification of several of those from extant authors. The help which we have received on particular points from other scholars is acknowledged in connexion with the individual papyri.

In the Appendices we give a list of addenda and corrigenda to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part II, and Fayûm Towns and their Papyri, a revised text of Part III, no. 405, which has been identified as a fragment of Irenaeus, and a list of all the Oxyrhynchus and Fayûm papyri which have already been distributed among different museums and libraries.

Oxford,
   APRIL, 1904.