The Flinders Petrie Papyri

A three-volume collection, published 1891–1905, of transcribed Greek papyri fragments, illuminating Egyptian life in the third century BCE.

Published between 1891 and 1905, this three-volume collection contains transcriptions of, and commentary on, Greek papyri fragments discovered by the pioneering Egyptologist Flinders Petrie. The papyri cover a variety of topics, revealing much about Egyptian life in the third century BCE. Each volume contains reproductions of key examples.A pioneering Egyptologist, Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) excavated over fifty sites and trained a generation of archaeologists. A great many of his publications have been reissued in this series. In the 1890s, the Irish scholar Sir John Pentland Mahaffy (1839–1919) took the lead on the considerable task of cataloguing, transcribing and commenting on the Greek papyri found by Petrie in mummy cartonnage on recent digs in Egypt. This three-volume collection is the result of his labours. The texts, comprising private correspondence, legal records, petitions and many other types of document, reveal a great deal about life in Egypt in the third century BCE. First published in 1905 with significant input from Mahaffy's colleague J. G. Smyly, Volume 3 contains seven autotype reproductions of key examples, as well as a review by Mahaffy of the entire project and its scholarly reception.