Bettany Hughes on the Sappho Papyrus

I have had the privilege of seeing the new #Sappho poems but was sworn to secrecy!
— Bettany Hughes (@bettanyhughes) January 30, 2014

At the end of January 2014 Bettany Hughes commented that she had seen the new Sappho papyrus fragments. This was in preparation for her Sunday Times article that appeared on 2 February. In that piece it was claimed:

The elderly owner of our new Sappho papyrus wishes to remain anonymous, and its provenance is obscure (it was originally owned, it seems, by a high-ranking German officer), but he was determined its secrets should not die with him.

Yet now Dirk Obbink has rejected this in an interview published on 23 January 2015.

Obbink characterized Hughes' story as a "fictionalization" and an "imaginative fantasy."

Who is telling the truth here? Or have Hughes and Obbink both presented (perhaps unwittingly) separate 'fictionalised' accounts? What makes the collecting history presented by Obbink more trustworthy? What is the authenticated and documented collecting history for the papyrus?

Can we believe that the fragments came from the Robinson collection? Has Obbink provided sufficient compelling evidence?

And why did it take from 2 February 2014 to 23 January 2015 for Obbink to reject Hughes' account?

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Bettany Hughes on the Sappho Papyrus

I have been returning to the case of the Sappho Papyrus as I have been working on the authentification of collecting histories. It is claimed that there is "documented legal provenance" for the papyrus. So what does this paperwork comprise?

Bettany Hughes has made some interesting comments on its collecting history ("Lover, poet, muse and a ghost made real: A find in a mummy's head has brought the Greek writer Sappho to life", Sunday Times February 2, 2014).

There are several pieces of information:
a. 'find in a mummy's head'. This indicates the papyrus had been repurposed as part of a mummy cartonnage. What is the date of the cartonnage? Where was it found? Who had owned it in recent years? How was the papyrus removed?
b. 'The elderly gentleman on the end of the line had material from an ancient Egyptian burial in his possession. He'd noticed that scraps of the cartonnage (the Egyptian equivalent of papier-mache, made of recycled papyrus) bore the ghostly imprint of writing.' So we learn that the individual telephoning Dirk Obbink in Oxford was 'elderly' and male.
c. 'The elderly owner of our new Sappho papyrus wishes to remain anonymous, and its provenance is obscure (it was originally owned, it seems, by a high-ranking German officer), but he was determined its secrets should not die with him.' If the "provenance" (i.e. the collecting history) is 'obscure', how can it also be claimed to be both "documented" and "legal"? Who was the "high-ranking German officer"? When did this "German officer" acquire the papyrus and under what circumstances? What due diligence search did Obbink undertake to ensure that this papyrus had not been "confiscated" during the 1930s or early 1940s?

I presume that Obbink will release the "documented legal provenance" so that the paperwork can be authenticated.

[Paul Barford commented on this article back in February.]

The Sappho Papyrus

It would be interesting to know the full and authenticated collecting history of the new Sappho Papyrus fragment that is due to be published in ZPE by Professor Dirk Obbink from Oxford (see press release from Christ Church). A news report (James Romm, "Scholars Discover New Poems from Ancient Greek Poetess Sappho", Daily Beast January 28, 2014) suggests:

The new Sappho papyrus probably came from Egypt and perhaps from Oxyrynchus, but its provenance may never be known. A thriving black market for papyri means that many of them emerge not from archaeological digs but from souks, bazaars and antiquities shops.

Part of the collecting history is known (but not made public): it is owned by an anonymous collector. Where and when did this anonymous collector acquire the fragment? When did it leave Egypt?

The online preprint (to ZPE 189 [2014]) is no longer available. However a translation by Tim Whitmarsh is available from The Guardian and another by Steve Dodson.

ZPE was also due to be the place of publication for the Fordham mosaics apparently derived from a Christian church in Syria. In 2012 there was debate about a new papyrus fragment from a German collection.