Ancient Egyptian provincial capital 125 mi. south of Cairo & 10 miles W of the Nile (modern Behnesa). Site where (from 1897-1920) one of the largest collections of ancient mss. (classical, Christian & secular) was discovered dating from the 1st - 9th c. CE. Among these were many works that had been considered lost, including fragments of three copies of a collection of Jesus sayings that was identified as the original Greek version of the gospel of Thomas, when a complete Coptic translation of that work was discovered at Nag Hammadi (Egypt) in 1945. Other Oxyrhynchus papyri (pOxy 840 & pOxy 1224) contained sayings & stories of Jesus from gospels that have yet to be identified.

[For further details see The Complete Gospels revised edition (R.J. Miller, ed. Sonoma: Polebridge Press, 1994) pp. 323-329 & 418-424; map & illustrated essay on the site are posted on POxy website].

Other On-line Resources

• Oxyrhynchus 840 Gospel - Geoff Trowbridge describes a papyrus fragment of an unknown (gnostic?) gospel found at Oxyrhynchus.

• POxy: Oxyrhynchus On-Line - ambitious Oxford U site designed to put the complete contents of the Egyptian papyri on the internet. Numbered Table of contents will give easy access to 80+ volumes containing thousands of documents (NT texts not yet hyper-linked).