The Charioteer Papyrus (

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

Egypt Exploration Society The Egypt Exploration Society (EES) is a British non-profit organization. The society was founded in 1882 by Amelia Edwards and Reginald Stuart Poole in order to examine and excavate in the areas of Egypt and Sudan. The intent was to study and ana ...

, s.n.) is a 5th-century fragment of an illustration from an unknown work of literature. It is one of the finest surviving fragments of ancient book illustration. Unlike other surviving illustrated fragments of

papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, '' Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'') can also refer to a ...

, such as the ''

Romance Papyrus The Romance Papyrus (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, cod. suppl. gr. 1294, also known as the Alexander Papyrus) is a fragment of 2nd century Greek manuscript of an unknown romance. It contains three unframed illustrations set within the columns of ...

'' and the ''

Heracles Papyrus The Heracles Papyrus ( Sackler Library, University of Oxford, Pap. Oxyrhynchus 2331) is a fragment of a 3rd-century Greek manuscript of a poem about the Labours of Heracles. It contains three unframed colored line drawings of the first of the La ...

,'' which have illustrations that are little more than mere sketches, the ''Charioteer Papyrus'' is sensitively drawn and finely colored. It shows portions of six

chariot A chariot is a type of cart driven by a charioteer, usually using horses to provide rapid motive power. The oldest known chariots have been found in burials of the Sintashta culture in modern-day Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia, dated to c. 2000&nbs ...

eers in the red or green

tunic A tunic is a garment for the body, usually simple in style, reaching from the shoulders to a length somewhere between the hips and the knees. The name derives from the Latin ''tunica'', the basic garment worn by both men and women in Ancient Rome ...

s of their factions. It is unlikely that it served as an illustration for the

chariot race Chariot racing ( grc-gre, ἁρματοδρομία, harmatodromia, la, ludi circenses) was one of the most popular ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine sports. In Greece, chariot racing played an essential role in aristocratic funeral games from ...

at the games at the funeral of

Patroclus In Greek mythology, as recorded in Homer's ''Iliad'', Patroclus (pronunciation variable but generally ; grc, Πάτροκλος, Pátroklos, glory of the father) was a childhood friend, close wartime companion, and the presumed (by some later a ...

in the ''

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; grc, Ἰλιάς, Iliás, ; "a poem about Ilium") is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odysse ...

'', since the number of charioteers is wrong.E. G. Turner, "The Charioteers from Antinoe", ''The Journal of Hellenic Studies'' 93 (1973), pp. 192–195. It undoubtedly served an illustration for a literary work and was once bound as a

codex The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...

. There are only a few letters of text on the illustrated side of the fragment, but on the back are the first letters of thirteen lines of writing. There is not enough to identify the work. The language and alphabet are

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, and the style might indicate an origin in

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

References

Further reading