The papyrus was published in 1940, but I hadn’t seen it until now, and perhaps it will be new to you as well: A 3rd century papyrus conjugating γράφω in the indicative, posted the other day by Roger Pearse on his blog:
Here is a truly fascinating item. It’s a leaf of papyrus from Oxyrhynchus. On it, someone has drawn out a table of the forms of the Greek verb γράφω (“I write”)! […] What is displayed here is the forms of the verb, and these are labelled, much as they would be in a modern text. […] The first side of the papyrus, the recto, shows the perfect and pluperfect indicative active forms.
This side of the papyrus, the verso, shows the middle/passive forms. Indeed at the top of the page it states “τούτων παθητικὰ ἐνεστῶτος” = “The present passive forms of these”. Then there is a line of dashes below. In the margins, letters indicating whether each block is singular, dual, or plural.
The first blocks on the left are the present indicative middle/passive. These start with “alpha” – the singular, given as today in order, 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person […] Then a line and a fresh heading, “παρατατικού“, above the “imperfect” forms, this time with a leading epsilon. In the right hand column are more forms. The heading παρακειμένου precedes the perfect forms. Then below the υπερσυντελισκοῦ, pluperfect. […]
Somehow this is just wonderful to see, for anyone who has laboured over a grammar, memorising forms.
It is, sure enough. And the student even made mistakes, which renders it still more poignant.
Re “errors”, the JSTOR linked at the blog post has:
—
24 e 25. Forme errate per ἐγράφατον e per ἐγραφάτην. Qui sono giuste le desinenze dei tempi storici, ma lo scolaro non si è ricordato della vocale caratteristica dell’aoristo.
—
However, this seems to be a known mixup for bilinguals in Egypt, see https://theswissbay.ch/pdf/Books/Linguistics/Mega%20linguistics%20pack/Indo-European/Hellenic/Koine%20Greek%3B%20A%20Grammar%20of%20the%20Greek%20Papyri%20of%20the%20Roman%20and%20Byzantine%20Periods%20-%20Vol%20I%20%28Gignac%29.pdf
Section VIII.C.2.a ( p.285 ff.) has examples from papyri for α > ε.
Very interesting, thanks!
Despite dating from 1995, the trailer for Branagh’s Shakespeare’s Othello was written by AI—beginning “In a world..” and including “that will change their lives forever.”.
Sorry, wrong thread
This is wonderful stuff. Reminds me of my own high school days.
In a different version of my life I think I would have liked to work at the Vitelli Papyrological Institute.
“il ragazzo” – sexist ageists (Giorgio Zalateo, Sergio Cammelli, Laura Giabbani, Anna Barbera and Irma Tondi)!
“known mixup for bilinguals”
What about native speakers? Is it (and ohters) incompatible with L1 Greek?
(I know too little about Greek, and much less about history of Egyptian Greek vernacular)
Handwriting is surprisingly good.
Handwriting is surprisingly good.
Yes, that struck me too. I hope the student got good grades for penmanship!
Wasn’t the dual well and truly dead by the third century CE? Or maybe this lad was indeed studying Homeric Greek.
Wasn’t the dual well and truly dead by the third century CE?
Yes, I was thinking that (it’s altogether absent already in New Testament Greek, and had been for a while IIRC.)
It would be interesting to look at just what kind of mistakes this student made. I suspect that they’re the sort of errors that could perfectly well be made by any native Greek speaker of the time, and not just in Egypt.
Allegedly, Homer came extremely early in the curriculum, being supposedly used in teaching how to read in the first place…
Yes, Homer was basic to the curriculum, at least that’s how I’ve always understood it.
I hope no one is under the apprehension that these kids were learning the forms of their own language as she was spoke! What would be the point of wasting school time on that?
(and why lad and not a woman in her 40s?)
@DE
The dual was a feature of both Homeric and Attic Greek, so it was regularly included in the school curriculum. Of course it was long dead in any form of spoken Greek, and in fact it already was in most dialects of the classical period .
For that matter, notice how such idealized conjugation tables regularly include the first person dual, which even in classical Greek was as good as unattested (it occurs once in Homer and twice in Sophocles, and nowhere at all in Attic prose).
I noticed that. There is first person in this papyrus, but not in Wiktionary.