THE RUBBISH HEAP
A few years ago, during the preparations for my production of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound at
the Royal Dramatic Theatre, I came into closer contact with a remarkable ancient rubbish heap.
Outside of circles of archaeologists, classicists, papyrologists, and the occasional philologist, it is
still quite an unknown story.
The rubbish heap, discovered as early as 1896, is located on the outskirts of the lost city of
Oxyrhynchus in central Egypt. The city’s lasted for almost 900 years, from Ptolemaic rule in the
4th century BC through Roman rule to the Arab conquest in the 7th century AD. When the canal
to the Nile slowly silted up during the 7th century, the city was abandoned and subsequently
forgotten. English archaeologists began excavating the sand dunes in the late 19th century and
uncovered the remains of one of antiquity’s largest free-standing theaters, with seating for over
11,000 spectators. They discovered squares, street networks, building foundations, and
irrigation systems. The archaeologists concluded that the city had once been Egypt’s third-
largest city.
However, the most significant find by far was the rubbish heap, which in some places was
9 meters deep and contained over 500,000 papyrus fragments.
Already in the first shovelful, unknown apocryphal biblical texts with sayings of Jesus and poems
by Sappho were discovered. It soon became clear that the rubbish heap contained fragments of
the entire known corpus of Western ancient literature, mixed with previously lost texts by
authors such as Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Homer, and Simonides, as well as many more
by unknown authors, theologians, philosophers, and mathematicians. It turned out that the
rubbish heap held the single richest find of ancient papyrus.
What is perhaps most special about the rubbish heap is not the literary fragments but all the
traces of everyday life. Unknown writers jotted down a shopping list, an inventory of what to
pack in the boat, the price of figs at the market, how many sacks of flour to deliver to one of the
40 churches, a letter to a daughter, or a registration of a child’s birth or death.
Today, all that remains of the city of Oxyrhynchos is rubble and sand. Yet, thanks to the rubbish
heap, we know more about this city than any other ancient city. We know where the fisherman
Thonis, the vegetable seller Philammon, and the dyer Anicetus lived. We know what farmers
had to pay when they brought dates, olives, and pumpkins to the market. We know that the
eight-year-old slave Epaphroditus tragically died on November 2, 182 AD, when he leaned out
of a bedroom window to get a better view of the dancers on the street below. We know that
Apollonius and Sarapis sent a thousand roses and four thousand narcissi to a friend’s wedding,
and we know what Paul wrote to Mary. Through the 500,000 papyrus fragments, we gain an
intimate glimpse into everyday life in a lost city spanning the period from 300 BC to 600 AD.
(Image from the excavation)
The project Sophögen (The Rubbish Heap) aims to introduce the city of Oxyrhynchos and its
history to a Swedish audience. The concept is to create a comprehensive book featuring
translations of a representative selection from the entire heap. A total of 500 translated papyri
will be published, accompanied by an appendix of supplementary texts and extensive
annotations. The project is divided into three parts: books, exhibitions, and performances.
Work began last winter, with translators Jan Stolpe, Lars-Håkan Svensson, and Daniel
Samuelsson continuously translating selections from approximately 6,000 deciphered and
published fragments (primarily from the editions of The Egypt Exploration Society/Oxford and
the Italian PSI). Only a few fragments in this selection have previously been translated and
published in Swedish. The project also involves collaboration with institutions specializing in
Ancient Greek, papyrology, and antiquity at the universities of Stockholm, Uppsala, and
Gothenburg.
Supplementary texts are being written by contributors such as Paul Linjamaa (historian of
religion in Lund), Denis Searby (professor and papyrologist at Stockholm University), and
Luigi Prada (professor in Uppsala).Three Parts
The project’s first stop is an exhibition at Galleri Duerr in Stockholm in February 2025. In
connection with the opening, an artist book will be published by Ellerström, linked to the
exhibition and the discovery in Oxyrhynchos.
The larger publication, the book The Rubbish Heap in Oxyrhynchos, will be released by
Ellerström’s publishing house in September 2025 and will be accompanied by a series of
seminars at the Mediterranean Museum in the fall of 2025.
At the same time as the book release, a theater production will take place at Orionteatern in
Stockholm. The performance takes the form of an exhibition, where the audience can come and
go as they wish during a 5-hour period. The core of the performance is an audio piece with
35 separate sound sculptures. The material is the fragments. At irregular intervals, played scenes
will emerge in the space, using fragments from unknown plays, letters, grotesques, mimes, slave
auctions, and much more. The performance will feature three actors, a puppeteer, a singer, four
elderly extras, and three musicians.
Karl Dunér
December 2, 2025
www.karlduner.com
073-9605597