While T. Kouremenos, G.M. Parássoglou and K. Tsantsanoglou (edd.), The Derveni Papyrus (2006) (KPT) is generally recognised as providing a secure textual basis for study of the papyrus's better preserved later columns, reconstruction of its earliest columns has proved more challenging since the papyrus's outermost part is more fragmentary than the rest and badly burnt. In an important article (ZPE 166 [2008]) R. Janko pointed out the shortcomings of KPT's reconstruction of the first three columns and offered an alternative of his own. The volume under review opens with a presentation of the latest results of Janko's continued work on the papyrus in the form of an edition of its initial columns. Janko's edition is followed by another edition of these columns prepared by V. Piano, who credits Janko's 2008 article with spurring her to a comprehensive re-examination of all the issues pertaining to the study of the papyrus’ first columns. These two editions are followed by a set of papers, some of which were presented at a 2018 Pisa colloquium organised by the editor.
Although each edition of the papyrus’ earliest columns presented here is vastly superior to any previously published, they merely represent work in progress. Janko states that his edition is provisional as he is preparing a full edition of the papyrus with translation and commentary. Piano's edition will be superseded by her forthcoming book-length edition of the beginning of the papyrus listed in the bibliography. As for the decision to publish two distinct editions of the initial columns in this volume, the editor's introduction offers the following explanation: ‘The differences between [Janko's and Piano's] editions are based upon not only personal style and taste, but especially upon the interpretation and evaluation of physical traces that are extremely uncertain, mostly incomplete, and highly ambiguous; and these differences are, at least for now, irreducible’ (p. xx). Each edition consists of a description of its methodology and criteria of reconstruction, a diplomatic transcript with detailed palaeographical commentary, and a reconstructed text with translation and apparatus criticus. During a period of study of the papyrus at the Conservation Laboratory of the Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki in 2014 and 2015, Janko was able to obtain high-resolution scans of the infrared photographs originally made by S. Tsavdaroglou in 1962 ‘when the papyrus was in pristine condition’, photographs that are ‘much superior to those … made in 1978, when it had already suffered some deterioration (it has suffered more since)’ (pp. 3–4). Janko was subsequently able to obtain a set of almost 10,000 microphotographs of the papyrus, some of which are reproduced among the volume's colour plates, which also include some microphotographs obtained by Piano. (Unfortunately, due to a production failure, the ten black-and-white plates described in the list of illustrations and intended to accompany Piano's edition are not included in the volume.) Janko makes it clear that his edition reflects his work on these columns as of March 2020. In a postscript (pp. 54–7) he presents subsequent alterations down to February 2022, as he says, on better readings, spacing and punctuation. These alterations make it even clearer that Janko's preceding reconstruction should be treated as an interim report of work in progress, not intended as final or definitive. Piano's account of the methodology and criteria of reconstruction in her edition is fuller than that for Janko's (and there is no postscript with alterations). Although her edition of the initial columns is also an interim report, one suspects that it is closer to what will eventually appear in her forthcoming edition.
In cols IV (44)–VII (47) Janko and Piano differ (with one another and/or with KPT) mainly regarding the placement of some of the papyrus’ smaller fragments and sometimes regarding what they feel they can see at the edges of its pieces. In the reconstructions on which their translations are based, Janko tends to be more ambitious and attempts to supplement more of the gaps than Piano, and their conjectured supplements (unsurprisingly) often differ significantly. The effect of their differing decisions becomes more pronounced in the preceding columns. For example, Janko reads and reconstructs col. III (43).3–9 as follows:
Piano reads and reconstructs the same lines of the column as follows:
Piano follows KPT in taking this column to be constituted by papyrus frr. F9, F8, G11, G5a, and F7, whereas Janko locates several other pieces here, such as F17 in the upper left of the column, which Piano assigns to lower right of the subsequent column. Piano assiduously attempts to note and address the differences between her readings and Janko's (and those of others). However, her references are often to publications reflecting earlier phases of Janko's work on the papyrus, such as his text in Kotwick, Der Papyrus von Derveni (2017), even though the editorial decisions there have often been superseded by those reflected in his edition here. For example, Janko here newly locates frr. G15, G6, G5b, G9b in col. III (43) rather than fr. G11, and this choice largely accounts for the striking differences between his edition and Piano's in the central portions of the column. The differences in the remainder of the column, where Janko now assigns fr. H49, and in the preceding columns are at least as pronounced.
Although the scholarship on display in these editions is of the highest order, their disagreements suggest that the damage suffered by the exterior portion of the papyrus is such that a definitive edition of its earliest columns will remain elusive. We may well be reaching the limits of what can be gleaned from these scraps of papyrus. Looking more closely does not always make things clearer. A case in point has led to differing numeration of the columns in the two editions. Janko regards a marginal omicron in fr. H18, assigned by Tsantsanoglou to col. VI, as a stichometric sign marking line 1500; on this basis, plus a plausible assumption that each column originally contained 33 lines, he calculates it as appearing in the papyrus’ 46th column. The columns in Janko's reconstruction are thus numbered beginning from 41. Piano reports that she is unable to see the stroke below this marginal omicron detected by Janko that would suggest it is a stichometric sign, though she does report detecting uncertain traces perhaps compatible with the horizontal of a tau touching the omicron.
While cols VII (47) through XXVI (66) provide a running commentary on lemmata drawn from an Orphic theogonic poem, the earlier columns appear to be doing something quite different in critiquing certain religious practices and beliefs; it has consequently appeared difficult to discern the relation between these two stretches of the text. Two essays here address this problem. Janko, in ‘The Cult of the Erinyes, the Villa of the Mysteries, and the Unity of the Derveni Papyrus’, undertakes to establish the unity of the preserved portion of the original treatise by arguing that through col. VI (46) its author first discusses the sacrifices to the Erinyes that preceded the Orphic/Bacchic mysteries in which the Orphic theogony interpreted in cols VII (47)–XXVI (66) served as a sacred text, and he pursues the novel idea that the mysteries of Dionysus and the Derveni theogony ‘arose together or were used from Pythagoras’ and/or Heraclitus’ time onwards’ (p. 157). D. Sedley, in ‘The Opening Lemmas’, attacks the unity problem by proposing that the commentary found in the later columns is already underway in the initial columns. This contribution is a version of a paper previously published in C. Vassallo (ed.), Presocratics and Papyrological Tradition (2019), here modestly revised to take account of the new papyrological data provided by Janko and Piano.
An astonishing feature of the papyrus is its mention and quotation of Heraclitus in col. IV (44). Two essays further the extensive discussion elsewhere of his presence in the treatise. G. Betegh and Piano, in ‘Cosmic Order, the Erinyes, and the Sun: Heraclitus and Column IV (44) of the Derveni Papyrus’, jointly undertake to reassess the text, its reconstruction and its interpretation on the basis of Piano's edition of the initial columns. This contribution revises their paper also previously published in Vassallo (ed.) 2019. V. Hladký, in ‘Heraclitus in the Opening Columns (III–VI (43–6)) and in Columns XI (51) and XX (60) of the Derveni Papyrus’, suggests that Heraclitus is more present in these columns than previously recognised by comparing their motifs with passages from Clement's Protrepticus and the pseudo-Heraclitean Epistles evidently influenced by him. Hladký advances the case for taking the prose quotations marked by paragraphoi in cols XI(51) and XX(60) as quotations of Heraclitus amounting to previously unidentified fragments of his work.
Finally presented here are essays on various other aspects of the papyrus. A. Bernabé's ‘Notes to Derveni Papyrus, Column XXI (61)’ offers a sample of the forthcoming commentary to accompany the online edition of the papyrus he and Piano published on the website of the Center for Hellenic Studies. The purpose served by publishing this example of their ‘work in progress’ for that commentary is unclear, and it seems out of place in a volume principally concerned with the papyrus’ initial columns. M.E. Kotwick's ‘Practices of Interpretation in the Derveni Papyrus and the Hippocratic Text On Dreams (Vict. 4)’ usefully compares the interpretative strategies of these two texts and finds that the scientific theories they draw on, their attitude towards traditional religion, their similarly competitive attitude towards professional rivals and their promise of manifesting hidden knowledge suggest a common intellectual culture. A. Boufalis's ‘Orphism in Macedonia: the Derveni Papyrus in Context’ reviews the evidence for Bacchic-Orphic beliefs in Macedonian burials of the Classical and early Hellenistic eras with a view to contextualising the papyrus vis-à-vis the specific religious and cultural dimensions of its archaeological context. While acknowledging that the ideas of the Derveni author are more in line with fifth-century philosophical trends than with its contemporary burial contexts, Boufalis offers intriguing speculations as to why this book may have been deliberately selected for inclusion in the burial.
Almost all the essays constitute important contributions to the study of this fascinating text, which continues to challenge artificial boundaries between religious, philosophical and scientific discourses in late fifth- to early fourth-century Greece. While some might question the decision to include revised versions of papers published in 2019, or chapters not directly relevant to the issues arising from the papyrus's initial columns, the editions by Janko and Piano represent major advances that will form the indispensable basis for work on those columns until their two projected book-length editions are published.
