SOURCE: Van Der Ben, N. “The Strasbourg Papyrus of Empedocles: Some Preliminary Remarks.” Mnemosyne 52, no. 5 (October 1999): 525-44.

In the following essay, Van Der Ben comments on certain aspects of a recently discovered Empedoclean papyrus and on how it may enable scholars to better resolve problematic areas of previously known Empedoclean texts.

It was early 1994 when the announcement was made of “un nouveau texte d'Empédocle révélé par un papyrus de la Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg” to be made public at the Strasbourg University Library April 14th 1994.¹ As it turned out, the papyrus was ‘new’ in the sense of being ‘unknown’, but it had been found, that is, bought, no less than 90 years earlier in 1904. It had been bought in Egypt by the German archaeologist Otto Rubensohn Nov. 1904 for das Deutsche Papyruskartell and was allotted to the Strasbourg University Library Sept. 1905. Its 52 fragments were...