Child Labour at Oxyrhynchus

In NT Pod 15: Gospel of Thomas, The First Glimpse, I mentioned that Grenfell and Hunt used a lot of child labour in their excavations. It is as likely as not that it was a child who found the first fragment of the Gospel of Thomas, P.Oxy. 1. Here is the relevant passage in Bernard Grenfell's account of the excavations that led to that discovery:

The excavator in Egypt is not much troubled by the restrictions which hamper the independence of employers of labor in this country. There is no question there about an eight-hours day. Sunrise to sunrise, with an hour off at noon, makes a nine to eleven-hours day even for the youngest, and one does not hear much about "half-timers." As the papyrus digging was comparatively light work, I had more boys than men diggers, the former being not only easier to manage and more trustworthy, but quite as keen about the work as the men, which is rather remarkable, seeing that all their earnings go to their parents. But I should think nearly every boy in the district who could walk wanted to be taken on to the work. Some of the tiny applicants really looked as though they had only recently left their cradles, if they had ever known such luxuries, which, of course, they had not. One of the smartest workers of all was also the smallest, a little chap of about eight years old, who had a wonderful eye for the right kind of soil for finding papyri. I am afraid some tender-hearted persons would have thought me a very brutal taskmaster, if they could have seen some of these children lifting and carrying away heavy baskets of rubbish all day, clothed, perhaps, if the weather was hot, in nothing but a cap on their heads and a piece of string around their waists. But I think the same persons would have retracted their opinion, if they could, at the end of the day's work, have seen the said infants racing each other home over the sand dunes, while I plowed my way painfully in the rear (Bernard P. Grenfell, M.A., "The Oldest Record of Christ's Life", McClure's Magazine Oct. 1897; Vol. IX, No. 6, 1022-30 (1029-30).

NT Pod 15: The Gospel of Thomas: First Glimpse: Programme Notes

I released the latest NT Pod yesterday, Episode 15 on The Gospel of Thomas: The First Glimpse. That term "the first glimpse" refers in particular to the story of Bernard Pyne Grenfell (1869-1926) and Arthur Surridge Hunt (1871-1934) who glimpsed fragments of what later turned out to be the Gospel of Thomas in their excavations at Oxyrhynchus in 1897 (which unearthed P.Oxy 1) and 1903 (which unearthed P.Oxy 654 and 655). This posts adds a few additional programme notes.

This is the first of a series of NT Pod episodes I am planning on the Gospel of Thomas (though not back to back; I'll be interspersing with other episodes) and I wanted to begin the story here, in 1897, with the discovery of P.Oxy 1. This is not where people usually begin the story of its modern discovery. It is standard to begin with Mohammad Ali's discovery of the Nag Hammadi codices in 1945, to which Grenfell and Hunt's discoveries are appended as a kind of afterthought. It's easy to see why -- the Mohammad Ali story is exotic, romantic, dramatic, and brilliantly told by James Robinson. But I find myself having a little more in common with a couple of Oxford trained academics who went searching for ancient texts than I do with a murderous Egyptian who stumbled upon them, and it's the right place to begin the story.

There are, I think, several consequences of beginning the story in the wrong place. One of them is that it can lead to a marginalization of this early Greek evidence including the striking verbatim correspondence, in Greek, between P.Oxy 1.1-4 and Matt. 7.3-5 // Luke 6.41-2. Grenfell and Hunt were quick to notice it, and here is an excerpt from Bernard Grenfell's story of the discovery, during the first week of excavations in January 1897,

Later in the week Mr Hunt, in sorting the papyri found on the second day, noticed on a crumpled uncial fragment written on both sides the Greek word ΚΑΡΦΟΣ ("mote"), which at once suggested to him the verse in the Gospels concerning the mote and the beam. A further examination showed that the passage in the papyrus really was the conclusion of the verse, "Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye;" but that the rest of the papyrus differed considerably from the Gospels, and was, in fact a leaf of a book containing a collection of sayings of Christ, some of which, apparently, were new. More than that could not be determined until we came back to England. (From Bernard P. Grenfell, M.A., "The Oldest Record of Christ's Life", McClure's Magazine Oct. 1897; Vol. IX, No. 6, 1022-30).

One of the delightful elements of studying Grenfell and Hunt's discoveries is the way that they so quickly have an idea what it is that they have found, and you get a feel for the excitement of the discovery. Their publication of their findings was often remarkably speedy, as with P.Oxy 1 here, the same year, 1897, that they discovered it.

Thanks to archive.org, you can download and read Grenfell and Hunt's works on the P.Oxy fragments of Thomas in pretty high quality scans. The first listed below is the 1897 book about P.Oxy. 1; the second is the 1904 book about P.Oxy. 654 and 655:

Logia Iesou: Sayings of Our Lord from an early Greek papyrus discovered and edited, with translation and commentary, by Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt, Published in 1897, for the Egypt Exploration Fund by H. Frowde (London).

New sayings of Jesus and fragment of a lost gospel from Oxyrhynchus, ed. Bernard P. Grenfell, Lucy Wharton Drexel, Arthur S. Hunt. Published in 1904, for the Egypt exploration fund by Oxford university press, American branch, H. Frowde (New York, London).

Arthur Hunt and Doctor Who

I often find myself curious about genealogy, and I am a big fan of Who do you think you are? and Tracing Your Roots. I have stumbled across something of interest to me because it indirectly connects two worlds, Doctor Who and the Gospel of Thomas. Arthur Hunt, along with Bernard Grenfell, unearthed fragments of what turned out to be the Gospel of Thomas first in 1896 (P. Oxy. 1) and subsequently in 1903 (P. Oxy. 654, 655), alongside many other fantastic finds in Oxyrhynchus. I have been reading up a little on both of these men, and I noticed that Arthur Hunt's mother was called Emily Pertwee. Pertwee is a very unusual name; it comes from the French Huguenot family name "Pertuis". And the name of the third doctor is, of course, Jon Pertwee (pictured here). After casting around a bit, I am pretty sure that they are related, though I haven't worked out the precise relationship yet -- I have several old records to work through. I will report back when I have more. As it happens, Jon Pertwee's grandmother was called Emily but this is Emily Pertwee, née Moore.