The Physiologus in Egypt

The Physiologus is a work intimately related to Egypt. The author of the essay is unknown, but most likely it was composed in Greek language in Alexandria between the end of the 2nd and the end of the 4th century AD. The direct tradition of the Physiologus in Greek includes a good number of manuscripts belonging to the Middle Ages (from the 10/11th century on), to which was recently added a fragment on papyrus from Egypt dating back to the 6th century (PSI XVI 1577). Among the non-Greek versions, the Coptic Physiologus stands out as one of the most important translations composed around the 5th century AD. We do not have an unbroken, direct witness of the complete work, but some fragments of the text are known, as well as some references to different chapters in the works of other authors. We can then say that the edition of the Physiologus in Coptic relies almost entirely on indirect witnesses of the text. The only direct witness appears to be a fragment of a paper notebook dating back to the 10/11th century AD (P.Berol. Inv. 7999). In this paper I would like to focus firstly on analysing the data on the text of the Physiologus obtained from the two direct witnesses coming from Egypt; secondly on investigating some aspects of the witness of the indirect sources, which are crucial to appreciate the influence that this essay had on Egyptian Christian literature, and to retrace the cultural environment of late ancient Egypt.