To preserve Egyptian papyri, the climate must be dry, and the site must not be subject to the annual flooding of the Nile. Among the sites that fit the bill are the Hellenistic towns around Lake Fayyum, to the south-west of modern Cairo, and Oxyrhynchus, a bit further to the south.
GRENFELL AND HUNT
Research started in late 1896. Two British scholars, Bernard Grenfell (1870-1926) and Arthur Hunt (1871-1934), chose the site with the explicit aim of securing anclient texts. Since their colleagues focused on the great monuments of Egypt, they explained, peripheral areas remained ignored and were open to plundering. Thus, papyri might come on the market without documented provenance. Oxyrhynchus was a great site to look for manuscripts: it had not been looted and was sufficient of a city to have many temples, had been found in Oxvrhynchus.
