From Alexandria to Babylon

This is an edition with introduction and detailed commentary of the Oxyrhynchus Glossary, a lexicon preserved in several papyrus fragments with glosses taken from Greek, Greek dialects and "foreign languages", especially Near-Eastern languages. In the entries many historians, periegetes, mythographers of Hellenistic time are quoted. The Oxyrhynchus Glossary is a unique document for the history of Greek lexicography as well as for the study of the relationship between Greek and non-Greek languages and the problems related to linguistic exchanges in the Near Eastern areas.

Auteur

Francesca Schironi, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Résumé

This book provides the first full edition and commentary of the Oxyrhynchus Glossary (POxy 1802 and 4812). This is a unique document both for the history of Greek lexicography and for the study of the cultural and linguistic exchange between the Greeks and the others in the Hellenistic near East. The fragment contains a fully alphabetized glossary with lemmas defined as Persian, Babylonian, and Chaldaean, as well as lemmas taken from Greek dialects or common Greek. The entries are rich in quotations from ancient authorities including Berossus, Apollodorus and Erasistratus. This glossary had never been analyzed in depth previously. Francesca Schironi provides a comprehensive introduction and commentary that places the Oxyrhynchus Glossary into the wider context of Greek lexicography and scholarship, discusses its interest for non-Greek languages and the problems related to linguistic exchanges in the Near Eastern areas, and shows the uniqueness and value of this document. The Oxyrhynchus glossary and this study will be of interest to classicists, papyrologists, comparative philologists, and scholars interested in the history of Greek lexicography and scholarship.