2. The Opening Lemmas of the Derveni Papyrus (original) (raw)
2019, Presocratics and Papyrological Tradition
3 I shall speak for convenience of cols. I-VI, without excluding the likelihood that the commentary on the opening lemma started one or more columns earlier. Janko (2016) 10-11 has in fact identified what looks like an underlined omicron in the left margin of col. VI, just below l. 6, as a stichometric number marking line 1500 of the full text. If he is right, there was a good deal of other material before what the editors call col. I. The hypothesis of my paper, which identifies the badly burnt and barely surviving outer fragments of the roll with the start of the commentary, favours the hitherto universal assumption that these fragments were located at or very near the roll's beginning. But if Janko's proposal were to gain acceptance, there would be no insuperable problem about filling the extra space with appropriate material: not just an authorial sphragis, but a prologue, quite possibly including a full exposition of the author's own cosmogonic theory (since in the preserved commentary this is presupposed rather than expounded); perhaps an introduction to the Orphic poem; even a transcript of it. The first step, though, is for Janko's proposal to be considered and critically discussed from a papyrological point of view. 4 Valeria Piano warns me that the apparent references to Furies in cols. I.6 and II.3 are textually doubtful (the first of these warnings being now confirmed by Janko [2016] 15 and Kotwick [2017]), but that on the other hand there are further references waiting to be inserted, in the detached fragments G6.2 and G9a.2. Even if none of those currently confirmed proves to be in the small scraps surviving from cols. I-II, their prominence within what is agreed to be a continuous religious context must be significant.
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