Rich pickings The library of the Mouseion in Alexandria may have ceased to exist but evidence of what it once contained can be gleaned from fragments of papyri found elsewhere in Egypt, writes Jill Kamil. Thanks to Egypt's dry climate and warm desert sand, papyrus texts in fragile and fragmentary form have survived from many sites -- among them Fayoum and Middle and Upper Egypt -- with the most expansive horde coming from Oxyrhynchus (modern Al-Bahnasa), a vast Graeco-Roman city once second in importance only to Alexandria. Oxyrhynchus was little more than a mass of ruins when, back in...
