Greece & Rome · c. 1st century BC · Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
Thirty lost verses by Greek philosopher Empedocles identified on papyrus in Cairo
A papyrus about 2,000 years old in the archives of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology preserves part of Empedocles' poem Physica on vision and perception.
Book
Cairo, Egypt A papyrus fragment about 2,000 years old contains thirty previously unknown verses by Empedocles, the Greek philosopher of the 5th century BC. It is kept in the archives of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology (IFAO) in Cairo.
The lines come from his poem the Physica. Until now, scholars had only quotations and summaries of his work by later writers. The fragment gives them a stretch of his original text.
Nathan Carlig, a papyrologist at the University of Liège, identified the fragment. It is catalogued as P.Fouad inv. 218.
The first edition, translation and commentary appear in the book L'Empédocle du Caire. Carlig edited it with Alain Martin and Oliver Primavesi. The Association Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth in Brussels published it in 2025.
Until now, our knowledge of Empedocles' work relied exclusively on indirect sources such as fragmentary quotations, summaries or allusions scattered throughout the works of authors such as Plato, Aristotle or Plutarch. Papyrus P.Fouad inv. 218 allows us to read the philosopher in his original text, without the intermediary of often partial or biased sources.
Nathan Carlig, papyrologist, University of Liège
According to Carlig, the Cairo papyrus is the only known copy of the Physica. Fragments of other parts of the same scroll are preserved in Strasbourg.
The Cairo piece is described as about two thousand years old. The news site Arkeonews dates the manuscript to roughly the 1st century BC.
The new verses deal with how we see
Empedocles was a citizen of Akragas, the Greek city in Sicily that is now Agrigento. He lived from about 494 to about 434 BC.
He is best known for his theory of four elements. In it, two forces he called Love and Strife mix and separate the elements. He is generally regarded as the last Greek philosopher to set out his ideas in verse.
The new lines deal with his theory of effluvia: the particles he believed flow off objects. They also deal with sensory perception, especially vision.
The editors' analysis found connections with later texts. The Cairo passage is probably the direct source of a passage by Plutarch, written in the 2nd century AD.
It is probably also the source of a dialogue by Plato and of a text by Theophrastus, Aristotle's pupil. Both date from the 4th century BC. The team also detected echoes of Empedocles that had gone unnoticed, in the comic poet Aristophanes and in the Latin philosopher Lucretius.
The study suggests that Empedocles could be regarded as a precursor of the atomists. These Greek philosophers of the 5th and 4th centuries BC held that matter is made of tiny, indivisible particles. The best known of them was Democritus of Abdera.
Papyri bring a 'second Renaissance' of lost texts
The authors offer a comparison to explain what the find means to specialists. Imagine that in a few centuries only scraps survived of Victor Hugo. Readers would have excerpts from Les Misérables in school textbooks and the musical Notre-Dame de Paris. They would also have the programme for a performance of his play Hernani.
A few pages from an original edition would then be a momentous event. That, the authors say, is what scholars of Empedocles are now experiencing.
Papyrologists have searched papyrus texts for lost works since the late 19th century. Renaissance humanists did much the same when they searched European libraries for lost manuscripts.
It is, in a way, to borrow Peter Parsons' words, a 'second Renaissance' of ancient literature.
Nathan Carlig, papyrologist, University of Liège
The publication is meant to help place Empedocles more precisely in the history of Greek philosophy. It is also meant to define his relationship with the thinkers who came before and after him. The edition appears as volume 44 of the series Papyrologica Bruxellensia.
Sources
- Unpublished verses by Empedocles discovered on Cairo papyrus (Archaeology Wiki)
- A Two-Thousand-Year-Old Papyrus with Thirty Unpublished Verses by Empedocles, the Philosopher Who Threw Himself into Etna, Found in Cairo (La Brújula Verde)
- Second Renaissance’ of Ancient Texts: 2,000-Year-Old Cairo Papyrus Reveals Lost Verses of Empedocles (Arkeonews)
Paper: Nathan Carlig, Alain Martin, Oliver Primavesi, L'Empédocle du Caire (P.Fouad inv. 218). Introduction, texte, commentaire. Papyrologica Bruxellensia 44. Brussels: Association Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 2025. hdl.handle.net/2268/329390
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