Description : Oxyrhynchus (; Greek: Ὀξύρρυγχος, translit. Oxýrrhynchos, lit. 'sharp-nosed'; ancient Egyptian Pr-Medjed; Coptic Pemdje; Arabic el Bahnasa) is a city in Middle Egypt located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo in Minya Governorate. It is also an archaeological site, considered one of the most important ever discovered. For the past century, the area around Oxyrhynchus has been continually excavated, yielding an enormous collection of papyrus texts dating from the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Roman Egypt. Among the texts discovered at Oxyrhynchus are plays of Menander, fragments from the Gospel of Thomas, and fragments from Euclid's Elements. They also include a few vellum manuscripts, and more recent Arabic manuscripts on paper (for example, the medieval P. Oxy. VI 1006).
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