The published volumes of Oxyrhynchus Papyri tell you about the papyri, but where are they all? There’s sometimes no substitute for checking your reading against the original — although the imaging project may take some of the pressure off, in time.
So: why aren’t they all in one place to begin with?
The majority of the Oxyrhynchus papyri are housed in the papyrology rooms of the Ashmolean in Oxford. However, in the early days of the project, a great many published papyri were presented to other institutions — from major research centres to boarding schools and public libraries. Some have been sold, destroyed or simply mislaid, but many can still be found there.
Institutions holding particular papyri will generally have negatives from which they may be prepared to supply prints. Additionally, negatives and/or prints of some papyri from other collections are kept at Liège, Brussels and Köln.
Currently this section is a stopgap, being nothing more than the old 1974 Location-List booklet in table form. The Location-List (compiled by Revel Coles at the Ashmolean, published by the Egypt Exploration Society) brought together what information there was at the time on Oxyrhynchus papyri that had been distributed to other institutions. Some of this information may now be out of date. A revised version will appear here in due course.
A key to location abbreviations used in the lists is available: we recommend you call it up before you get bogged down. It contains full postal addresses of institutions holding papyri and photos.