ï~~34
AnneMarie Luijendijk
The archaeological provenance for both the Library of Congress fragment and
the Princeton fragment remains unknown.3
The Greek translation of Isaiah 23 differs markedly from the Hebrew text.
For a detailed, verse-by-verse analysis of the Masoretic and the Septuagint text
of this chapter, see A. van der Kooij, The Oracle of Tyre: The Septuagint of Isaiah
XXIII as Version and Vision (Leiden 1998) 54-70, with a reconstruction of the
possible Hebrew Vorlage of these verses on pp. 131-146.
The Library of Congress fragment, the larger of the two pieces (henceforth
"fragment 1"), measures 12.4 x 6.7 cm. As Donovan observed, "it preserves
the width of the page, with lateral margins likely complete at their greatest
preserved points," and contains ten incomplete lines of text per side.4 The upper
margin now measures 0.6 cm; originally, it may have been larger.5 The Princeton fragment (henceforth "fragment 2") is a rather coarse, light-brown papyrus measuring 5.0 x 5.7 cm. with five fragmentary lines of text on each side.
The lower margin of 1.5 cm is partly preserved; lateral margins have broken
off. This piece formed the bottom part of the folium in the papyrus codex. The
continuous text flowing from the bottom of fragment 2k to the top of fragment
1-> indicates that these two pieces form the upper and lower part of the same
page. The two fragments, however, do not touch: a section with 3 or 4 lines is
missing in between them. Thus while these two pieces form the top and bottom of a page, a middle section (let alone the rest of the codex) is still missing.
The script is an informal round, fairly fast, upright hand. The copyist wrote
individually formed, small letters (between 0.3 and 0.35 cm. in height) without
ligatures, but placed some letters close together, tails touching. The writing is
fairly bilinear. (I projects above and below the line, and the descender of P goes
sometimes slightly below the base line. A has a long tail, crossing over to the
next letter. The scribe uses small, leftward-facing hooks on I and the first stroke
of A, HII, and X. Y's right arm bends down deep to the right. O makes a fat oval,
while M boasts a round belly. I tilts a bit forward. Visually, the B stands out:
it is broad and tall, with a long stroke underneath. In line 144, the scribe even
extended the stroke over 5 letters. The B resembles that of P Chester Beatty V
3 Robert Garrett acquired the Princeton piece in 1924 and donated it to his alma
mater in 1942; the Library of Congress received its piece from Seymour de Ricci in
1931. See Don Skemer, "A Descriptive Inventory of Princeton University Collections
of Papyri,' at http://library.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/aids/papyri/papyri.
html and Donovan, "Isaiah Fragment," 625, n. 1.
4 Donovan, "Isaiah Fragment," 625. At the Library of Congress the fragment has
been preserved covered with thin gauze on both sides and mounted in a paper mat
under glass.
5 Ibid.
