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Greek Myths from Egyptian Sands: Discovering the New Euripides

Saturday, September 14, 2024
11:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. MDT (GMT/UTC-6)
Cofrin Auditorium (Atlas 100, CU �鶹ӰԺ) and via live-stream

A link to the video recording of the Symposium is available until October 24

A complete program is available here: Fountain Symposium - 2024 Program

In November of 2022, a team of archaeologists led by Basem Gehad of the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities recovered several papyri from a simple grave in the cemetery of Philadelphia in the Fayoum. The best preserved includes nearly 100 lines from two otherwise lost plays by the Athenian playwright Euripides - the most significant discovery of new tragedy in nearly 60 years. CƯ's Yvona Trnka-Amrhein, the team's papyrological expert, invited her colleague John Gibert, a specialist in Greek drama, to join her and Dr. Gehad in preparing the first edition of the text: here, for the first time in nearly 2,000 years readers will encounter gripping scenes from two plays based on little-known but intriguing incidents from the mythical careers of Dionysus' aunt Ino/Leucothea, the Cretan king Minos, and the seer Polyidus. The Ninth Annual Celia M. Fountain Symposium will introduce the discovery and explore its contexts in archaeology, literature, mythology, and vase painting.

• The papyrus was officially published on August 27, 2024, in the Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik (vol. 230, pp. 1–40). It will take a while for it to reach libraries, but you may view the table of contents .
• Rob Cioffi discusses the papyrus in the London Review of Books here: 
• Colorado Public Radio’s Anthony Cotton (“Colorado Matters”) discusses the papyrus and the upcoming Symposium with Yvona and John here: 
• Brown University Professor Johanna Hanink discuses the papyrus with John and Yvona on her podcast Λέσχη here: 
• In June, 2024, Harvard’s  hosted a two-day conference devoted to further exploration of the newly discovered text by specialists. The proceedings will eventually be published in an online, open-access book, but in the meantime, there is information about the conference  and , including a  and several pre-prints (or choose Preprints from the Publications pull-down menu on the main page).
• This discovery was recently featured in CU's Arts & Sciences Magazine: Uncovered Euripides fragments are ‘kind of a big deal’
• On September 4, 2024, the Times Literary Supplement (London) published “,” by Bill Allan.

There has been and will continue to be more press coverage, which we will later collect on a separate page you will be able to link to from here.

The Fountain Symposium is sponsored by the generous support of Celia M. Fountain, the Bruce D. Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization, and the Classics Department.
It is free and open to the public

classics@colorado.edu | www.colorado.edu/classics | 303-492-6257

This site is under construction. Please check in as often as you like for additional information!​

Download the poster