The Shelves · History
List of the Chief Librarians (P.Oxy. X 1241)
Conjecturedin Alexandria?Conjectured · Our reconstructionour placement
I · The entry, in his form
In the table of History
Conjectured · Our reconstructionour placementAnonymous (school chrestomathy)
List of the Chief Librarians
Opening words not preserved.
Length: not counted
Above, his entry form, filled from what we know. Below, ours.
II · Does it survive? Where to read it
Survives in fragments
A damaged papyrus from Oxyrhynchus (Grenfell and Hunt, 1914). It contains clear errors, so it is evidence, not proof.
Was it in Alexandria?
ConjecturedA witness to the city.
On the ledge: written elsewhere, a witness to the city; not known in the Library.
Read it today
- The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, part X (1914), no. 1241 · original and translation · link checked 31 Oct 2026
III · In the show
The show has not yet spoken of this work.
IV · Sources and the living entry
Ancient references
- P.Oxy. X 1241, col. ii
Modern scholarship (5)
- P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972)
- R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968)
- R. Blum, Kallimachos: The Alexandrian Library and the Origins of Bibliography, trans. H. H. Wellisch (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991; German 1977)
- R. S. Bagnall, "Alexandria: Library of Dreams", Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 146.4 (2002) 348–362
- S. Johnstone, 'A New History of Libraries and Books in the Hellenistic Period', Classical Antiquity 33.2 (2014): 347-393.
Entry checked 31 Oct 2026 · no corrections · Suggest a correction ›
LIST OF THE CHIEF LIBRARIANS