Early papyrus ‘rewrites history’

ROME - It served first as a notebook for ancient painters and then as part of a mummy’s wrapping. Now, a first-century-BC parchment believed to contain the earliest cartography of the Greco-Roman era will be on display next month in the northern Italian city of Turin.

The Papyrus of Artemidorus tells a tale of more than 2,000 years of art and culture.

Egyptologist Alessandro Roccati, of the University of Turin, said the parchment was “extraordinary” in that it “conserves direct and ancient testimony that helps reconstruct history.” Roccati was not involved in the project.

The parchment’s story begins around the mid-first century BC, when a copyist in Alexandria, Egypt, began working on a blank parchment to copy the second of 11 books by Greek geographer Artemidorus of Ephesus.

I absolutely love maps, the older the better. Fascinating news.