In 1995 a papyrus excavated by tomb-raiders appeared on the antiquities gray-market and was subsequently purchased by an Italian bank representing the University of Milan. It contained over one hundred previously unknown epigrams now attributed to the Greek epigrammatist Posidippus, who lived in Alexandria at the center of Ptolemaic Egypt. The papyrus was divided into the same ten sections that this book is now.

The remarkable survival of this papyrus is due to its abandonment. The papyrus is a cheap edition of what would have been a luxury scroll, one that was likely held in, and then lost with, the Library of Alexandria. The copy that exists today survived because it was used as scrap paper to wrap the chest of a mummy, following the standard practice of the time. 

The papyrus is, as of writing, held by the University of Milan; it is known in the papyrological community as P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309.

Softcover book!