British archaeologists Bernard Grenfell and Arthur Hunt excavated rubbish mounds at Oxyrhynchus (modern El Bahnasa), Egypt, recovering hundreds of thousands of Greek, Latin, and Coptic papyri from the 1st-6th centuries AD. The desert town yielded lost literary fragments, including new Sappho and classical plays. It was a major find for papyrology.

New fragments of ancient authors directly enriched classical poetry studies and translations, inspiring poets to engage with recovered voices in lyric traditions.