Language and Agency in Sappho’s Brothers Poem

Abstract

The papyrus fragment containing the text of the Brothers Poem (P.Sapph.Obbink) has no established provenance, since Dirk Obbink’s accounts of provenance have been exposed as fabrications. There is further reason to believe the fragment was looted and sold illegally on the antiquities black market: P.Sapph.Obbink comes from the same book roll as the illegally-acquired Hobby Lobby/Green Collection fragments that were returned to Egypt in January 2021. The present whereabouts of P.Sapph.Obbink are unknown. This article engages with the text of the poem and its scholarly reception, but it is equally important that we continue to investigate the object’s history. I draw the reader’s attention to the important work by Roberta Mazza and others.1