A couple of weeks ago I gave an online talk for the Paideia Institute and realized that many are unaware of the fate of the so-called Sappho Brothers Poem papyrus. In Stolen Fragments I revealed that the Brothers Poem papyrus, which we were desperately chasing, had been always kept at Christie’s Manuscripts Department in London, as the “owner” was trying to sell it privately. From there, it went into police custody, as part of the Oxford papyri thefts investigation. But after the release of my book, the Oxford Thames Valley Police kindly informed me that the Brothers Poem papyrus was given back to “the owner(s)”. As investigations were (and still are) on-going, I could not be provided with explanations on the reasons why the decision had been taken. (I broke the news last year during a lecture in Oxford).

I was and still am puzzled. It is a fact that the papyrus comes from one and the same ancient bookroll from where other 26 Sappho fragments acquired by the Green family were obtained. The handwriting is the same, and one of the Green Sappho fragments actually joins the Brothers Poem papyrus bottom left, as shown in an academic article published in 2017 with images attached. Moreover, shady dealer Yakup Eksioglu has admitted in an interview released to Ariel Sabar and published in The Atlantic that he is the seller of all the new Sappho papyri, which he stated “belonged to his family collection for at least a century.” Nobody believes to his provenance tale, since Eksioglu did not provide any evidence to confirm it; in fact, Mr Green decided to send the Sappho and other papyrus fragments he had bought from Eksioglu and others back to Egypt, where they belong.

Again, everybody must be fully aware that the Brothers Poem papyrus, the only extant testimony of verses of a previously unknown poem of Sappho, is in the hands of some men (I believe three, but they can be one or two of the trio: names, based on the evidence I collected, at p. 197 of Stolen Fragments!) who obtained it illegally and tried to sell it for ab. $ 12,000,000 through Christie’s London. We are waiting for the closure of this over six years investigation to understand why this has happened.