ABSTRACT
One of the most fundamental difficulties in working with papyri has already been mentioned briefly in chapter 1. It is the question of what historical reality the papyri refer to. This might seem so obvious as hardly to need discussion, but it is not; rather, it is a major source of confusions-“Confusions,” plural, because several types of both error and difficulty arise from it. The common root of them, however, may be summed up in the phrase “in the papyri.” Tacitly understood in this phrase are at least two assumptions. First, the world of the papyri (by which, unfortunately, tends to be meant the world of the Greek papyri) is seen as a unity; and second, it is seen as distinct from other “worlds.” Both of these are false. The real situation is much more complicated, and this chapter will try to set out several of the elements that drive the historian both to internal analysis of the papyri and to eliciting their connections beyond themselves.
