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Dr Federica, papyrology researcher at the University of Naples, said this "curse" is also their saving grace.

Oxyrhynchus spawned a whole new sub-discipline of classics: papyrology.

More than a century after the discoveries, one of papyrology’s main tasks is to publish these scrappy manuscripts.

An associate professor in papyrology and Greek literature at Oxford, Obbink occupies one of the plum jobs in his field.

In the early 2000s, he held the chair of papyrology at the University of Michigan – a full-time job – but failed to resign from Oxford, leaving colleagues “profoundly disappointed by his conduct”, according to a senior US-based classicist.