Today, most museums and universities concerned with the study of Antiquity have procured collections of varying size of papyrus fragments. The nature of these fragments ranges from receipts, letters, contracts or economical accounts, to literary works – which renders the field of papyrology immensely important in the study of nearly every area of ancient society. However, the sheer amount of available material means that large quantities of fragments have been practically ignored. This paper is a small contribution to the monumental endeavour of finally examining and publishing these hitherto ignored fragments, by studying three unpublished papyri from the collection owned by Uppsala University.

The selected papyri are Pap. Ups. 18, Pap. Ups. 106 and Pap. Ups. 22. The former two are documentary texts (concerned with inheritance), and the latter is a literary excerpt, containing a passage from books 15 and 16 of the Iliad. The understanding of the latter,whilst somewhat hindered by the fragmentary state of the fragment, was less affected by the illegibility of some passages than that of the former two – owing to the familiarity of the epic from other sources – and the fragment revealed several interesting and unusual readings. The two documentary texts were more difficult to interpret, and whilst the reading of the preserved sections was mostly straightforward, key elements were unfortunately lost in lacunae, which greatly impaired the understanding of crucial details such as the identity and relations of people mentioned in the texts. Nonetheless, they contribute to the ever-growing knowledge of and appreciation for the lives and achievements of our ancestors.