Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus (/ɒksɪˈrɪŋkəs/); Greek: Ὀξύρρυγχος; "sharp-nosed"; ancient Egyptian Pr-Medjed; Coptic Pemdje; modern Egyptian Arabic el-Bahnasa) is a city in Upper Egypt, located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo, in the governorate of Al Minya. It is also an archaeological site, considered one of the most important ever discovered. For the past century, the area around Oxyrhynchus has been continually excavated, yielding an enormous collection of papyrus texts dating from the time of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods of Egyptian history. Among the texts discovered at Oxyrhynchus are plays of Menander fragments from the Gospel of Thomas and fragments from Euclid's Elements, much of it critical to the understanding of mathematics and science.