Oxyrhynchus Papyri - Huge treasure trove of paper (papyrus) documents from ancient garbage dump
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient rubbish dump near Oxyrhynchus in Egypt (28°32?N 30°40?E, modern el-Bahnasa).
The manuscripts date from the time of the Ptolemaic (3rd century BC) and Roman periods of Egyptian history (from 32 BC to the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640 AD).
Only an estimated 10% are literary in nature. Most of the papyri found seem to consist mainly of public and private documents: codes, edicts, registers, official correspondence, census-returns, tax-assessments, petitions, court-records, sales, leases, wills, bills, accounts, inventories, horoscopes, and private letters.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxyrhynchus_Papyri
There's everything from a contract for a wrestler to throw a match for a fee to fragments from early Christian gospels! These papers are a fascinating look back into the public and private lives of the ancient residents of Oxyrhynchus.