Excavations carried out by Otto Rubensohn in 1905 on the Hermopolis site yielded a set of literary papyri that are likely to have constituted the library of the Taurino family (5th/6th century), whose members made their careers in the army and military administration.
Having attempted to reconstruct the books in this library, we can see that, as in those from Oxyrhynchos and Lycopolis studied last year, the authors represented are hardly original: apart from Homer, they are writers from Athens' golden age (Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Isocrates), who were among the most widely read authors of the5th-6thcenturies and formed the basis of the teaching. Only Euripides' excerpt from The Cretans, which is older (3rd century) and on parchment unlike the other books, bears witness to a certain originality in relation to the scholastic canon. There are no Christian books in this library.
The books in this library do not appear to have been produced to high standards of quality or scholarship: the handwriting hardly differs from that of the family's documentary archives (which confirms their belonging to the same socio-cultural milieu as that evidenced by the Taurinos' business papers); there are no marginal scholia and virtually no corrections, while copying errors abound. Nor do they appear to have been used for learning Greek. These works corresponded to the tastes of their owners, tastes shaped by the Atticist school tradition.
