Abstract
The seminar was devoted to the deciphering and study of three pieces in dactylic hexameters by Dioscorus of Aphrodite (a 6th-century poet known thanks to the discovery of his archives and library in 1905), which in their own way pose the problem of the relationship between classical and Christian cultures [1].
This papyrus, currently preserved in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, was already known from Jean Maspero's attempts to decipher it in 1916 in his edition of the Dioscore papyri in the Cairo Museum(P.Cair.Masp. 67353 B and C). But this is a scroll which, under the effect of humidity, has rotted and crumbled to such an extent that it is reduced today to a series of fragments arranged, not always in order, under six glasses (one of which disappeared several decades ago; figure 1). Reconstruction is rather difficult, and its very dark color often makes the text illegible to the naked eye. Dioscore's verses are concentrated on the most damaged part of the scroll, to such an extent that Maspero, acknowledging that they " are today almost entirely illegible, the ink being scarcely darker than the papyrus itself ", could only distinguish two titles, and then only partially. It was only in 2014 that I was able to take infrared photos of this papyrus, which literally revealed these poems, enabling me to give as complete a text as possible and, above all, to identify their subject matter.
