Researchers have identified 30 unpublished verses by Empedocles in a papyrus fragment housed in Cairo, Egypt, offering direct access to the ancient Greek philosopher’s writing for the first time. The fragment is roughly 2,000 years old and was held in the archives of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology.
Nathan Carlig, a papyrologist at the University of Liège, identified the document as papyrus P. Fouad inv. 218. He determined it belongs to Physica, a philosophical poem by Empedocles of Agrigentum, who lived during the fifth century BC.
Cairo’s papyrus unveiled Empedocles’ unpublished verses
Carlig said that knowledge of Empedocles had until now depended entirely on indirect accounts, including short quotations and summaries found in later authors such as Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch, adding that the papyrus now allows scholars to read the philosopher directly without relying on sources that may be partial or shaped by later interpretation. He also noted that the document is the only known surviving copy of Physica, while separate sections of the same scroll have been held in Strasbourg.
A two-thousand-year-old papyrus fragment, discovered in the archives of the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo, reveals thirty previously unpublished verses by Empedocles, a pre-Socratic philosopher of the 5th century BCE. pic.twitter.com/JDVxG1BTxo
— Tom Marvolo Riddle (@tom_riddle2025) April 2, 2026
The verses address the theory of particle effluvia and sensory perception, with particular attention to sight.
Researchers found several previously unrecognized connections in the text, among them what they believe to be the probable direct source behind a passage written by Plutarch in the second century CE.
The analysis also drew links to works by Plato and by Aristotle’s student Theophrastus, each dating to the fourth century BC.
Papyrus breaks new ground in ancient Greek philosophy
The study found traces of Empedocles in the surviving work of the playwright Aristophanes and in the philosophical writings of the Roman poet Lucretius. Researchers also argue that Empedocles may be seen as an early forerunner of the atomist tradition, most associated with Democritus of Abdera.
To convey the scale of the find, the authors ask readers to picture a distant future in which Victor Hugo exists only through classroom excerpts from Les Misérables, a stage musical based on Notre-Dame de Paris, and a printed program from a production of Hernani.
In that scenario, they said, turning up pages from an original Hugo manuscript would carry enormous weight. That, they argue, is precisely the situation scholars of Empedocles now face.
Carlig described the discovery as part of what scholar Peter Parsons once called a renewed awakening of ancient literature. A new book, L’Empedocle du Caire, edited by Carlig, Alain Martin, and Olivier Primavesi, presents the first published edition of the text along with its translation and commentary. The publication opens new ways to understand Empedocles and his place in the history of Greek philosophy, researchers said.
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