{"product_id":"the-city-of-the-sharpnosed-fish-9780297645887","title":"The City of the Sharp-nosed Fish","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1897 two Oxford archaeologists began digging a low sand-covered mound a hundred miles south of Cairo. When they had finally finished  ten years later  they had uncovered 500 000 fragments of papyri. Shipped back to Oxford  the meticulous and scholarly work of deciphering these fragments began. It is still going on today. As well as Christian writings from totally unknown gospels and Greek poems not seen by human eyes since the fall of Rome  there are tax returns  petitions  private letters  sales documents  leases  wills and shopping lists. What they found was the entire life of a flourishing market-town - Oxyrhynchos ( the city of the sharp-nosed fish )  on a side branch of the Nile - encapsulated in its waste paper. The total lack of rain in this part of Egypt had preserved the papyrus beneath the sand  as nowhere else in the Roman Empire. We hear the voices of barbers  bee-keepers and boat-makers  dyers and donkey-drivers  plasterers and poets  weavers and wine-merchants  set against the great events of late antiquity: the rise and fall of the Roman Empire and the coming of Christianity  as well as the all-important annual flooding of the Nile. The result is an extraordinary and unique picture of everyday life in the Nile Valley between Alexander the Great in 300 BC and the Arab conquest a thousand years later.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45647885795381,"sku":"ByrdShop_0297645889","price":79.26,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780297645887.jpg?v=1781698782","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-city-of-the-sharpnosed-fish-9780297645887","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}