(RNS) — In the 1890s, a pair of British archaeologists began digging in an ancient rubbish heap at the edge of the ruins of Oxyrhynchus, Egypt, looking for a glimpse into the city’s past.
They’d eventually find tens of thousands of documents, written on papyrus and preserved in the desert for centuries, ranging from official documents to personal letters. Among them was a fragment about 11 inches long and 2 inches wide that detailed shipments of grain on one side.
On the other side were the music and lyrics to a song. That song would turn out to be one of the oldest Christian hymns ever found.
“We have about 50 examples of musical compositions with musical notation from antiquity,” said John Dickson, a former songwriter turned biblical scholar. “This is the only Christian one. And it predates any other notation of a Christian hymn by many centuries.”
Scholars have known about the fragment, known as P.Oxy. 1786 or the Oxyrhynchus Hymn — a reference to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri collection — since 1922, when the text of the hymn was first published in English. The song is filled with Christian imagery, with worshippers telling the stars and wind to be silent as they praise God, “the giver of all good things,” but the tune is hard to sing. It’s not the kind of song to …