School poem on mythology

Description

The papyrus preserves part of a poem which was put to use as a writing exercise. The format is familiar: a teacher supplies a writing model and a pupil's copy follows. Here the pupil fails to finish his assignment. He stops writing before quite completing to copy the first verse in line 5.;Each of the three complete hexameters in the writing model deals with a different mythological event. The lines are arranged so as to form an alphabetical acrostic. We know of numerous such abecadaria designed to aid in the teaching of various subjects, and one of them closely resembles our text in that it deals with mythological subjects as well. It is recorded in the 'Notebook of Papnouthion", lines 18-37. Formally, it differs from the present poem in three ways. First, it is written in iambic trimeters, rather than hexameters; second, the alphabetic pattern is alpha omega, beta psi, gamma chi etc.; and finally, these pairs of verses, rather than individual hexameters, each treat an incident in myth or legend.