Book excerpt: The volume offers an account of Oxyrhynchus as an ancient city and archaeological site by surveying its material culture and art objects, including sculpture and draftsmanship, against the backdrop of the papyrus texts. It includes treatments of the site itself (city plan, topography, monuments, art and architecture), the history of the excavations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as a synthesis of the study of social, cultural and intellectual life under Greek, Roman and Byzantine rule. Original contributions by E. G. Turner and W. M. F. Petrie are reprinted; the original archaeological reports are edited with notes.