The Publisher notifies the readers that the above-mentioned chapter has been
retracted, and supports the following statement by the editors of the volume:
In the years following the first publication of this book, serious doubts have
been raised about the provenance of the newest Sappho papyri (P. Sapph.
Obbink and P. GC inv. 105). Last summer, the Green collection/Museum of the
Bible released a statement according to which their fragments (P. GC inv. 105)
were acquired from a Turkish dealer on January 7, 2012, without any document
proving their legal provenance. Most recently, Mr Green has restituted to Egypt
ca. 5,000 papyri, including P. GC inv. 105, on the basis of their illegal acquisition
circumstances.
P. Sapph. Obbink appears to have been part of the same bookroll to which
P. GC inv. 105 belonged. In an article published in 2017, Simon Burris showed
that a fragment found among those of the Green collection physically joined
with P. Sapph. Obbink (zpe 201: 12–14). This evidence suggests that P. Sapph.
Obbink too came from the same source as P. GC inv. 105. In the meantime,
Michael Sampson has published an article that also questions the provenance
of the papyri as reported in chapter 2 of this book (Bulletin of the American Soci-
ety of Papyrologists 57 [2020] 143–169). Dirk Obbink, the author of this chapter,
was given the opportunity by Brill publishers to respond to this evidence, but
so far they have not received a substantive response. He has told them that he is
working on an academic article in which he disputes the findings of Sampson,
but he has not mentioned a timeline. Considering the above, in consultation
with Brill publishers, we therefore have retracted this chapter, although it will
remain accessible The repatriation of the Green Sappho fragments has restored these papyri to
its rightful owner. We hope that they will be made available to the scholarly
community in their new location both directly and through online digital
reproductions, so they can be studied further. The status of P. Sapph. Obbink remains problematic, however, not only because its provenance is tainted, but
also because the papyrus, which is the main testimony of the Brothers and
the Kypris poems, is inaccessible. We sincerely hope that it will also be made
available to the academic community soon and its acquisition circumstances
will be fully explained. So far we have not seen any evidence to suggest that
either P. GC inv. 105 or P. Sapph. Obbink is not authentic.
We as the editors of this volume will continue to monitor the developments
around these papyri and we will, in consultation with the publisher, update
this postscript or take further measures when necessary, on the basis of new
scholarly evidence.
Anton Bierl and André Lardinois
The retracted chapter will remain available in order to maintain the scholarly
record, but will be watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’, both in print and
online.

