Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This book offers a new and thorough interpretation of the entire text of the Derveni papyrus, a multilayered and intricate philosophical and religious treatise written in Greek, probably around 400 BCE. Since its discovery in 1962, the papyrus has been attracting the attention of scholars in several areas of Classical studies, mostly ancient philosophy and religion but also literary criticism. The anonymous author of the text quotes a previously unknown Orphic poem and comments on it using philosophical motifs and notions borrowed from various Presocratic thinkers, especially Heraclitus and Anaxagoras and his followers. The study offers an ‘all-embracing’ interpretation of various aspects of this complex text and tries to situate concepts and ideas which appear in the text within their original contexts. The material is divided in chapters dedicated to different aspects of the Derveni papyrus: the opening columns describing a peculiar ritual, the Orphic theogony and its explanation with the help of Presocratic allegorical, theological, and physical conceptual devices. In general, the study argues that rather than being the work of a philosophising Orphic initiate, the Derveni treatise contains text written by a late Presocratic philosopher. An analysis of sources upon which the Derveni papyrus is based thus ultimately indicates that the author of the text was probably active in Athens in late 5th century BCE and may have been a person close to the Presocratic thinker Archelaus.</jats:p>