I first met the Derveni papyrus via a reference to the Heraclitus quotation in it. When I read the text in the anonymously published ZPE transcript, I found it astonishing and fascinating; I realised that I wished to know more about it even apart from its lesson on Heraclitus.

Presumably everyone interested in ancient philosophy, and especially in the earliest part of it, has the dream that by some archaeological miracle some new evidence will one day be found which can shed new light on the doctrines of individual philosophers or on the intellectual climate of the age. I felt I was reading such a document. Also, the commonplace of papyrology became personal experience: I found it outstandingly exciting to read a text which did not come down to us through the stemma of medieval manuscripts but had survived in a copy written by someone around the end of the classical age.

Yet, even though many of the phrases and ideas of the text had a familiar ring, I found the text beyond comprehension. The reasoning appeared contorted, I soon got lost in the jungle of allegorical identifications, and, on the whole, it seemed far from obvious what the author actually wanted to say, why he wanted to say it, and, more generally, what the purpose of the whole text was. As I turned for help to the secondary literature, numerous details became clearer, but I had the feeling that many of the basic questions were still open, or, for that matter, had not even been asked. Also, piece by piece, I gathered the details of the unfortunate editorial situation.