Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus is a funny-sounding word that means "sharp-nosed" in Greek. It was the name of a city a very long time ago in ancient Egypt. People used to throw away all sorts of things they didn't need anymore, like old letters, shopping lists, and even poetry scraps. These things would get buried in the ground over many years and forgotten about.

Fast forward a few thousand years, some curious people discovered a big pile of rubbish from the ancient city of Oxyrhynchus. They found that this trash heap was really special because it contained thousands of documents from over 2,000 years ago! Amazing, right?

These documents showed us things about daily life in ancient Egypt, like what people wrote to each other, what they ate, what they believed in, and many other fascinating details. People are still working on translating all these documents to learn even more about how our ancestors lived long ago.

So, Oxyrhynchus is kind of like a time-capsule that helps us learn about ancient Egypt, and it all started with people throwing away their trash!