Dr Walsh –
Please take a minute to carefully re-read Dr Prodi’s post above. For your convenience I am copying here the excellent point he made: “[the papyrus may] have been on the antiquarian market – and potentially already in Europe – several decades before the ban on papyrus exports came into force”. You’re correct about the rampant looting in Egypt, but your repeated references to it in the context of the present discovery are irrelevant until we know more from the actual publication. As Dr Prodi has said, it is going to be a matter of weeks, not years. Basically, you may be right or you may be wrong, but in my opinion it’s definitely too soon to jump to conclusions the way you did.
Also, at the risk of repeating myself, I’d like to point out that this forum has not been about analyzing the object (but thanks for pointing out to the members of the profession what our real concerns should be), but about analyzing the poems.