Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 18 is a fragment of the first book of the Histories

Histories (Herodotus)

The Histories of Herodotus is considered one of the seminal works of history in Western literature. Written from the 450s to the 420s BC in the Ionic dialect of classical Greek, The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that...

of Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

 (chapters 105-106), written in Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

. It was discovered by Grenfell and Hunt in 1897 in Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus

Oxyrhynchus is a city in Upper Egypt, located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo, in the governorate of Al Minya. It is also an archaeological site, considered one of the most important ever discovered...

. The fragment is dated to the third century. It is housed in the British Library

British Library

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

 (Department of Manuscripts). The text was published by Grenfell and Hunt in 1898.

The manuscript was written on papyrus

Papyrus

Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....

 in the form of a scroll. The measurementss of the fragment are 182 by 87 mm. The fragment contains 13 lines of text. The text is written in a good-sized round formal uncial hand. The style of writing resembles great biblical codices

Great uncial codices

The great uncial codices or four great uncials are the only remaining uncial codices that contain the entire text of the Greek Bible ....

. It has deep margins. The fragment supports the manuscript tradition with a few variations in grammar.