The volume is representative of the diverse papyrological research which was encouraged and stimulated in the Institute of Papyrology at Heidelberg University between 1982 and 2004, a period in which it attracted numerous papyrologists, philologians, ancient historians and theologians from both home and abroad. The varied content includes literary papyri, ancient medical texts, palmomancy and lexicography. Furthermore there are documentary papyri from the Ptolemaic, Roman, Byzantine and Arabic periods concerning the history of Pagan and Christian religion, political history, tax raising, administration and agriculture as well as articles on onomastics, prosopography, the transmission of communication, manuscript tradition, Church history and, last but not least, the trail of Socrates.