The papyri are almost invariably non-literary in character. For instance, they include legal documents of all possible kinds: leases, bills and receipts, marriage-contracts, bills of divorce, wills, decrees issued by authority, denunciations, suings [sic] for the punishment of wrong-doers, minutes of judicial proceedings, tax-papers in great numbers. Then there are letters and notes, schoolboys’ exercise-books, magical texts, horoscopes, diaries, etc. As regards their contents these non-literary documents are as many-sided as life itself.

Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, trans. Lionel R. M. Strachan, 36.

Despite their unassuming simplicity the papyri have infused new blood into the veins of learning. Legal history in the first place, but afterwards the general history of culture, and notably the history of language, have benefited thereby. And here, paradoxical as it will seem to many, let me say that the non-literary papyri are of greater value to the historical inquirer than are the literary. We rejoice by all means when ancient books, or fragments of them, are recovered from the soil of Egypt, especially when they are lost literary treasures. But scientifically speaking the real treasure hidden in the field of Egypt is not so much of ancient art and literature as there lies buried, but all the ancient life, actual and tangible, that is waiting to be given to the world once more.

Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East: The New Testament Illustrated by Recently Discovered Texts of the Graeco-Roman World, trans. Lionel R. M. Strachan, 39.