Classification by crocodile
An illustration that you can never tell how people are going to want to classify things:
When Bernard P. Grenfell, Arthur S. Hunt and J. Gilbart Smyly discovered the mummies of the “papyrus enriched” holy crocodiles in Egyptian Tebtunis, they sensibly decided to include in the first volume of their publication a “classification of papyri according to crocodiles,” for papyri in the belly of the same animal might reveal relationships reflecting their administrative provenance and an original arrangment.
In Ernst Posner, Archives in the Ancient World (The Society of American Archivisits: Chicago, 1972) p. 5 [Tags: EverythingIsMiscellaneous taxonomy crocodiles egypt]
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