Papyrus: PD-old. Even under UK law, which requires very little originality, it is still the case that no new copyright can be created by a mere mechanical scan. It follows that there can be no new copyright in images such as this that are to all intents and purposes indistinguishable from such a scan.
This is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason:
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse
This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer.
https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/PDMCreative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0falsefalse
The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that "faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain". This photographic reproduction is therefore also considered to be in the public domain in the United States. In other jurisdictions, re-use of this content may be restricted; see Reuse of PD-Art photographs for details.
Captions
John 18:31–33 on Papyrus 52
Il papiro P52, scritto in greco e paleograficamente datato attorno all'anno 125, è attualmente riconosciuto come il più antico documento riguardante Gesù che ci sia pervenuto. @Alfio
Папирус библиотеки Райлендса Стр. 52 из Евангелия от Иоанна
Reverted to version as of 03:28, 22 October 2007 (UTC) Reason: Revision was the library approved untouched image, only resized, to replace the poor quality manually enhanced old image per library instructions, I can only assume the OTRS will render the "expert" opinion, since the email discusses UK law at length. - REAL TUBE | Talk 17:45, 22 October 2007 (UTC)