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This paper will discuss the ‘finding’ of the new Sappho fragments and following events in the wider context of discovery narratives, which have been functional to the establishment of papyrology as a discipline and contributed to keep the audience engaged from the late 19th century onwards. I am going to analyse the P.Sapph.Obbink and P.GC. 105 case through a comparison with other recent and less recent findings of Sappho poems in order to show how some methodological misconceptions caused harm to people, texts and their interpretations too. The conceptualization of papyri as carriers of texts rather than archaeological artefacts has caused a series of epistemological and ethical damages to the field, which have been only partially addressed (e.g., Davoli 2015; Mazza 2019). Past generations of scholars have employed narratives of discovery to mythologise papyrologists, classicists and their achievements; in so doing, people and facts that were not functional to the creation myth (e.g., Egyptian actors, the illicit trade and the key-role played by academics in it) were excided from the official accounts. However, recent studies on papyrus findings and acquisitions based on archival evidence (e.g., Hickey and Keenan 2017) have shown that it is time to abandon this type of creation-discovery discourses and re-write the history of papyrology and its practices through the lenses of colonial and imperial exploitation. Finally, the paper will also demonstrate that while feminist readings of Sappho have flourished, these as any other interpretations are based on poetry mainly transmitted by papyri published in the form of first editions exclusively by male scholars, except for a single and meaningful case that will be considered (PSI 1300, Norsa 1937). This male monopoly over Sappho has had a massive although unrecognized impact in the public reception and understanding of the poetess.