Sarapion was the governor of Upper Sebennytos, against whom the legal complaint was brought. This manuscript was probably written in Alexandria in the first century B.C., and presumably was found among the numerous papyri excavated circa 1900 at Oxyrhynchos, of which Sarapion was a citizen. Another letter written in Sebennytos addressed to him is P.Oxy. 931.

Prof. van Groningen remarked (op. cit.) on the present manuscript's faulty orthography and concluded from the mysterious verse numbers that the word list either related to scrolls which did not correspond to the Books of the Iliad or, more likely, that it was compiled to explicate a school abridgement of the epic that is now lost.