An invasive cervical carcinoma was found to harbor an episomal variant of human papillomavirus (HPV) type 16 DNA, with a size of about 10.1 kb. A genomic library of the tumor was constructed in bacteriophage lambda and a recombinant phage clone was isolated by screening with HPV 16 probe. Analysis by restriction mapping and Southern hybridization showed that the isolate contained a 2.2 kb duplication of the early region, which included part of E6, all E7 and part of E1 open reading frames. Possible consequences of this duplication for oncogenesis are discussed.