Greek Papyri: An Introduction 9781400877652

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GREEK PAPYRI

G R E E K PAPYRI AN INTRODUCTION

E. G. TURNER Professor of Papyrology University College Londcn

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY 1968

Oxford University Press, Ely House, London W. ι GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON CAPE TOWN SALISBURY IBADAN NAIROBI LUSAKA ADDIS ABABA BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG TOKYO

© OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS I968 IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD BY VIVIAN RIDLER PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

PREFACE Quid non Ars queat? Ecce tibi in latas tenuesque palustris Secta Papyrus acu philyras mortalibus usum Dat chartae. . . . What cannot Skill achieve? A marvel, now! The plant which in the swampy Lakes did grow, Split into pithy Ribands, broad and fine, Gives unto mortal men the Sheet divine. Then was it first that Friend to distant friend In sweet Exchange fond Messages could send; Then Books found honour: none there was but sought To follow Wisdom and to teach th' untaught. Papyrus first the Mind of man did whet And many Books spread wider Learning's net. Jean Imberdis, S.J., Papyrus, 1693, transl. E. Laughton

T

HIS book is written as an aid to the use of Greek or Latin papyri (Latin texts, though not specifically mentioned in the title, are treated throughout on the same footing as Greek). The reader may be textual critic, historian, or intelli­ gent layman whose imagination has been stirred at the idea of making direct contact with the writers of two thousand or so years ago. I hope this guide will help him to find his way about an elusive branch of study, and make his exploration of the originals both more fruitful and more interesting. By setting out what it is useful for a man to know before be begins to use these texts, I hope also that I can save him from putting the wrong sort of questions and drawing unjustified inferences. The aim I have had foremost in mind is to facilitate a profit­ able approach to the originals (in the manner of W. Schubart's Einfiihmng in die Papyruskunde, Berlin, 1918) rather than to summarize and codify the findings of past scholars. This book will not offer a body of results of the same kind as the magisterial survey of historical, administrative, and juristic knowledge derived from the papyri that is to be found in the Grundziige und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde of U. Wilcken and L. Mitteis issued in 1912. Itisdoubtfulwhetherasingleindividual could nowadays possess the knowledge to survey the whole field

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accurately, or whether, even if he had it, the result would be of sufficient value to other scholars to justify the time consumed in compiling it. It is partly the success of Wilcken and Mitteis's great book in codifying the results of investigation that has led to a common interpretation of 'papyrology' (Papyruskunde) as 'a body of knowledge derived from the study of papyri'. It is a one-sided, oversimplified interpretation. What the papyrologist does will, I hope, emerge from a reading of Chapter V. I prefer in conse­ quence not to attempt prematurely to define the bounds of the discipline. I have indeed gone to some lengths to avoid making use of the words 'papyrologist' and 'papyrology'. They suggest a department of knowledge which is only too easily elevated into a 'mystique'. A man who wishes to work on Greek or Latin papyri needs no mystical powers. But he does need good eye­ sight, familiarity with the Greek language, a powerful fund of curiosity, and a determination to relate what he finds that is new to the existing stock of knowledge. Add a faculty of critical judgement and a dash of critical scepticism and he will develop into a first-rate scholar. Papyrus itself is one of the most splendid legacies of Egyptian civilization to later ages. It is well to pay this tribute now, for in this book when the term 'papyri' is used as a collective noun it does not in general include texts in Egyptian hieratic or demotic, Coptic, Aramaic, Pehlevi, or Arabic, but is applied only to texts in Greek or Latin. Most of these texts belong to the thousand years during which the Greeks occupied Egypt (roughly from Alexander the Great to the eighth century after Christ) and have been preserved by the dry sands of Egypt. Though I exclude from the term writings in other languages, I do include writings on other materials during this period: it is a matter of convenience to use the word 'papyri' to cover skins, parchment, vellum, potsherds, wooden boards, etc., indeed all materials carrying writing in ink done by a pen. To one article of faith I had better confess in a preface. I have little patience with a common attitude, that literary texts alone are worth the attention of a scholar, and that documen­ tary papyri may be left to a humbler kind of investigator. This dichotomy of the texts from Graeco-Roman Egypt into literary and documentary papyri has put scholarship in

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blinkers. There is not one kind of palaeography that applies to literature and one kind that applies to documents. Some of the most precious texts of Greek literature survive only in copies made by scribes whose normal employment was copying documents; probably less than half of the total are written in 'bookhands' by scribes who devoted themselves to copying literature and literature only. I hope that Chapters VI and VII will make clear what illumination can be brought to the literary texts themselves by the documents which describe the condi­ tions under which literature was studied and copied. Neither literary man nor documentary scholar has a monopoly of imagi­ nation or sensitivity, though it is imagination and sensitivity of a different kind that they employ. To prevent their subject suffering they must try to come to terms with each other. A second notion I have borne constantly in mind is that at least as many papyrus texts still await an editor as have been published. The opportunities are there for those willing to take them. Consequently I have tried to treat the development of discovery and interpretation as a continuing process. A book such as this should, of course, answer questions; but it should also try to show what kind of questions can be answered and what cannot, and serve as a launching-pad for further investi­ gation. Scholarship moves forward through the work of new generations. The book can, I hope, be read straight through if the reader wishes, without recourse to the bibliographical references col­ lected together at the end. They are there because a guide would be of restricted usefulness if it did not indicate what books and articles out of a widely dispersed literature are likely to be most helpful. These bibliographical references have been kept to a minimum: for any particular topic I have chosen as a base a recent discussion which itself subsumes much of the earlier literature. ForliterarytextsI have (though not consistently) adopted the plan of referring to them by the number they bear in R. Pack, The Greekand Latin Literary Texts from Graeco-Roman Egypt, 2nd ed., 1965 (abbreviated as Pack2). This method has the advan­ tage of a concise mode of reference both to the text in question and to a fairly full bibliography concerning it; its disadvantage is to interpose a second book between the reader and his quarry.

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I hope that the searcher will not grow impatient at this pro­ cedure. I have it in mind in a later work, which I have pro­ visionally called A Reference Book of Greek Papyri, to compile a more extended critical bibliography alphabetically arranged. It might start from the index entries of this book, but also contain additional matter, such as a detailed section about provenances, a bibliography on Herculaneum, and perhaps a table of formats of rolls and codices. To supplement the plates in this book, I have made a selection from the papyri discussed and hope to present them in facsimile reproduction in a com­ panion volume, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, which is now in an advanced stage of preparation. For photo­ graphs and for permission to reproduce I should like to thank the Trustees of the British Museum (PI. IV), the Egypt Ex­ ploration Society (Pis. V, VII and VIII), the Kelsey Museum of Art and Archaeology, Ann Arbor (Pl. I), Mrs. Raissa Calza and the Fototeca Unione (PI. VI), Mme Semni Karouzou (PI. II), and Miss Alison Duke and the Mistress and Fellows of Girton College, Cambridge, for PI. III. This book and its companion volume would never have been written had I not enjoyed the opportunity of two periods of residence at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. The greater part of the present volume took its present shape in 1964. The date will explain the choice of illustrative material, and also its presentation (Pack2 was not published till the manuscript was completed). The list of papyrological publica­ tions is, I hope, reasonably complete to 31 May 1966. A few items have been added since then, but systematic bibliographical revision has not been possible after that date. I am grateful to many scholars for their advice and help. Parts of the manuscript were read at an early stage by Profes­ sors Cl. Preaux, E. A. Lowe, Dorothy and Homer Thompson, B. D. Merritt, H. C. Youtie, and N. Lewis, and the plan bene­ fited from their criticisms and suggestions. My wife has en­ couraged and helped me throughout, and lightened my load by making a fresh inspection of library shelves in order to compile the list of papyrus publications. The complete manu­ script was read and improved by Dr. J. R. Rea, Mr. C. H. Roberts, and Professor C. B. Welles. The whole book has been read in proof by Dr. Douglas Young, Messrs. E. W. Handley,

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P.J. Parsons, and by W. Ε. H. Cockle (to whom I am indebted also for compilation of the index); and sections of proof have been read by Professors Α. Η. M. Jones and J. A. C. Thomas. The scholarship and attentiveness of these learned men have removed many ambiguities and saved me from many errors. For those that remain I alone am to blame. I have two final acknowledgements to make. The first is to the non-pareil of scholars, Edgar Lobel, from whom I have learned more than I can express. A very great deal of what is set out here originates from him. The second is to Sir Harold Idris Bell. In December 1966 he accepted the dedication of this book. Alas, he has not lived to see it appear. But I inscribe it to his memory with all the reverence and affection in my power. He first revealed to me the value and interest of papyri, taught me to read a papyrus text, and helped me to glimpse what was required to understand it. E. G. TURNER

February ig67

CONTENTS LIST OF P L A T E S

XLI

I. WRITING M A T E R I A L S AND BOOKS

I

I I . T H E REDISCOVERY OF P A P Y R U S

17

H I . E X C A V A T I N G FOR P A P Y R I : THE ORGANIZATION OF THEIR STUDY

25

I V . P L A C E OF ORIGIN AND P L A C E OF W R I T I N G : THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF FINDS

42

V . H O W A P A P Y R U S T E X T IS EDITED

54

V I . T H E PERSONS W H O OWNED T H E P A P Y R I IN ANTIQUITY Ι. ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE AND THE TESTIMONY OF THE TEXTS 2. THE EVIDENCE FROM PALAEOGRAPHY

74 88

V I I . P A P Y R I AND GREEK L I T E R A T U R E Ι. 2. 3. 4. 5.

NEW TEXTS OF THE CLASSICS ALEXANDRIAN SCHOLARSHIP AND THE PAPYRI EDITION AND HYPOMNEMA THE CONTENTS OF HYPOMNEMATA POSTSCRIPT: GREEK PAPYRI AND TEXTUAL CRITICISM

V I I I . T Y P E S OF P A P Y R U S DOCUMENT

97 IOO 112 118 125 127

POSTSCRIPT: THE STATE OF STUDIES IN 1965

148

I X . THE P R I N C I P A L EDITIONS OF P A P Y R I

154

NOTES TO C H A P T E R S I - V I I I

172

NOTES ON THE P L A T E S

189

PLATES

FOLLOWING P. 190

G E N E R A L INDEX

193

I N D E X OF G R E E K W O R D S

221

MAP OF E G Y P T

AT END OF BOOK

LIST OF PLATES (following p. 190)

r. Papyrus letter found in a house in Karanis 11. Sappho reading her book hi.

Mummy-portrait of Hermione, grammatiki

iv. A Papyrus Roll of Homer's Iliad (the tBankes' Homer) v. A leaf of an open papyrus codex (a glossary) vi. Scribes writing on wooden tablets supported on tables vii. A Private letter from Oxyrhynchus Yin. From a Papyrus Roll containing Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon

W R I T I N G M A T E R I A L S AND B O O K S earliest surviving Greek papyri (rolls such as the verses of Timotheos, or the carbonized roll from Derveni) were written in the fourth century before Christ. But papyrus was in use as a writing material much earlier. A blank roll of papyrus for the use of the dead man was discovered in the tomb of the vizier Hemaka at Sakkara of the time of the first dynasty, that is, about 3000 B.C.1 The earliest fragments of written papyri2 are fragments of books of accounts, and they come from a funerary temple of the fifth dynasty, a period which has also left a number of striking statues of seated scribes. They have already a long tradition behind them, for their hieratic script, writing simplified forms of the hieroglyphs, can be traced back to the first dynasty. Outside Egypt it is not unlikely that papyrus was used in the second millennium before Christ. In bronze age Crete, where Linear Ά' or 'B' writing has been preserved only as incisions on clay tablets or seals, or as painting on jars, papyrus may per­ haps have been used for more permanent records. These intri­ cate signs are ill adapted for incision in tacky clay; and sealings from Knossos and elsewhere often contain strands of papyrus,3 as though the object sealed were a papyrus roll wrapped in a string formed by pulling out one of its own fibres. We know from the tale of Wen-Amon4 that papyrus was exported to Phoenicia. At his request '500 [rolls] of finished papyrus' were among the goods sent in the twelfth or eleventh century to Zakar-Baal, prince of Byblos, in return for timber. It is pre­ cisely from Byblos5 that the Greek word bublos, 'book', or 'Bible' was formed. Moreover, both word and thing may well have been taken over by Greeks in the bronze age: Greek bublos must have been based on a Phoenician form Gubla, and W. F. Al­ bright claims that the accent changed from Gilbla to Gebdl about 1200 B.G. Yet if papyrus was used by Greeks in the Mycenaean age we have to explain how memory of its use vanished utterly. he

814262

B

2

Writing Materials and Books

Ivory writing-tablets of the eighth and seventh centuries have been discovered at Nimrud6 in Mesopotamia; possibly the Hittites employed them much earlier. On Assyrian monuments rolls can be seen in the hands of counting scribes, though they were perhaps made of skins, the great rival of papyrus as writing material in the early period, even in Greece. The word 'papyrus' apparently first appears in cuneiform7 in a text of the Assyrian king Sargon (721-705 B.C.): the term 'writer-on-skin' does not occur till the third century B.C. The oldest piece of papyrus to be found outside Egypt8 (in a cave near Murabba'at on the Dead Sea) is written in Hebrew and assigned to about 750 B.C. We have no firm evidence as to when papyrus came into general use by Greeks in Greece. It is hard to think that it could be later than the time of Archilochus, that is, the middle of the seventh century B.C.9 The Greek scribes no doubt at first sat cross-legged like the Egyptian, supporting the writing surface on the garment tightly stretched across their knees. But they improved on Egyptian methods by writing with a hard reed. This they trimmed and split with a knife, and used as a pen to draw strokes with10 rather than a soft reed to paint with, as their models did. The earliest inks were prepared for use on the day of writing as required—black ink from a dense carbon black (e.g. lamp-black), gum, and water; in palettes that survive in Egypt the ink is in the form of a dried cake; and Demosthenes taunts Aeschines with having to get up early and 'grind the ink' when his mother kept school.11 It is salutary for modern technologists to note that the oldest papyrus is also the best made. Papyrus manufactured in the Egyptian Ramesside period, let alone that of the Old Kingdom, is of a miraculous fineness and evenness of texture. Put along­ side it a sheet of good quality made in the Ptolemaic period, a thousand years later, and the younger product, though still good, is heavier and thicker. Sheets of the Roman period tend to be clumsier and coarser still; but good standards are main­ tained till the third century after Christ. Thereafter though fine quality material12 appears occasionally, notably in the Berlin and Chester Beatty Manichaean codices, the quality of ordinary papyrus deteriorates rapidly, and ends up by re­ sembling cardboard. In Ptolemaic Egypt we know that the manufacture of the best kinds of papyrus was subject to such

Writing Materials and Books

3

a degree of royal control that the word 'monopoly'13 has (prob­ ably rather loosely) been applied to it. Certainly a stereotype of the tall plant stem with its feathery crest was early adopted as a symbol of the Land of Lower Egypt. The plant, in fact, rarely grew outside the marshes of this territory. It provided its in­ habitants with far more than 'paper'—fuel, food, medicine, clothes, rugs, sails, ropes, even a kind of chewing gum, were some of the other products derived from it. To manufacture a writing surface14 the rind is first removed from a freshly cut piece of the plant's triangular lower stem. Then thin strips of the underlying substance can be cut—or better, peeled off—in a vertical direction to as long a length as the maker is skilled to handle. These strips are laid on a hard bed just overlapping each other, and all facing the same way, and a second set of strips, placed at a right angle to the first layer, is laid above them. A few blows from a wide-surfaced mallet (a large flat pebble will do) cause these two layers to coalesce firmly without use of gum. The resultant sheet, when dried and polished with pumice, is light in colour, strong, and flexible. It has been made from the plant by purely mechanical means without first turning its material to liquid pulp; but it is as well able to stand folding and rolling as a good modern paper. Many ancient sheets of papyrus still retain something of their original flexibility and light colour. They become brittle and darken in colour after they have been exposed to damp: a surface that has been repeatedly wet and dried will disinte­ grate at a touch. Happily most ancient papyrus fragments are still fairly robust. The process just described is that successfully used by Mr. S. Baker in the British Museum in 1964 to produce a sheet of papyrus. The account given by the elder Pliny15 adds refine­ ments to it: no doubt the ancient craftsmen accumulated a stock of 'know-how' which has not yet been entirely recovered. The manufactured sheet does not require to be treated with size in order to take ink. The ancients speak of the application of 'cedar oil' as a preservative, and a brilliant yellow patina to be seen in some surviving texts, a patina which admirably sets off the ink, seems to be due to treatment of a kind not yet fully understood.15 Pliny adds a table of the standard sizes of sheet17 and their trade names in his day. They ranged from Augusta, '13 digits

4

Writing Materials and Books

wide' (nearly 10 inches), to emporetica, 'not more than six digits' (about 4-5 inches). The sheets were immediately pasted together to form rolls, a common number (Pliny wrongly says it was never exceeded) being twenty sheets18 to a roll. From such a roll pieces could be cut to write a letter or invitation. Or if the roll was not long enough, additional pieces or even a second roll could be pasted on, so that your roll could be as long or as short as you cared to make it. But it is worth emphasizing that the manufacturer's and retailer's unit is the made-up roll, and that the Greek word χάρτη€, Latin charta, does not mean a sheet but a roll. Seen through a microscope, a section cut across the stem of the papyrus plant reveals a number of dark-walled vascular bundles growing in a matrix of light-coloured pith cells. When the strips are hammered to form sheets, the pith is crushed and the vascular bundles are impacted into each other: they may join together, part again, or criss-cross. It is these impacted bundles which show up in the finished sheet as 'fibres', and their peculiar grouping or colouring may help a scholar to reconsti­ tute a page out of a mass of torn fragments (see Chap. V, p. 62). Each sheet, it will be recollected, consists of two layers. In one of them the fibres will run in a horizontal direction, in the other in a vertical direction. If the sheet is well made there will be little difference in the smoothness and finish of the two sides; one side may be given a higher degree of polish than the other. Whether the fibres run with the direction of the writing or against it, in such a sheet there will be little resistance to the pen. Indeed, for a time in the early Ptolemaic period docu­ ments (i.e. sheets cut from a roll) were regularly written across the fibres; and similarly for a time in the Byzantine age. The custom has grown up of calling the side which looks smoother and which one would expect to be used first the recto, the other side the verso. Such a definition is a misuse of terms. When applied to Greek and Latin papyri the terms recto and verso should only be used in connexion with rolls: the recto is that side of a roll in which the fibres run horizontally (that is, along the length of the roll), and it is the inside; the verso is that side on which the fibres run vertically (that is, across the length of the roll), and it is the outside.19 An ancient book roll is not written

Writing Materials and Books

5

from top to bottom of its length, as is a medieval scroll; it is written in a series of independent columns perpendicular to its length and beginning at the left-hand end of the roll. As the scribe writes (and the reader reads) he will roll up the used por­ tion with his left hand and unroll more papyrus with his right. Now what is placed inside a roll is, of course, better protected against accident than what is outside, and the horizontal fibres placed inside are subject to less strain and less danger of tearing than if they were on the outside. The sheets, moreover, are gummed together on the assumption that the inside of the roll will carry the writing. If two sheets are pasted together, one must inevitably be slightly higher than the other. The ancient manufacturer contrived his joins on the inside of the roll to make a series of easy steps down;20 the scribe's pen, travelling from left to right, would, as it were, travel downhill. In a wellmade roll these joins are managed with great care. Usually there is an overlap of one to two centimetres. They are then smoothed over after pasting and cannot normally be detected on the back of a roll. One sheet only in a roll does not obey this rule, the first: it was usually gummed with its inside fibres running vertically. It was called protocollon; our 'protocol' derives from the authentication written here in Byzantine times. Earlier it was usually left blank to serve as a guard. The Greek word for a sheet forming part of a roll is kollema; selis, Latin pagina, is applied to the column of writing, which may at times be so wide as to extend over two or even three sheets. One would expect the kollemata in a good literary roll to be of approximately equal sizes, but the papyrus restorer should be warned that such is not always the case.21 It is worth empha­ sizing that when all that survives is a single piece cut out of a roll, unless the gummed joins are retained, it is hardly possible to decide absolutely which side was first used for writing. A very common way of preparing a letter for delivery was to roll up the sheet to make a cylinder, pull out a fibre from the back, wrap the latter round the cylinder, and fix it in position with a lump of clay on which one impressed one's seal. There were times in the ancient world when papyrus was relatively inexpensive.22 In the lavishly equipped government offices of the early Ptolemaic period an enormous amount of it was consumed: an account of 258-257 B.C. reveals that certain

6

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departments of the auditor's and secretary's section of the prime minister Apollonius' bureau used 434 rolls in 33 days. Never­ theless, even upper-class individuals would often emulate 'papersparing Pope' and write on the back of a sheet or roll already used for other purposes. At times, also, a man would go to the trouble of washing out the writing with a sponge, and then reusing the surface; the procedure is parallel to the scraping of parchment for reuse as a palimpsest.23 For schoolboys, Roman soldiers, poor priests (in Christian Egypt), and tax collectors a serviceable material was offered by a fragment of broken pottery, an ostracon; or even a flat piece of limestone, much favoured by draughtsmen for pen trials. Other materials had their particular uses—lead, for example, on which to write and then bury curses on an enemy, defixiones.24 Linen mummy wrappings may carry writing, usually at least the identification of the dead. The most famous such wrapping is one in the museum at Zagreb inscribed in Etruscan charac­ ters.25 Materials such as bark or palm-leaves may be neglected here. But the schoolboy's slates26 of fifth-century Athens should be mentioned: they are slabs of peculiar form, of slate-like stone, irregularly shaped, and pierced with a hole for suspension. The letters have been scratched on them with a sharp instrument. Among the commonest of materials is wooden board. It may be used plain, shaped, for instance, into a tabula ansata (the common mummy27 label bearing the name, father's name, and age of the dead is like such a tablet cut in half and its end pierced). The surface may be prepared in various ways, as in the tablets of the sixth century B.C. found in a cave near Sicyon,28 which were covered with white slip and then brilliantly painted. For whitening a common preparation was made from gypsum, and on such a whitened board (leukoma, album) Athenians exhibited notices and Egyptians did their homework. Another way of treating the wood was to hollow out the centre (or make a frame at the edges) and fill this area with coloured wax (:maltha): such boards (deltoi) were from early times made in sets, hinged on a ring or a leather thong. They are implied in Homer's story of the 'folded tablet' which Proetus gave to Bellerophon, or in Herodotus' version of the secret intelligence conveyed to Greece during the Persian wars.29 They were used, above all, for first drafts, and therefore the deltos is often put as

Writing Materials and Books

7

his symbol by the poet; but they can carry all kinds of memo­ randa, letters, and exercises. Perhaps the earliest surviving example is a set of the third century B.C. from Illahun in Egypt30 recording expenses on a journey. Their wax was often coloured red. The wax could be scratched with the pointed end of a stylus, smoothed with its blunt end. Such texts, being 'inscribed' rather than 'written', strictly should fall within the province of Greek or Latin inscriptions. Happily there need be no demarca­ tion disputes. They would in any case be difficult to resolve, for there are added complications: in some cases the wax has disappeared and the writing can still be read because the stylus scratched the underlying wood; in others the wax was never run on (or was not renewed at the proper time) and the scribe has written in ink directly on to the wood. The term for a set of tablets such as this is diptych for one 'of two folds', triptych for 'of three folds', polyptych 'of many folds' (ten is the largest known number), and codex in Latin. A dossier of several polyptychs assembled in a kind of carrying case fitted with a handle is termed 'codex ansatus'.31 From the codex made of hinged wooden tablets there was eventually to develop the codex of folded sheets of papyrus or parchment:32 a book in modern form, contrasted with a 'volume', Oolumen, a book roll. For Plato and for Cicero a book (bublos, biblion, volumen) was a roll of papyrus. It was inconvenient, im­ permanent, and not very capacious. As we have seen, two hands were needed to hold it open, to wind it so that its narrow columns of writing should always be within the reader's angle of vision, and after use to rewind it. Its title, if written on a stuck-on tag of papyrus, parchment, or skin (sillybos),33 was liable to tear away. The whole roll, even if protected by rollers34 (which have rarely survived), was vulnerable. Athenian vase-paintings35 show readers getting into difficulties with a twisted roll, and the aged Verginius Rufus broke his hip while trying to collect up one he had dropped.36 It is of interest to note that very many of our surviving literary rolls are torn vertically down the centre of a column. Estimates of its length of life37 can only be guesses. Galen speaks of handling rolls 300 years old. A roll of Pindar from Oxyrhynchus, written in the first century after Christ, was, to judge from patches on its back, some of which carry writing of the fourth century, still being read 300 or so years

8

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later. But we do not know how far this was an exceptional case. As for contents, one play of a tragedian, two or three short books of Homer were all that its one written side would hold. It did not encourage careful scholarship. Anyone who has tried to consult a dictionary contained in microfilm will sympathize with an ancient writer's reluctance to check his references or his tendency to take his metrical and grammatical examples out of an author's opening verses. By the time of Augustine, however, a 'book' {codeχ, οωμάτιον) has come to mean very nearly the object with which we are familiar: sheets of parchment folded at the spine, put together quire by quire, stitched, and pro­ tected by wooden binding boards. A codex could lie open on a reader's desk and one hand could turn its pages backwards and forwards with ease; its pages could be written on both sides, and its total contents could hold four or five times as much text as a roll; it was stout and sturdy with a prospect of long life. In the change of format the substitution of skins for papyrus is not the crucial feature. Apart from the fact that papyrus itself frequently, one might almost say regularly, forms the material of the earliest surviving codices (though this use may perhaps be restricted to Egypt), skins of one sort or another had long been in use in the East as carriers of writing. The oldest sur­ viving text on skin (it is described as 'leather') is said to be a roll of the Egyptian twelfth dynasty preserved in Berlin. Ctesias says that 'royal hides' (βααιλικαΐ διφθεραι) were used by the Persians for their historical records, and his statement is vindicated by a fifth-century archive written on 'leather', that of the Persian satrap of Egypt, 'Arsam, which was published in 1 954·38 When found it was still in its protecting leather bag. When more space was required than was offered by a single skin, several were sewn together to form a roll. The famous QiUmran scrolls (of 'leather') are set out exactly like Greek book rolls except that the Hebrews work from right to left. Greek texts on 'parch­ ment' and in several cases in roll form39 are preserved from Hellenistic and Parthian Dura-Europus, and even from Egypt. It will be seen that there is an uncertainty of terms here— 'leather' and 'parchment' seem to be used interchangeably in the description of these texts. No doubt the materials are difficult to distinguish—when they are much damaged and

Writing Materials and Books

9

needing extensive preservative treatment, perhaps only labora­ tory technicians are able to tell the difference. The processes of manufacturing leather and parchment go hand in hand up to a point40—the skins must be preserved if not worked on at once, must be washed and soaked, cleansed of flesh and hair, and limed. Thereafter 'leather' is made by tanning, i.e. soaking the skin with a vegetable matter containing tannin; parchment by tawing, that is, dressing it with alum, and dusting with sifted chalk.41 By convention the term 'parchment' is used for the skins of sheep and goats, 'vellum' being reserved for the finer skins of calf and kid. The best kind of all is that derived from newly born or even still-born lambs (hence its title 'uterine vellum'). Antelope skin, which TischendorfT claimed as the material of the specially fine vellum of the Godex Sinaiticus, probably represents a descriptive flight of fancy on the part of its author. It is in this perspective that the much disputed notice of Varro, preserved by Pliny, N.H. xiii. n, should be viewed. Varro asserted that 'papyri' (chartae) were 'invented' in Egypt at the time of Alexander the Great, and 'parchments' (membranae) were invented at Pergamum by an Eumenes of the Attalid dynasty, in answer to an embargo placed by the king of Egypt on the supply of papyrus to a rival. Both 'inventions' are clearly false. Is there anything more in the story than that Pergamum had (presumably in the time of Eumenes II, 197-159 B.C.) to make do with skins? Varro's credit has been hotly defended by those who point to the use of the adjective derived from Pergamum—pergamena charta, περγαμηνή (sc. διφθέρα) or περγαμηνόν •—as the regular term for parchment. This adjective is not re­ corded till Diocletian's price edict of A.D. 301.42 One might speculate on whether this adjective owes its currency to the development of parchment manufacture at Pergamum (in which case the adjective would have arisen in the same sort of way as our word 'china'), or whether its currency may be based on Varro's notice. The earlier Latin word for parchment is membrana, Greek διφθέρα. Alternative defences of Varro are the suggestion that the story reflects an improvement in the technique of preparing the skins, e.g. in scraping, smoothing, and stretching, or else in concentrating on the finer kinds of skins. Others have held that the supposed improvement in technique now for the first time allowed both sides of the skin

ίο

Writing Materials and Books

(i.e. both 'hair' side and 'flesh' side) to carry writing, and such a view would be helped if membranae in Pliny's account were interpreted, as C. H. Roberts shows it should be in the majority of examples, as 'parchment notebooks'. Unfortunately there is no evidence for this 'improvement'. Two of the many Greek parchments from Dura-Europus are assigned to the second century before Christ. One of them (P. Dura 15) is described as 'excellent parchment', and it has been assigned on palaeographical grounds to the first half of the second century B.C. (it is certainly later than 190/189 B.C.). Did it come from Pergamum? We may note that it is thought to be part of a stitched roll, and certainly has no writing on its back. Firm ground for a history of the development and date of the codex form has been won only slowly and painfully. The change in our view of it has come not only from the accumulation of examples, but from a slowly increasing confidence in the earlier dating of the handwriting of important examples. It is, of course, a tricky matter to judge a date only on the basis of the writing. For long it was held as a dogma that codices did not exist before the fourth century after Christ, and that papyrus made up in codex form was a freak, so used by poor men at a late date in imitation of parchment. In spite of the general view, F. G. Kenyon right from the beginning dated a parch­ ment codex of Demosthenes in the British Museum (Pack2 293) to the second century A.D., W. Schubart a leaf of a small-size parchment codex of Euripides' Cretans (Pack2 437) to the same time, and Grenfell and Hunt pioneered a relatively early dating of examples of codices, though they tended (under the influence of the dogma) to date the handwriting later than they would have if it had been on a roll. It is possible that the pendulum has now swung too far, and that the modern tendency is to date new examples too early. But the anchor of the view now widely held is on good holding ground, and is supported by sufficient examples for which there is some measure of objective dating. It is possible, none the less, that the general picture may have to be revised in detail as new examples come forward. In 1955, when C. H. Roberts published his persuasive account of the growth of the codex, he pointed out that no early text of the Greek New Testament known to us was written on the recto of a roll. Of the 111 examples of biblical manuscripts

Writing Materials and Books

11

in Greek then known which were dated before the end of the fourth century A.D., 99 were codices; of this total, such as were Christian in origin and could be assigned to the second century or the borderline between the second and the third centuries were all codices made of papyrus. He writes as follows: 'When the Christian bible (to use a slightly anachronistic term) first makes its appearance in history, the books of which it is composed are always written on papyrus and in codex form.' Since 1955, numerous new examples of Christian literature, some of them of early date, have come to light in Egypt, but this statement is still true. Equally valid, I believe, though I have not reworked the figures,43 is his statement of the completely different relation­ ship between roll and codex when used for classical (i.e. pagan) literature in Greek. In 1955 the tabulation stood as follows: 2nd cent. 465 rolls 11 codices (2-31%) 2nd/3rd cent. 208 „ 6 „ (2-9%) 3rd cent. 297 „ 60 „ (16-8%) 3rd/4th cent. 28 „ 26 „ (48-14%) 4th cent. 25 „ 71 „ (73-95%) Of the eleven codices of Greek literature assigned to the second century, two are on parchment (one may also add one Latin codex on parchment), of relatively small size and written in tiny hands; the rest are made of papyrus. The latter include a philosophical manual, a medical treatise, a medical text, and two grammatical manuals. Roberts comments: 'the high pro­ portion of technical or professional texts is worth noting, as is the fact that several of the others are clearly designed to pack as much text as possible into the available space.' To account for these facts Roberts offers a suggestive hypothesis. Noting the distinction in linguistic usage between Latin membrana singular as the material and membranae plural as 'notebooks made of parchment', he brings evidence for the use of such parchment notebooks by lawyers and businessmen. It was in a society of merchants and small traders that John Mark moved at Rome. Aware of the Jewish habit of writing Rabbinic teachings on tablets or 'smooth surfaces' he transferred to the parchment notebooks his account of the sayings of Jesus. A gos­ pel once circulating in this format determined, partly by way of authority, partly by way of sentiment and symbol, that the proper form for the Christian scriptures was a codex, not a roll.

12

Writing Materials and Books

Classical literature followed suit, slowly and perhaps at first for economic reasons. When the codex form was finally established, certain regular principles for its make-up eventually ousted the widely varying methods used in the experimental period. It will usually be found in parchment or vellum codices that the leaves are laid hair side to hair side, flesh side to flesh side.44 F. G. Kenyon argued that this is the natural result of folding a large skin first vertically, then horizontally, and then perhaps vertically again; but the result is also pleasing in that it minimizes differences in colour between the two sides of the skin. If in the folding just described the skin is cut at the first and second fold (which will give 4 sheets—4 separate skins could of course be used), when the mass is folded again a gathering of 8 leaves or 16 pages will result. This unit, 16 pages = 8 leaves = 4 sheets, a quaternio (English 'quire', Greek rerpdSiov), settles down eventually as the standard form of assembly. But others are found: for in­ stance, P.S.I. 1182 (a fine parchment codex of Gaius) groups its sheets in quinternions (10 leaves, 20 pages), an arrangement found also in the biblical Codex Vaticanus and the Bembinus of Terence. Such variations suggest that the successive folding of a skin is not the reason why hair side faces hair side, flesh side flesh; and that the gatherings were formed of pieces already cut to size. The variations may some day supply a clue to the scrip­ toria in which these manuscripts were written; as may also the order of flesh and hair side, whether the flesh or the hair side is on the outside of the quire—for both systems are found. C. R. Gregory indeed laid down as a rule that the first and last pages and the central opening of a gathering display the flesh side of the vellum. This rule applies in the East; but in Latin manu­ scripts and in western Europe the hair side is usually found on the outside. Before beginning to write, the scribe would rule each sheet (on one side) with a dry point, having fixed the framework of his lines by pricking right through the assembled quires so as to keep his text sitting in the same relationship to its margins on every page throughout the manuscript. When written the quires would be stitched internally and bound. It is likely that the increasing use of iron compounds as a basis for making ink is connected with the replacement of papyrus by skin; the free acid of the chemical ink acted as a mordant.

Writing Materials and Books

13

The experiments which preceded this crystallization of prac­ tice may now be followed in detail in the many surviving papy­ rus codices, which show the most diverse methods of make-up. One method, practised for a long time in spite of its disadvan­ tages, was to form a book out of a single quire of a large number of superimposed sheets (just as children form a notebook for themselves). Two examples of this construction may be shortly described here. One is a papyrus codex containing the Gospels of Luke and John, P. Bodmer xiv-xv (Π75), assigned by its editor to A.D. 175-225, and not likely to be later than the third century. What now survives is Luke iii. 18 to the end of Luke and John i to xv. The last words of Luke end on p. 87 (calculation, for the scribe did not write the page numbers), followed by end-title of Luke, initial-title of John, and first lines, all on the same page. It can be calculated that the total number of pages was 144, i.e. 36 sheets. As an example of a codex of classical literature we may note the book45 containing Iliad xi. 86-xvi. 499 now in the Pierpont Morgan Library (Pack2 870), which its editors date to c. A.D. 300. Its pages are numbered, and t ^ ie middle: its total size the sheet containing pages 61-64 *s can therefore be calculated at 124 pages, 31 sheets. In order that the leaves should lie in a clean straight edge when shut, the inner leaves are not so broad as the outer (page width 12-5 centimetres against 14 centimetres), a result probably achieved by trimming the fore-edge after the sheets had been folded.46 It seems not unlikely that the Bodmer codex including Menander's Dyskolos47 was also a single-quire codex, though its editor formed a different view of its make-up. A book made up in this way, even if stiffened internally with bands of parchment, is liable to tear or break at the spine. Moreover, it is not easy to see into the middle pages alongside the fold. An improved method of make-up is to form the book of separate gatherings, which can then be secured by horizontal straps which pass through the vertical threads and are pasted to the binding boards. The number of sheets included in these gatherings varies. The Chester Beatty codex of the gospels and Acts (Π45) is made up of a succession of single-sheet quires. The Chester Beatty Genesis has quires of 5 sheets, Chester Beatty Enoch quires of 6 sheets. P. Bodmer ii, a St. John in square format of perhaps A.D. 200 (Π66), consists of quires

14

Writing Materials and Books

containing a varying number of sheets: 5, 4, 1, 5, 5, 8 accord­ ing to V. Martin's reconstruction. There are similar variations between 4- and 5-sheet quires in the seventh-century Heidelberg codex of the Minor Prophets; on parchment, in the Freer codex in Washington, the quires range from 4 to 8 sheets. It seems, however, that for papyrus as for parchment, 4 sheets became a regular number for a quire: we meet this number in the Cairo codex of Menander (Pack2 1301, fifth century), or Origen's Dialogue with Heraclides (Pack2 p. 58, sixth century). In a number of these papyrus codices (e.g. in P. Bodmer ii,48 the early St. John codex) it is possible to trace the prickings which delimited the written area and kept it even throughout the book. But it does not seem that papyrus was ruled: traces of such ruling are rare. In other volumes no such pricking was undertaken: or else it was not adhered to. In P. Bodmer xiv-xv, which begins with Luke and continues with John, it is possible to trace the progressive realization by the scribe that he would not succeed in getting in the whole of John unless he crowded more on to his page and wrote his letters smaller and in a longer line. The holes for the binding threads can also be observed in a number of cases, and sometimes the binding actually survives. Some early bindings in the Chester Beatty collection studied by Mrs. B. Regemorter consist of wooden boards, often hollowed out as if they were intended as wax tablets, covered in leather tooled to simple geometric shapes. Some early bindings in the British Museum have been studied by Mr. T. C. Lamacraft; some of the Coptic books from Nag Hammadi still retain their bindings. P. Bodmer xvii, of the sixth or seventh century, has an outer binding wrapper of tooled, supple leather, backed by cardboard (made out of old papyrus) and coarse canvas.49 A counterpart to the alternation of flesh and hair sides in a parchment manuscript is offered by the fact, as we have al­ ready noted, that in a sheet of papyrus the fibres run in a hori­ zontal direction on one side and a vertical direction on the other. It has perhaps been natural to use the terms 'recto' and 'verso' for these two sides of a sheet: but seeing that in codex terminology recto properly means the right-hand of two facing pages, it is desirable that terms involving such ambiguities be entirely avoided.50 If then a scholar wishes to indicate those pages in a papyrus codex in which the fibres run vertically, he should

Writing Materials and Books

15

either use this full phrase or utilize as convenient shorthand an arrow facing downwards j; similarly for 'page in which the fibres run horizontally' either the full phrase should be used, or else an arrow facing horizontally —The sheets of which a papyrus codex is formed may, of course, easily be so large that they need to be made of two gummed sheets. In such a case the join clearly cannot fall in the middle of the leaf at the point of fold. It will very commonly be found in the middle or towards the edge of the left-hand -> page. H. Ibscher has observed51 of a number of codices in Berlin that they were made of sheets of papyrus cut from a blank roll. But not all papyrus codices cannibalized rolls for their material (cf. also p. 53). The maker of a papyrus codex has a choice between placing his sheets all the same way up or making their horizontal and vertical fibres alternate. If he chooses the former method, when the sheets are folded there will be an alternation of j and —>• on facing pages; in the latter case, facing pages will be homo­ geneous, both —or both j. P. Bodmer xiv-xv (Luke and John) is an example of the former procedure, P. Bodmer ii (John) an example of the latter. Sometimes, however, there may be further variations on this basic system. For instance, the maker of the Crosby codex at Mississippi52 (a single-quire codex) laid his eight outermost leaves with their horizontal fibres downwards (outside), then from folio 9 to the centre of the book he reversed the order. If then a codex has come to pieces, and no leaves survive in their conjugate form, it may be difficult to reconstruct the codex. Codices of papyrus will normally have held less than codices of parchment. We may contrast the Pierpont Morgan Iliad (described on p. 13 above), which contained Iliad xi-xvi, that is, not more than a third of the whole poem, with P. Ryl. i. 53 (Pack2 1106), a more or less contemporary parchment codex, which (on the evidence of quire numberings) probably held the whole Odyssey. The Bodmer codices on papyrus held not more than one or two gospels each; the longest of the Chester Beatty New Testament papyrus codices held the four gospels and Acts; but the Codex Sinaiticus on parchment held the whole Bible and the Old TestamentApocrypha in one original bound volume.53 Our surviving manuscripts, which include such magnificent examples as the biblical Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus

16

Writing Materials and Books

assigned to the fourth century or the Vatican Dio Cassius as­ signed to the fifth, make it clear that by this date the parchment codex has replaced the papyrus roll as a luxury book: one writ­ ten with loving calligraphy, on which no expense is spared. The narrow-column format is no doubt taken over from the best papyrus manuscripts of the Greek orators and historians. Vel­ lum may occasionally be used for something of less prestige, e.g. in documents such as those of the second century from Murabba'at (D.J.D. ii), or of the Byzantine age from Egypt (P. Oxy. 1720, a receipt for payment of the price of 1 iojars of wine). But in general esteem vellum is considered superior to papyrus. In A.D. 376 Basil's fellow clergy did not think it proper for him to send to a brother bishop a copy of his treatise on the Holy Spirit written on a papyrus roll, and claimed the latter had given orders that it should be written on vellum54 (Letter 231, to Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium). The author of the Epigrammata Bobiensia in about A.D. 400 apologizes for writing on fibres of papyrus from the Nile, Nilotieae fibris papyri: fair copies should be 'worthy of pages of parchment', pergamenis digna paginis. None the less, papyrus rolls were still being used occasionally in the sixth century to carry literary work. And papyrus con­ tinued to serve as the principal material for documents, letters, and accounts. In Egypt there are considerable archives in Greek on papyrus written during the Arab domination, at the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth century.55 Outside Egypt papyrus is still the regular standby for letters and docu­ ments. Augustine, writing to Romanianus in the fifth century (.P.L. xxxiii. 80), apologizes for having to make do with vellum instead of papyrus. A whole series of documents, sales, con­ tracts, etc. from the Ravenna archives or scriptoria in Italy still survive, dating from the fifth century to the tenth and later. Papyrus was in regular use by the papal chancery till the eleventh century at least.56 The last extant papal bull on papy­ rus is dated A.D. 1057, but there are references to papyrus later than that. The material was, apparently, still being manufac­ tured in Egypt in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Its super­ session by paper does not belong to the province of this book.

THE REDISCOVERY OF PAPYRUS " idea of some power in human history has been that of the reappearance of the heroes of an earlier day: King Arthur will return when needed from Lyonesse; in a cave in Thuringia sleep Frederick Hohenstaufen and his knights awaiting the trumpet call that will summon them to rescue their harassed posterity. The discovery of 800 ancient papyrus rolls at Herculaneum in 1752 seemed to promise that the wisdom of the ancients would help the modern world in a similar way. Papyrus as a writing material had in fact passed so far out of the experience of ordinary men that the Latin word was then in common use for paper. It is Latin usage of the later Middle Ages1 and more especially of the Renaissance that has given the word 'paper' to modern Europe. When Father Imberdis in 1693 composed in Latin his didactic poem on the art of papermaking (from which a few lines were quoted in the preface, p. v) he felt no qualms in applying the word 'papyrus' to the modern product. Since paper was unknown to ancient Rome, there was no precise term available for medieval writers to use, and antiquarian fashion adopted 'papyrus'. It is a fashion based on a false interpretation of the ancient writers. Regularly in conscientious ancient Latin authors, and without exception in Greek authors, 'papyrus' means the plant or its products (see p. 3), and is used for the writing material only by a figurative extension of meaning. Antiquarians, however, knew and puzzled over their Pliny (already discussed on p. 3). A few archivists and chancellors were aware of the medieval documents on papyrus among their records. One or two sixteenth-century humanists chanced on small pieces of this material bearing writing of the late imperial age and described them with interest as curiosities.2 The re­ discovery of the ancient written word of Graeco-Roman civiliza­ tion was to come late in the history of the Renaissance. The finds of papyrus rolls at Herculaneum3 were made 814262

G

18

The Rediscovery of Papyrus

fourteen years after excavations began on this town buried in ash during the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79. They stirred the imagination of contemporaries: Winckelmann described them with enthusiasm, George IV of England contributed a scholar's salary to help the decipherment of the rolls. Alas, they were 'carbonized', that is, turned into hard masses by decomposition, by the action of water and damp and the hardening of the tufadeposit. They could not be unrolled. The best that could be done was to break through the crust and detach single thicknesses of the original, reconstitute the pieces, and copy them by holding them obliquely to the light so that the iridescence of the ink might stand out from the blackened background. They proved to be a library of the Epicurean school of philosophy. In 1966 there is a hope that new technical methods may permit the unrolling of more of this find, and make it worth while to search under the tufa for further ancient libraries. In Europe and most of the countries bordering on the Medi­ terranean, writing materials are unlikely to resist the onset of damp unless they are protected in libraries. It is only in special conditions—under the 'terracotta skin' at Derveni,4 the tufa cover of Herculaneum—that they will survive. But in Egypt, parts of Palestine, and Mesopotamia the climate is not hostile to long life. Away from the Delta and the coastal belt in Egypt rain does not fall in any appreciable quantity. Papyrus books, parchment books, wooden tablets all have an excellent chance of survival even in ordinary ground, provided they are not too close to the surface and not so far down that they grow damp from water rising from below. If papyri can have the protection of a cave, a jar, or a ruined building there are many places where they can remain intact, outside as well as inside Egypt. From the sixteenth century onwards a sprinkling of travellers visited Egypt and the Nile valley. James Bruce,5 who in 176870 reached the headwaters of the Blue Nile, purchased two codices on papyrus at Medinet Habu, one Greek, one Coptic, containing Gnostic writings. But his finds made less stir than the papyrus roll sent in 1778 as a gift to Cardinal Stefano Borgia. A Dane, Nicholas Schow, wrote the story of its dis­ covery ten years later.6 An unknown merchant ('negotiator quidam') was offered at a low price a bundle of forty or fifty papyrus rolls. They were said to have been found underground

The Rediscovery of Papyrus

19

('in loco quodara subterraneo') in the 'town' of Giza5 hidden in a container of sycamore wood. The traveller bought one only: the rest were torn up by the Turks ('Turcae'), who enjoyed their aromatic odour. Schow implies that they set fire to them. The details of the story have been suspected by critics: they seem to resemble the story of the Sibylline books, and it is said that other eighteenth-century travellers told similar tales. Whether papyrus when burned has an aromatic odour is a ques­ tion answered with a definite 'no' and an equally definite 'yes' by those who claim to have tried it. The former answer was given by Grenfell and Hunt in 1900: the latter by N. Lewis in 19347 (who also points to the Roman custom of burning papyrus material on the funeral pyre in support of his claim). The roll itself, however, is not to be dismissed. It is now to be seen in the Vatican Museum. To Niels (latinized as Nicholas) Iversen Schow belongs the honour of wrestling with a new kind of Greek cursive script and editing the first documentary text on papyrus. But instead of containing the wisdom of the ancients this three-and-a-halfmetre-long roll6 carries a list of the men of the village of Ptolemais Hormou liable for dyke corvee at Tebtynis in the Fayyum in the year A.D. 192. The publication came as an anticlimax. Great expectations (those of Goethe included) were once again disappointed. In Mozart's Magic Flute (written in 1791) we can still feel how the late eighteenth century hoped to find in the wisdom and ritual of Egypt a new and satisfying answer to the mystery of life itself. Egypt had so far remained withdrawn, a land of secrets. But wonder and curiosity are good starting-points for scholar­ ship. An enduring effect of Napoleon's imaginative Eastern campaigns was to throw Egypt open to the West. Though Napoleon's hold on Egypt lasted a bare three years (he evacuated it in 1801), in his train, like Alexander the Great, he had brought scientists, economists, botanists, and antiquarians. Their magnificent statistical and topographical Description de L'Egypte, published between 1809 and 1817 under the editor­ ship of E. F. Jomard, laid a firm foundation for the coming science of Egyptology. Under this heading, and as a minor part of it only, the study of Greek papyri was to be treated for almost a century yet. In 1802 the famous trilingual stone from Rosetta

20

The Rediscovery of Papyrus

was forwarded to the Society of Antiquaries in London, and set Thomas Young and Champollion Ie Jeune on the right track for the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. A succession of travellers with observant eyes and critical minds—ChampolIion himself, Letronne, Lepsius, Brugsch—carried on the task of recording and cataloguing. Many of the visitors to Egypt, even though not scholars, also found their imaginations stirred by the country's monuments. Shelley, who never went to Egypt, caught the infection in his Ί met a traveller from an antique land'. Even before Waterloo, diplomats, scholars, and adventurers were competing to form collections of Egyptian antiquities in which papyri (including Greek and Latin papyri) came to occupy an increasingly pro­ minent place. Among them may be mentioned Bernardino Drovetti, French Consul General 1810-29; Henry Salt, Consul General in Cairo 1816-27; G. Passalacqua, who was present at excavations at Thebes and Memphis in 1820 and 1824; the Prussian general Heinrich de Minutoli, who undertook a journey to Egypt in 1821 on behalf of the Prussian Academy; Giovanni Anastasi, Swedish and Norwegian Consul General from 1828; Jean-Frangois Mimaut, French Consul General from 1829; William John Bankes, son of a secretary of the British Museum and assistant in 1815-20 to Henry Salt; these persons (conveniently listed in W. R. Dawson's Who Was Who in Egyptology) and many others have given their names to both individual texts and to whole collections of papyri. The first person to follow N. Schow in publishing a Greek text was L. Furia in 1813, and in 1821 August Bockh himself published a paper on a text now in Leiden.8 Several further editions fall in the 1820V. in 1826 and 1827 Peyron published the first two volumes of the Turin papyri, Pettretini the Vienna papyri in 1826, and J. C. Droysen a few Berlin papyri in 1829. Some Vatican papyri were edited by A. Mai in 1831-2, a first instal­ ment of the British Museum collection by Forshall in 1839, of Leiden in 1843 by Leemans, of Paris in 1865 by Brunet de Presle. These papyri most often originated in finds made by local inhabitants. But a number are by-products from the search for objects of vertu, especially precious metals, promoted by col­ lectors, such as Salt, acting through Giovanni d'Athanasi and

The Rediscovery of Papyrus

21

Belzoni. Perhaps the first piece of archaeological exploration directed at the discovery of knowledge for its own sake was that of Mariette at the great Serapeum of Sakkara in the 1850s. A number of Greek papyri had already been found there, and Mariette (incidentally as it were) was present at the finding of more. The early collectors were interested mainly in complete texts, archives, or whole rolls. Their pieces make their effect by their size, splendour, or number of items. But Greek and Latin papyri were still not specially numerous: Ulrich Wilcken has collected and re-edited such of them as belong to the Ptolemaic period (the bulk of them) and had been published before 1891 in his Urkunden der Ptolemaerzeit (U.P.Z·)· Their total is a bare 200. The principal literary finds up to the 1860s were the two rolls of Hyperides in the British Museum; the Louvre poem of Alcman; and three Homers of substantial size in the British Museum, one named after Bankes, the other two after A. C. Harris.9 An entirely new stage in the process of rediscovery began in the 1870s. The sites of ancient settlements had always been a legitimate hunting ground for building materials: stones were quarried out and reused, marble reduced to lime in the kiln, and their very earth (rich in nitrates) used as a fertilizer. Even the ancients seem to have dug out the soil for this purpose. In the 1870s, as the cultivated area expanded, the demand for 'fertile earth' or sebakh grew enormously. Farmers removed it by donkey- and camel-load, by cart, and at last by railway. As ancient sites were stripped, papyri began to appear in masses, just as they had been thrown away in the ancient world on rapidly forming out-door rubbish heaps. In 1877 spectacular finds of this sort began to be made at the mound (kom) el-Faris, a part of the ancient Arsinoe, capital of the Fayyum. Similar finds were made elsewhere (though the date of the first dis­ covery is not recorded) at Ihnasya (Heracleopolis) and Eshmunein (Hermopolis). Naturally the strata reached first were those offering Arabic, Coptic, and Byzantine Greek papyri; col­ lectors had little regard for products of so late a period, and many thousands, perhaps millions, of texts must have been destroyed. Among the first to realize their value was Joseph Karabagek, Professor in Vienna and later librarian of the

22

The Rediscovery of Papyrus

imperial library there. He worked closely in co-operation with his fellow countryman Theodor Graf. A glimpse into their activities is offered by their recently published correspondence.10 Even­ tually thousands of texts, parts of papyrus rolls, single sheets and books, quires and leaves of parchment, and a considerable amount of actual paper coming mainly from Arsinoe, but also from Hermopolis and Heracleopolis, were transferred to Vienna, principally for the collection of the Archduke Rainer. As the word went round that Europeans were ready to buy written sheets, more and more were offered to the dealers by their finders, or scraps were made up into 'rolls' to sell to tourists. In 1887 a new and untouched source of sebakh was dis­ covered at Dimai (Socnopaei Nesus) on the edge of the Fayyum, the so-called 'Second Fayyum find'. Two local dealers in antiquities organized their own excavations there. At this site papyri were actually found on the floors of the ancient houses buried in the sand. The museums of Berlin, Paris, and London became alive to the desirability of adding new papyri to their collections. The new material for Berlin was especially that recovered from the second Fayylam find. The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris benefited from the exploration of Panopolis (Achmim) by G. Maspero and Urbain Bouriant. There were finds of Greek literature and also whole codices of apocryphal Christian and Jewish books—the Gospel of Peter, the Apo­ calypse of Peter, and the Book of Enoch. A long roll of Hyperides reached the Louvre in 1888.11 On behalf of the British Museum Ernest (later Sir) Wallis Budge was sent on a journey to Egypt in 1888 that was to be exceptionally profitable. The Revd. Greville Chester, an Englishman resident in Cairo and already purchasing on behalf of the Museum, put him in touch with Mr. J. R. Alexander, director of the American Missionary School at Assiut, and Mr. Chauncey J. Murch, director of a similar establishment at Luxor. Alexander above all is worthy of honour, for it seems to be he who should have the credit (inadequately acknowledged in Budge's account) for saving the famous four rolls of Aristotle's Constitution of Athens12 and the Herodas roll. The arrival of texts such as these challenged a new genera­ tion of scholars. In Vienna Carl Wessely had taught himself to read the most difficult handwritings, and began a chalcenteric

The Rediscovery of Papyrus

23

output of publication. His pioneering work and devoted ap­ plication have never received the credit they merited. He was overshadowed by a younger German scholar, a man of un­ doubtedly more balanced judgement and greater accuracy of exposition, Ulrich Wilcken. The latter was under the influence of Mommsen's early appreciation of the importance for histori­ cal study of collecting from a mass of documents detail that in itself is trivial but when assembled and related becomes sig­ nificant. 'The nineteenth century', Mommsen was wont to say, 'is the age of inscriptions: the twentieth will be the age of papyri.' Consequently the young Wilcken chose the history of Egypt as illuminated by the papyri for his doctoral dissertation, published in 1885. From then until his death in 1945 Wilcken was at the centre of papyrological investigation, himself editing texts, founding a periodical, the Archiv fur Papyrusforschung, in which he passed in magisterial but kindly review the publica­ tions of others (always having himself something to contribute), and forming a school of brilliant pupils. Very slightly younger was Frederic Kenyon, who joined the British Museum in February 1889 as a 26-year-old classical scholar, and was almost immediately commissioned to work on its growing papyrus collection. It was just before Budge's parcel of papyrus rolls arrived in the Museum. It was on the 30th January 1890 [wrote Kenyon nearly fifty years later] that I was first introduced to them. I well remember my first sight of them, laid out under glass on long tables. The handwritings were for the most part totally unfamiliar. One, a small roll of poetry, looked easy to read, and so it was so far as mere decipherment went; but the matter was strange and often difficult, so it was reserved for a further examination. The two longest were in small and (at that time) difficult hands; but it was possible to discern that one was historical and one medical, while a third, in not very dissimilar writing, was oratorical. The latter was immediately identified as Isocrates vepl elprfvyc, and the next day a letter of Demosthenes was recognised. The next discovery, after some days steady transcription work, was Hyperides κατά Φιλιππίδου. Presently the historical treatise was taken in hand. I remember that progress was slow at first, as the first column was a good deal damaged, but my suspicions as to its identity were aroused. I remembered having heard at Oxford, in a lecture by Dr. Macan, of the fragments of Aristotle's Αθηναίων πολιτεία which had been identified at Berlin. I sent for Rose's

24

The Rediscovery of Papyrus

edition of the fragments of Aristotle, and kept my eye on it, and on February 26th I find it recorded that I had identified the papyrus as the lost Aristotle. Eleven months later (Jan. 19 1891) the first edition13 was given to the world,—very inadequately done, through hurry and inexperience, but at least providing much material for other scholars to work on. The Herodas and Hyperides,14 with descriptions of the Demosthenes and Isocrates and other texts, followed in August of the same year. In the same summer (July 1891) there was printed in Dublin an edition by J. P. Mahaffy of texts and documents recovered from Ptolemaic mummies. W. Flinders Petrie had found papyri at a series of excavations in the eighties—at Tanis in 1883/4, Hawara in 1889,15 at Gurob in 1890.16 He noticed (Letronne had observed the same thing in 1826)17 that the casings of a number of the mummies from Gurob were formed of 'cartonnage', a term applied to a kind of cardboard or papier mache built up of sheets of used papyrus. These casings were taken to pieces, and turned out to be composed of texts and documents of the early third century before Christ. One piece was an early copy of Plato's PhaedoJs For ten years, until the discovery of the Timotheos roll at Abusir by German archaeologists, it was to rank as the oldest surviving Greek literary manuscript. Now even the Timotheos may have been robbed of its primacy by the Greek papyrus from Derveni in Macedonia.

Ill

EXCAVATING FOR PAPYRI: THE ORGANIZATION OF THEIR STUDY

T

H E publications of the annus mirabilis of 1891 made a sensa­ tion. It seemed as though a sleeping emperor had really and truly awoken after centuries. What more might not be found of ancient literature in the desert sands? The competi­ tion to buy was intensified. From their journals and correspon­ dence we can follow the activities of collectors such as fidouard Naville (laying the basis of the collections in Geneva), Urbain Bouriant, Charles Edwin Wilbour, James Sandilands Grant. Publication of the new texts began to be organized. The first parts (issued serially) of the documentary papyri in Berlin, the Berliner Griechische Urkunden (B.G.U.), appeared in 1892; the first volume of the Catalogue of Greek Papyri in the British Museum in 1893; the first comprehensive publication from Vienna, volume i of the Corpus Papyrorum Raineri (C.P.R.), and the first fascicule of the Geneva papyri in 1895. The purchases made during his first winter in Egypt (1893/4) by B. P. Grenfell, Craven Fellow of the University of Oxford, appeared in 1896 (An Alexandrian Erotic Fragment and Other Greek Papyri). In the same year he published a more extensive text (one part of which was purchased by Petrie in 1893/4, t^e second portion by Grenfell himself in 1894/5), The Revenue Laws of Ptolemy Philadelphus. A. H. Sayce purchased papyri from the Oasis of Khargeh in 1893/4.1 In 1896 a new prize, a roll of Bacchylides, came to the British Museum. Its place of origin was kept secret; Wallis Budge later said it was a tomb at Meir, Moirae, twenty-five miles from Hermopolis.2 Certainly during the next four years the inhabitants searched Hermopolis intensively. Wilcken ac­ cepted the report that it was in a house in this town that the rolls containing the Berlin Didymus, Theaetetus commentary, and Hierocles were found—the constituents of the new series of Berlin classical texts (Berliner Klassikertexte, B.K.T.) inaugu­ rated in 1904.

26

Excavating for Papyri

To us, seventy years after, the nineties seem an era of rich discovery. What far-sighted contemporaries were more keenly aware of was the enormous number of texts that were un­ doubtedly being destroyed. In the hit-or-miss ransacking of ancient sites for anticas of intrinsic value, perhaps half the papyri they contained were ruined by the coarse methods employed; of those found, many were destroyed in ignorance, or thrown away to evade detection by the Inspectors of the Antiquities Service, who valiantly tried to bring the illicit diggings under control. Others were divided deliberately among the finders (examples will be given in a later chapter). Now a number of archaeological expeditions, though looking for other things, had recently found papyri: the French expedition at Achmim in 1887, and Flinders Petrie at Tanis, Hawara, and Gurob. Their experience suggested that exploration with the avowed object of searching for papyri might be rewarding. In 1895 the Egypt Exploration Fund (later to become the Egypt Explora­ tion Society) commissioned its first excavators on the GraecoRoman side: D. G. Hogarth, B. P. Grenfell, and A. S. Hunt of Oxford. In the years 1895 and 1896 they visited a number of sites in the Fayyum and conducted test excavations to recover Greek and Latin papyri. Their searches were to be rewarded in a phenomenal manner, and to inaugurate a new period in the recovery of texts from Egypt. Previously papyri had usually been found by accident, in temples, graves, or various hiding-places; or else they had appeared from no one knew where in the baskets of the sebakh diggers. Places were now selected for search as a result of rational choice. It has already been stated that in Egypt south of Cairo papyri have a good chance of survival in the ground, if they are not actually on the surface, and not so far down that they are ruined by damp from water rising from below (i.e. they must be above what is technically known as the height of the water-table). In Egypt the level of the water-table has risen constantly through the centuries as the bed of the Nile has been raised by the mud deposited on it. Now in Egypt no place that has for a millennium or more been subject to the annual inunda­ tion of the Nile can preserve papyri. The majority of papyri from Egypt will therefore come from the desert, tombs, ceme­ teries, monasteries, funerary shrines, or deserted town sites on

Excavating for Papyri

27

the higher ground on either bank, above the irrigation level. They may also come from the upper levels of still-existing towns that have themselves climbed high above the earlier settlements on the same site—a striking example of such climbing is pre­ sented to the traveller's eyes at Elephantine Island, opposite Assuan. So in the sixth century of our era a dweller in Edfu gave his address as 'on the mound [e'v νφώματι] of the town' (.Archiv i, p. 165). These general principles were by now tolerably well under­ stood. Grenfell and Hunt decided to make a systematic explora­ tion of the sites of Graeco-Roman villages and towns that in the 1890s were still on the fringe of the cultivation level, and to search for cemeteries from these settlements that might contain papyrus rolls. The technique of investigating a town site for papyri inside a limited period of time had to be worked out from scratch. Grenfell and Hunt developed a method of looking for afsh, a word used by the fellahin. iAfsh consists of earth mixed with little bits of twig or straw; and the depth of a stratum of it may vary from a few inches to several metres. Good afsh must not be too hard, for coagulation is somehow fatal to the preservation of papyri nor yet too soft, for then it tends to become Sebakh, i.e. fine, powdery earth in which any fragile substance such as papyrus has decomposed.' This afsh, they lay down, may be found in '(i) rubbish mounds pure and simple, which cover no buildings; (2) remains of buildings which are partly filled up with and buried in rubbish; (3) build­ ings which were never used as places for throwing rubbish, but have simply collapsed, and are filled by their own debris and wind-blown sand. . . . As regards the completeness and value of the accompanying papyri, these three classes are arranged in an ascending scale.'3 In the winter of 1895/6 Grenfell and Hunt explored the vil­ lages of Kom Aushim (Karanis) and Kom el-Asl on the north­ eastern rim of the Fayyum. At the latter site papyri were relatively plentiful and were found in the houses themselves. In 1896/7 they moved further south to Behnesa, the ancient Oxyrhynchus, situated on the edge of the western desert 120 miles south of Cairo. The reasons for this choice may be given in Grenfell's own words, written after the season's work.4 Being the capital of the nome, it must have been the abode of

28

Excavating for Papyri

many rich persons who could afford to possess a library of literary texts. Though the ruins of the old town were known to be fairly extensive, and it was probable that most of them were of the GraecoRoman period, neither town nor cemetery appeared to have been plundered for antiquities in recent times. Above all, Oxyrhynchus seemed to be a site where fragments of Christian literature might be expected of an earlier date than the fourth century, to which our oldest manuscripts of the New Testament belong; for the place was renowned in the fourth and fifth centuries on account of the number of its churches and monasteries.

The site was in fact at this time just out in the desert west of the Bahr Yusuf; there were few inhabitants because of exposure to Bedouin raids. The area of the ancient town was roughly one and a quarter miles long, half a mile broad. My first impressions [wrote Grenfell] were not very favourable. As has been said, about half was Arabic [village]; and, with regard to the other half, a thousand years' use as a quarry for limestone and bricks had clearly reduced the buildings and houses to utter ruin. In many parts of the site which had not been used as a depository for rubbish, especially to the north-west, lines of limestone chips or banks of sand marked the positions of buildings of which the walls had been dug out; but of the walls themselves scarcely anything was left, except part of the town wall enclosing the north-west of the site, the buildings having been cleared away down to their foundations, or to within a few courses of them. It was obvious from the outset that the remains of the Roman city were not only much worse preserved than those of the Fayyum towns which we had dug the year before, and in which most of the houses still had their walls partly standing, but that, if papyri were to be found, they must be looked for not in the shallow remains of houses, but in the rubbish mounds. These, of course, might cover buildings, but it was more probable that they would not; and there is a great difference between digging houses which after being deserted had simply fallen in and become covered with sand, and digging rubbish mounds. In the former there is always the chance of finding valuable things which have been left behind or concealed by the last occupants, such as a hoard of coins or a collection of papyrus rolls buried in a pot; while in rubbish mounds, since the objects found must have been thrown away deliberately, they were much less likely to be valuable, and were quite certain to be in a much worse condition. The result of our excavations showed that I had been so far right in that the rubbish mounds were nothing but rubbish mounds; and the miscellaneous

Excavating for Papyri

29

small anticas which we found are of little interest, while the number of papyri which are sufficiently well preserved to be of use was but trifling compared to the mass which is hopelessly fragmentary or defaced. Fortunately, however, the total find of papyri was so enormous that even the small residue of valuable ones forms a col­ lection not only larger than any one site has hitherto produced, but probably equal to any existing collection of Greek papyri. Grenfell and Hunt were, in fact, reluctant to dig these mounds. They spent three weeks, with little tangible result, looking for the Graeco-Roman cemeteries of the town. Then on Ii January 1897 a low mound was dug. Almost immediately there turned up a sheet of papyrus recognized as containing 'Sayings of Jesus' (now known to form part of the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas); a second sheet was a portion of St. Matthew's Gospel. 'The flow of papyri soon became a torrent it was diffi­ cult to keep pace with.' One hundred and ten men, working in pairs, carried the trenches across the mounds. The papyri were rarely whole rolls; often only single leaves or fragments of leaves were found. The mounds, it was noted, tended to divide into three classes: those on the outside of the site producing first to early fourth century papyri, those near the village being of the mediaeval Arabic period, while the intermediate ones chiefly produced papyri of the Byzantine period, varied occasionally by earlier ones or by Arabic papyri of the eighth or ninth centuries. The old town, founded probably on the riverbank where the modern village stands, thus reached its widest extent in the Roman period and has been contracting ever since. It was noted that as a rule papyri found in one mound tended to be within a century or two of each other. But there were cases of 'composite' mounds, i.e. 'two or three small mounds heaped up at different periods'. The papyri tended to run in layers and to be associated with afsh. Often large quantities of papyri were found together. Grenfell supposed that such finds represented a clearance of the local archives. In the first of these 'archive' mounds, of which the papyri belonged to the end of the first and beginning of the second century, we some­ times found not only the contents of a basket all together, but baskets themselves full of papyri. Unfortunately, it was the practice to tear most of the rolls to pieces first, and of the rest many had

30

Excavating for Papyri

naturally been broken or crushed in being thrown away, or had been subsequently spoiled by damp, so that the amount discovered which is likely to be of use, though large in itself, bears but a small proportion to what the whole amount might have been. In the second find of archives the papyri belonged to the latter part of the third or early part of the fourth century, and several of them are large official documents which are likely to be of more than usual interest. The third and by far the greatest find, that of the Byzantine archives, took place on March 18th and 19th, and was, I suppose, a 'record' in point of quantity. On the first of these two days we came upon a mound which had a thick layer consisting almost entirely of papyrus rolls. There was room for six pairs of men and boys to be working simultaneously at this storehouse, and the diffi­ culty was to find enough baskets in all Behneseh to contain the papyri. At the end of the day's work no less than thirty-six goodsized baskets were brought in from this place, several of them stuffed with fine rolls three to ten feet long, including some of the largest Greek rolls I have ever seen. As the baskets were required for the next day's work, Mr. Hunt and I started at 9 p.m. after dinner to stow away the papyri in some empty packing-cases which we for­ tunately had at hand. The task was only finished at three in the morning, and on the following night we had a repetition of it, for twenty-five more baskets were filled before the place was exhausted. It has seemed worth while to report in extenso the conditions under which the first finds were made at Oxyrhynchus. First, it has often been doubted whether the mounds at Behnesa were true rubbish mounds. Such a doubt cannot survive Grenfell's explicit testimony, explicitly confirmed by the account given later by U. Wilcken of the German excavations at Heracleopolis.5 Secondly, in view of the present-day trend to statistical treatment of data from papyrus finds, it is important to show the extent to which caprice governs the survival and discovery of papyri of any given epoch. On this point more will be said in the next chapter. The immediate result of the work at Behnesa was the forma­ tion of a Graeco-Roman branch of the Egypt Exploration Fund, to support further excavation and the costs of publishing the texts discovered. The first volume issued, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (vol. i), with the names of Grenfell and Hunt as editors, ap­ peared in 1898. The method followed in the publication— introduction, text, translation, and brief commentary on each

Excavating for Papyri

31

text, together with lavish facsimiles—was to serve as a model for succeeding editors. The series was to reach volume xvii before the death of A. S. Hunt. Now (in 1966) it totals thirty-two volumes. The papyrological posterity of Grenfell and Hunt can only wonder at the speed with which publications on such a scale and of such authority were issued, especially when it is recalled that between 1894 and 1907 in only one year (1897/8) were Grenfell and Hunt not excavating in Egypt throughout the winter. Other European countries followed the example set by the Egypt Exploration Fund. In 1898 the German archaeologists H. Schaefer and U. Wilcken examined the mounds of Ihnasya (Heracleopolis) with some success, even though the site had already been rifled by sebakh diggers. But bad luck dogged their expedition: the finds of the first season were destroyed while still on board ship in the harbour of Hamburg. In 1898/9 and 1900 Grenfell and Hunt went back to the villages on the west side of the Fayyum, where the ancient sites were in immediate peril. In these villages their success was only moderate compared with the finds from Oxyrhynchus. But they had already learned that on town sites texts of the Ptole­ maic period were usually so deeply buried by the later occupa­ tion levels that normally they were ruined by damp. Flinders Petrie's texts from Gurob pointed a way to the discovery of earlier papyri: as already indicated, they were waste-paper made into cartonnage for mummy wrappings (a method com­ monly used in the third century before Christ, and one which lasted in some communities down to the time of Augustus, but rarely thereafter). Identification and digging of Ptolemaic ceme­ teries was therefore regarded as a first duty at any site explored. Their most sensational discovery was the cemetery of crocodile mummies of Umm-el-Baragat, Tebtynis, when they were work­ ing on behalf of the University of California. They were hoping to find human mummies from which cartonnage might be ex­ tracted; to some extent they were successful. 'But on January 16, 1900 . . . one of our workmen, disgusted at finding a row of crocodiles where he expected sarcophagi, broke one of them in pieces and disclosed the surprising fact that the creature was wrapped in sheets of papyrus. As may be imagined, after this find we dug out all the crocodile-tombs in the cemetery; and in

32

Excavating for Papyri

the next few weeks, several thousands of these animals were unearthed, of which a small proportion (about 2 per cent.) con­ tained papyri.'6 A similar but smaller crocodile cemetery was unearthed in 1901 at Khamsin, about six miles from Tebtynis. It is impossible (and would be tedious to the reader) to men­ tion every site visited by Grenfell and Hunt or the other early excavators. The cartonnage obtained from some of the villages they visited has not yet been published. Buying up odd bits of papyri offered for sale would sometimes lead to a promising new source. In 1900/1 it was such a trail which led them to el-Hibeh, on the right bank of the river. The spring of 1901 and a good deal of the following winter (1901/2) were spent in examining the Ptolemaic necropolis there. Its mummies have provided very early Ptolemaic texts and documents, some of them earlier than the Petrie papyri. At the same time Pierre Jouguet was finding texts of the same age on cartonnage in the Ptolemaic cemeteries of Ghoran (1901), and at Medmet-enNahas (Magdola, 1902). In 1902 he excavated at Tehneh, thirty-five miles down the Nile valley. Early Greek texts might survive, however, if protected by a container. L. Borchardt, directing the German excavations at Abusir in 1902, found a roll of Timotheos,7 an undoubted manuscript of the fourth century before Christ, lying alongside its owner in a wooden sarcophagus. At Abusir-el-Malaq, some fifty miles further south, the same excavators found cartonnage which went right down to the age of Augustus. The German excavators continued with a season at Eshmunein (Hermopolis) in 1904. Then, following discoveries of Aramaic rolls and of enormous archives of papyrus at Syene (Assuan) and Elephan­ tine (opposite Assuan), Rubensohn and Zucker spent two years there (1906 and 1907). In Elephantine two different finds of early material were made by them, both again protected in jars: a marriage document and a will of 311 B.C., and a series of papers of about 230 B.C. It was in the year 1906 that a syndi­ cate was formed in Germany to purchase papyri and distribute them to institutions of learning and museums in that country. During 1906 the French excavators Glermont-Ganneau and Cledat were also at work in Elephantine. Alongside the consciously directed hunt for papyri, finds of course continued to be made by natives. The Byzantine and

ExcavatingforPapyri

33

Arab archives of Syene have already been mentioned. In 1901 a similar find was made at Aphrodito (Kom Ishqaw) during the digging of a well inside the present inhabited area. In 1905 a further accidental discovery on the same spot led to the un­ earthing of literary rolls. Gustav Lefebvre, the energetic and gifted Inspector of Antiquities, at once took charge, and seized the opportunity offered by the demolition of a recent building to excavate. Inside a room in a house of the sixth century he found ajar stuffed with papyri. On the top were remains of the now famous Cairo codex of Menander. Of another find of roughly the same date (1906/7)—four complete codices of Deu­ teronomy, Joshua, Psalms, the four Gospels, and Pauline Epistles, belonging to the fifth century—no information is avail­ able regarding origin. In the spring of 1903 Grenfell and Hunt returned to Behnesa, Oxyrhynchus. The site was far from being exhausted, and the English excavators spent five seasons there in a row (from spring 1903 till spring 1907). Three particularly rich finds of literary texts were uncovered in 1905/6 and cleared up the following season. One of the mounds containing these texts was sur­ mounted by the tomb of a locally venerated holy man, the Sheikh Ali-Gamman. To the excavators' chagrin the workmen refused to allow search under his tomb. The area was not to be opened up and the rest of the literary papyri garnered till more than twenty years later by Italian excavators. Grenfell and Hunt left in 1907 with the hope of returning in 1909. But 1906/7 was in fact to be their last season of excavation. Grenfell be­ came ill in 1908 and the concession was relinquished. It was taken up by the Italians who (inspired by G. Vitelli) had in June 1908 formed a society for exploring to find papyri (Societa per la ricerca dei papiri). Italian excavators had already between 1903 and 1905 worked in Eshmunein (Hermopolis), and their finds began to be published in the Papiri fiorentini (vol. i, 1906). In 1908 their excavators returned there, and then in 1910, 1912, and 1913 Professors Pistelli and Farina worked in Oxyrhynchus. On be­ half of the society E. Breccia returned there for seasons of work in 1927/8, 1932, and 1934. This list of excavations (not intended to be a complete one) may be concluded by a mention of the later investigations by the 814262

D

34

Excavatingfor Papyri

Egypt Exploration Fund. Between 1909 and 1914 J. de M. Johnson explored sites on both banks of the Nile south of Oxyrhynchus. Antinoe (previously explored by A. Gayet), al­ ready extensively worked for sebakh, was the principal source of papyri in the season's work 1913/14, but finds were disappoint­ ing in bulk compared to those of Oxyrhynchus. At Atfieh (Aphroditopolis) some Ptolemaic cartonnage was recovered. But damp was the enemy, both there and at a series of settlements on the west bank which had had an abundant population in Graeco-Roman times. The twenty or so years between the first excavation for papyri in 1895/6 and the First World War in 1914 had seen organiza­ tion brought into scholarly work in the study as well as into search on the ground. In this period thousands of texts were published and a working apparatus of scholarly aids and source books gradually assembled. These works will be enumerated in detail in later chapters, but a few should be mentioned here. It was the first generation of papyrological scholars which pro­ vided most of the essential subsidia which have not yet been replaced. Kenyon's Palaeography of Greek Papyri (1899), supple­ mented by Schubart's plates, Papyri Graecae Berolinenses (1911), had no systematic successor till Schubart's Griechische Palaographie (1925). The periodical Archivfiir Papyrusforschung founded by Wilcken, in 1900, acted as a critical and bibliographical focus for papyrus work. Wilcken and Mitteis's Grundzuge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde (1912) formed a masterly summary of the contribution of papyri to the fields of history, administra­ tion, and law; and Schubart's Einfiihrung in die Papyruskunde (1919) is written for the scholar actually intending to decipher texts and for the literary historian. Perhaps the biggest con­ tributions to scholarly organization were made in the twenties by F. Preisigke, a retired German post office official. In 1915 he published an experimental vocabulary of technical administra­ tive terms (Fachworterbuch). This led him to establish four other works: a Mamenbuch (1920), listing the names of persons found in Greek and Latin documentary papyri and inscriptions from Egypt; the Worterbuch der griechischen Papyrusurkunden, a lexicon of Greek and Latin words in papyri (1926); a Berichtigungsliste, which attempts to collect all corrections proposed for published papyrus texts, whether verified or not; a Sammelbuch, which

Excavatingfor Papyri

35

reprints all documents printed in periodicals (except—and alas for the exception!—the Archiv itself) or in books that have no index. These works have helped scholars to find their way about material published in widely dispersed places. One other such list may also be mentioned here—that of the pub­ lished literary papyri, the list of R. A. Pack (The Greek and Latin Literary Textsfrom Graeco-Roman Egypt, 2nd ed., 1965) superseding all previous ones. From what has already been said the reader will be able to appreciate the advantages for scholarship of organized excava­ tions for papyri under a trained director. Such a system guaran­ teed that the origin and provenance of texts would be certainly known; that texts found together would be kept together, and that individual pieces would not be snipped into halves or quarters, or sold in small parcels to individual buyers. Writing in 1912, Wilcken expressed a hope that such a system would always be adhered to in the future. It was, alas, a Utopian dream. During the First World War excavations stopped, but the finding of papyri did not. In 1915 the largest and bestpreserved single archive of papyrus documents in history was turned up by Egyptian farmers near Darb-el-Gerza. European excavators had repeatedly examined the site but failed to locate them. What makes them especially valuable is that they are early Ptolemaic, yet not on cartonnage. They consist of the papers of Zenon, manager for Ptolemy II's finance minister, belonging to the years 260-240 B.C. Eventually the bulk of them were assembled in the Cairo Museum; but not before individuals had bought on their own account both single texts and large parcels, which are now dispersed in many collections. It is, in fact, inevitable that most finds will be made by the inhabitants of an area as they go about their daily business, and that every effort will be made to keep a new find secret from the An­ tiquities Service. The result is that we know almost nothing of the origin of some of the most interesting caches, which are often more or less complete manuscripts: the Freer Collection of Old and New Testament codices acquired probably about 1906,8 the eleven Chester Beatty biblical Greek codices found about 1931,19 the Manichaean books found in a box about 193°10 (K. F. W. Schmidt said 'somewhere in the Fayyum'), the manuscripts of Origen and Didymus the Blind hidden in the

36

Excavating for Papyri

Tourah quarries near Cairo and unearthed about 1940,11 the Coptic Gnostic books from Nag Hammadi, or the find which has enriched the collections of M. Bodmer of Geneva, Sir Chester Beatty, the University of Mississippi and others12 with a complete play of Menander, three nearly complete Greek gospels of early date, and a whole series of other New and Old Testament books in Greek and Coptic. First in the excavation field after the First World War was the French Institut de Varcheologie orientate, based in Cairo. Girard, Henne, and later O. Gueraud resumed work begun by P. Jouguet in 1913/14 at Apollinopolis Magna (Edfu). One single big group of Greek papyri was found, all of them of the eighth century. They were in a jar, about a hundred metres south-east of the eastern pylon of the temple. French excava­ tors continued to work on this site. In 1937 they were joined by Polish colleagues under the leadership of K. Michalowski. Only scraps of papyrus were found, but a large number of Ptolemaic and Roman ostraca, especially from the Jewish quarter, were assembled. Petrie paid a fleeting visit to Oxyrhynchus in 1922, but the principal excavations of the English-speaking world were the notable ten years of work undertaken by the University of Michigan. The moving spirit in organizing it was F. W. Kelsey. From a visit to Egypt in 1920 he took back what H. I. Bell13 has described as 'a really splendid collection'. It was purchased in the flourishing Egyptian papyrus market for the universities of Michigan and Wisconsin. In 1922 a syndicate of buyers was formed, consisting of the universities of Michigan, Cornell, and Princeton, the City and University Library at Geneva, and the British Museum; purchases made during the next five or more years were inventoried by Η. I. Bell before distribution. Later other universities (Yale and Columbia) joined in. Then in 1924 the decision was taken to reopen excavations in the Fayyum, not only to find papyri, but if possible also to plan and trace the growth of the communities from which papyri originate. The site selected was Kom Aushim (Karanis). Natives had recently turned up the papers of Aurelius Isidorus, a ruggedly indepen­ dent and outspoken landowner of the early fourth century A.D.; they had also found some exceptionally long tax rolls. Work began in 1925 and was continued till spring 1935. The

Excavating for Papyri

37

great mound had suffered previously from sebakh-hunters. But the excavators discovered a completely unknown temple, and cleared out a large number of houses (some of them rich in papyri). In 1931/2, during a temporary suspension of work at Karanis, Dimai (Socnopaei Nesus) was examined, and the his­ tory of the settlement and its remarkable temple and paved approach (cf. p. 80) made clear. The Italian work at Oxyrhynchus in this period has already been referred to (p. 33). A further important Italian under­ taking was the systematic excavation of Tebtynis, untouched since 1902. A considerable number of papyri was discovered, especially in houses. But the aim of the excavations conducted by C. Anti in 1929 and 1930/1, and continued by C. Bagnani in 1932/3 and 1933/4, was to expose the temple and the 'blocks' {ττλινθίΐα) of the town. The great street of the town was found to run from north to south, eventually becoming a processional way leading to a large temple with huge precinct wall devoted to the ritual of the crocodile god. The final publication of this excavation is likely to throw interesting light on the way such communities lived. Other campaigns of excavation during this period which may be mentioned are those at Hermopolis: 192931, conducted by the Pelizaeus museum of Hildesheim under G. Roeder; in 1935 by the University of Alexandria; and in 1937 by S. Gabra at the neighbouring Tuna-el-Gebel. Between the years 1933 and 1939 A. Vogliano was also examining Medinet Madi; and E. Breccia and S. Donadoni began a new attack on the mounds of Antinoe. Herculaneum excepted, only recently has written material been found outside Egypt. In 1909 a peasant in a village in the Avroman mountains of Persian Kurdistan discovered in a jar in a cave a number of documents written on skins.14 Two of them were in Greek and eventually reached the British Museum: one is a sale in 88 B.C. of a vineyard, the second a lease of a vineyard of 22/21 B.C. Next, in 1921 a mission led by F. Cumont15 to Dura-Europus on the Euphrates (a fortress town on the route between Antioch and Mesopotamia) found two parchments, and seven more in 1922/3. In 1928 the search was reinforced by the University of Yale, under M. Rostovtzeff and C. B. Welles, and three parchments and a papyrus were found. Then in 1931/2 a deposit of papyri was turned up in the

38

Excavating for Papyri

archives room of a Roman cohort. The finds included a few Greek literary texts, Greek contracts and letters, a calendar of festivals to be observed by the Roman army, and a considerable quantity of a Roman quartermaster's papers. The next place at which papyri were turned up was Auja-el-Hafir16 in the desert between Palestine and Egypt, about forty miles south of Gaza. In 1935 an expedition working under H. Dunscombe Golt at Sbeitah17 was forced by drought to leave the Negeb. It turned its attention in this and the following year to the mounds at this police post, first reoccupied in modern times by the Turks in 1908. Two scraps of papyrus had in fact turned up about 1919 and been passed on to German hands. Mr. Colt found his first papyri while clearing a store-room in the church of Mary the Mother of God; others were found later in a second church, that of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, the place being the ancient Nessana. The finds included literary books (a Virgil glossary) and Christian codices (parts of the New Testament, the lives of the saints, the letter of Abgar), a soldiers' archive, and a church archive, as well as the papers of individuals. Dated documents run from A.D. 505 to 689; more than forty papyri are later than the Arab conquest. The desert round the Dead Sea also has preserved Greek papyri. Following the first discovery of scrolls in a cave at Q,umran in 1947 the desert has been searched intensively. The first Greek papyri located were found in a cave at Murabba'at: one group from there is of the second century after Christ and consists principally of papers of the Roman soldiers seeking out the Jewish fugitives.18 Another is of much later date. Then Greek texts, mainly of the Septuagint, were found in Qumran itself,19 first in Cave Four, then in other caves. The handwriting is alleged to be not later than the early first century A.D., and to confirm de Vaux's general archaeological dating of the scrolls. These texts were no doubt for the use of those Jewish adherents at Qumran who could read only Greek, not Hebrew. An intensive search of the cliffs above the Dead Sea by the Israeli authorities in i960 and 1961 brought further rewards. In i960 a packet of fifteen letters was discovered, sent in the name of the leader of the Jewish revolt in A.D. 132. Two of these were in Greek, and one settled the question of how his name should be written by vocalizing it as Khosiba.20

Excavating for Papyri

39

Most dramatic in the circumstances of its hiding is the find in 1961 by Y. Yadin of a biblical roll in Greek and an archive in caves at Engedi. In the time of the second rebellion in A.D. I 32, a number of followers of the Jewish leader took refuge in these caves. But the Roman army encamped above the cliff, and the beleaguered faithful starved to death in their holes in the rock. In one grotto, aptly named 'the cave of horror', forty skeletons were discovered. In the depths of this cave a parchment roll of the Minor Prophets in Greek was found.21 In a second cave ('the cave of the letters') was found the archive of a Jewish family which included documents in Nabataean and Aramaic as well as Greek.22 The Greek papyri, the dates of which range between A.D. 110 and A.D. 132, are property deeds, a marriage settlement (Greek law recognized, where Jewish did not, a woman's title to property), and a number of minutes of legal decisions, written at Petra, the capital of Trajan's new pro­ vince of Arabia. Chance and improved archaeological techniques have re­ sulted in the discovery and preservation of written materials elsewhere than in the East. First we may mention a hoard of writing-tablets written in ink found in Algeria in 1930, belong­ ing to the later Roman Empire and the Vandal occupation of northern Africa.23 Wax tablets have been preserved in Europe itself: not only at Herculaneum (where their number is legion), but in the Hungarian Transylvanian mountains, and even in Friesland (near Leeuwarden) .24 In 1954 a Roman writing-tablet, with its ink writing still legible, was recovered from a well attached to a Roman villa at Chew Stoke, Somerset, England. Probably tannin in the water had helped to preserve both wood and ink. Five years later, in February 1959, parts of a similar wooden writing-tablet were thrown up from a deep excavation in the City of London by a mechanical digger. Both texts, the former a sale of property, the latter a private letter, could be read.25 1963 brought news of the discovery of a carbonized roll of papyrus, probably of the fourth century B.C. (see pp. 56, 77), at Derveni, north of Thessaloniki in Macedonia. The roll had been burned outside the tomb after the burial as part of the last rites. In the same year a Roumanian excavator opening a grave of the fourth century B.C. in a cemetery of the Greek colony of Callatis on the Black Sea (not far from modern Constanza), was

4©

Excavating for Papyri

astonished to observe a roll of papyrus placed between the legs of the deceased.26 Unfortunately it crumbled almost instantly. It is to be hoped that next time such a roll is found there may be some technique for preserving it. After the Second World War no expedition was sent to Egypt with the primary task of hunting for Greek papyri until that of the universities of Florence and Milan in 1965. An excavation organized by the Universita degli Studi of Milan is said to have found 400 papyrus texts at Medinet Madi in the spring of 1966. Other archaeological missions have in the meantime continued to find them. Mention may be made of that of the Egypt Exploration Society at Qasr Ibrim in Nubia in 1963.27 On the floor of the church there papyri of Greek homilies were found; then, in the tombs of the bishops, and under the stairway of a house were discovered Coptic, Old Nubian, and Meroitic texts. Even though none of the finds are Greek, mention should also be made of the Coptic Gnostic library from Chenoboskion, which began to appear about 1948 and most of which was coaxed into the Cairo Museum by the enthusiasm and perseverance of Togo Mina and J. Doresse.28 Papyri are still being discovered in Egypt faster than scholars can transcribe and edit them. What are the prospects for the future? Scholars and excava­ tors qualified to pronounce because of their familiarity with conditions in Egypt have for decades been pessimistic29 about the possibility of future finds. Yet such finds continue to be made. Two observations may help us to judge the chances of their continuing. First, the new high dam at Assuan and the progress of irrigation technique must inevitably bring a rise in the water-table throughout Egypt, not merely south of or in the neighbourhood of Assuan. Undetected texts that may still be lurking underground in irrigated areas cannot but be jeopar­ dized thereby. Second, manuscripts in graves or hiding-places in the desert fringing the Nile valley will still await a finder. Texts preserved in this way are normally completer and more extensive than those recorded from open sites, even if Homer and Menander are the authors they are most likely to contain. To locate such cemeteries and hiding-places will be like looking for a needle in a haystack; but the prize is of infinitely greater value than the proverbial needle, and perhaps new techniques

Excavating for Papyri

41

of search can be developed, comparable to those now em­ ployed by Dr. Lerici in Etruria. This possibility apart, the mounds of the Fayyum villages—perhaps even of Elephantine —should be finally cleared. Outside Egypt it is time for work to be resumed vigorously at Herculaneum.

PLACE OF ORIGIN AND PLACE OF WRITING: THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF FINDS

T

HE traveller who goes by air from Cairo to Luxor starts

from an airport built out in the eastern desert and flies high over the barren, forbidding mountains that lie be­ tween the Nile and the Red Sea. Not long after take-off he can see the distant blue of the sea on his left hand, and the tiny green strip of the river away to the right. All else is inhospitable. His course will take him only a little to the west of the 'Porphyry mountain'. Under a relentless burning sun convicts toiled to cut from its quarries the beautiful veined rock that was lugged over desert and down river for the beautification of Rome. It is a relief to leave the hostile but spectacular mountain ranges and rejoin the Nile at its great bend at Qena, at a point where there is a panoramic view of the temple of Denderah. The flight dramatizes the well-known geographical fact that Egypt is the Nile valley, a valley that from Middle Egypt southwards is nowhere more than fourteen miles broad. The desert that presses it in need not be much higher in level than the irri­ gated area. A great deal of it, however, is mountain—TO opoc, the mountain in which refugees from justice and man's in­ humanity alike took refuge. In Graeco-Roman Egypt they were called 'retreaters', άναχωρηταί; and their etymological de­ scendants were the anchorites, living a lonely wrestling-match with the demons of evil who ambushed their cells in the baking wilderness. Even from the low bluff on which stands Sakkara, a bare thirty miles south of Cairo, one can discern the outline of craggy heights to the south on the opposite bank of the river. As one goes south, the mountain presence is rarely not felt; at several places the mountains seem to close in on the valley; finally at Gebel Silsileh north of Assuan there is room only for river, road, and railway. The previous chapter will have failed in its intended effect if

Place of Origin and Place of Writing

43

it has not stressed the element of chance that went into any successes obtained by excavators for papyri when they actually began to dig. Yet I also tried to show the principles which led exploring missions to places in which they could expect to find papyri. It is the task of this chapter to relate these sites to the geographical conditions governing life in Egypt as a whole and to consider how far such sites are representative. Such an inquiry will reveal both the potentialities and the limitations which Greek papyrus evidence can bring. The sites themselves, when plotted on the maps at the end of this book, will fall into clusters. There will be great empty areas on the map from which no papyri come at all. Such are the Delta, which is practically bare of papyri. In this well-watered land, 'the gift of the Nile', which constituted the most fruitful third of the whole territory of Egypt, they have survived only when the buildings in which they were stored were burned down and they themselves were housed in containers which admitted no oxygen, so that they did not combust but were carbonized into a black charcoal-like state. Flinders Petrie found hieroglyphic papyri in this condition at Tanis; and a similar series of Greek texts, which includes a long and informa­ tive register of the Mendesian nome, was found in a building at Thmouis. But the site of Alexandria has provided no papyri, nor has the ancient Greek foundation of Naucratis, to which Sappho's brother went trading. Nor has the purely Greek city of Ptolemais in Upper Egypt. In Middle Egypt the number of places at which papyri have been found are few in relation to the ancient populations of the area. In the Thebaid and Thebes itself, the number is relatively so small as to have given rise to a dogma that papyrus was little used in Upper Egypt and was to a large extent replaced there as writing material by potsherds or ostraca. Certainly many thousands of tax receipts written on this salvaged material have been collected from the area near Thebes. But there is no longer a disproportion between their numbers in this and other provinces of Egypt. The ostraca from Karanis in the Fayyum assembled by the University of Michigan form a corpus equally impressive in kind and in quantity. It would seem that the relative shortage of papyri in Upper Egypt is due to the hazards of destruction and discovery. The texts that have been recovered

44

Place of Origin and Place of Writing

from Thebes, though few, are important, and I shall describe them shortly (p. 46). Omissions and relatively empty spaces can be noted on the map. In Middle and Upper Egypt they may often be accounted for by the continued occupation of the ancient sites by modern settlements, or to the damp brought by a progressive rise of the water-table. Quite the opposite explanation applies to the thickly clustered area of the Fayyum, the ancient Arsinoite nome or district, which lies south-west of Cairo, from which it can now be reached by the desert road in little more than an hour's motoring. This district forms a depression below sea level, the size of an English county, surrounded by low hills and the desert. Its own water-supply, a branch of the Nile called 'Joseph's Canal' (Bahr Yusuf), finally drains into and is lost by evaporation in the Lake of Moeris (Birket-el-Qarun). Greek engineers in the third century B.C. carried out irrigation works which brought into cultivation extensive tracts on its periphery that could be assigned to the Greek immigrants who flocked to the banner of Ptolemy Philadelphus to earn a better livelihood than they could in their own homes. Sometimes completely new communities such as Philadelphia (Darb-el-Gerza) were built for them. Through the documentary papyri we can watch their birth in the reign of Philadelphus; and also their slow strangula­ tion in the fourth century after Christ, as the irrigation works1 ran down until the desert was allowed to engulf village after village. In the village of Dionysias (Qasr-Qarun) at the south­ west corner of this territory Diocletian built a massive Roman fort. It was abandoned in the second half of the fourth century, and when the excavators cleared the fort area in 1950 they found the great gate carefully closed.2 This shrinkage in pros­ perity and cultivation helped to preserve the ancient sites and their contents until late in the nineteenth century. In the Fayyum, then, when irrigation was neglected beyond a critical stage, areas that were only cultivable by artificial means had to be abandoned. Naturally in these areas (in which houses were left intact, gradually to fill with sand) the texts and documents likely to be found in largest quantity are those of the era just before the abandonment, the late third and early fourth centuries. Now an enormous number of our extant papyri originate from these villages on the edge of the Fayyum. It is

Place of Origin and Place of Writing

45

natural to expect that it should be so in an area where the Greeks greatly extended the acreage under cultivation, and then lost it again. There will clearly be a need for caution in drawing from the papyri general conclusions which apply to Egypt as a whole. If statistics based on all published papyri show a preponderance of copies of Homer belonging to the second or third centuries A.D., this need not mean that a spec­ tacularly reduced number of persons read Homer in Egypt in the fourth century and after, just as a mass of documents of the age of Diocletian and Constantine need not mean a great increase in bureaucratic activity and pressure in this age. It need mean no more than that in the case of our principal source of both texts and documents this period is the latest before the inhabitants leave the areas from which the papyri come. The inhabitants leave peacefully, their homes are not looted, and the blown sand preserves what they leave behind them. We should there­ fore expect this period to be the most productive of texts. We are not entitled to assume that similar complete disasters oc­ curred in all the other provinces of Egypt. One way out of the difficulty for a statistician would be to select a site which has produced papyri written at dates spread widely over the whole millennium of the Greek and then the Roman occupation of Egypt. Yet there is, in fact, no site which offers a continuous and even spectrum of texts from 300 B.C. to A.D. 700. Oxyrhynchus, perhaps, comes nearest to fulfilling these requirements. Certainly, it is one of the four places in Egypt (the others are Aphrodito, Apollinopolis, and SyeneAssuan) from which more than a casual idea of conditions in Byzantine times can be obtained. Yet even here there are limit­ ing factors. With very few exceptions, papyri of a date earlier than the first century B.C. lie at a level below the water-table and have perished. It may also be remarked in passing that perhaps less than half the texts recovered by Grenfell and Hunt at this spot have as yet been published. The discontinuity in time and place is most serious in the Ptolemaic period. There are now thousands of texts of the third century B.C.—cartonnage from Ghoran and Gurob in the Fayyum, from el-Hibeh outside it, and the great Zenon archive from Philadelphia. Yet only Philadelphia continues to supply (in much reduced numbers) texts of the second century B.C.

46

Place of Origin and Place of Writing

The Tebtynis cemeteries (which offered a few third-century texts) now take over, and run into the first century B.C., and papyri found in the town of Tebtynis run on till the end of the third century after Christ. But the Ptolemaic texts from Tebtynis are overwhelmingly those of a village record office. The second century B.C. is helped out by the Serapeum archive, the papers of Ptolemy, who was a recluse at Memphis about 160 B.C.; by texts from Socnopaei Nesus; and a little later by five different finds of mixed Greek and demotic papers made in the Thebaid. These five belong to the period of ninety years between about 180 and 88 B.C. and concern soldiers who may have been quar­ tered in this area to keep an eye on Thebes and Upper Egypt, where there were persistent attempts to reassert Egyptian in­ dependence. The latest group in the series, the letters of Plato, is a contemporary source for the revolt in 88 B.C. Then for the middle and latter part of the first century before Christ informa­ tion comes from the cartonnage of Abusir-el-Malaq; and texts from Oxyrhynchus begin to appear on the scene (the earliest text found on the site is of 183 B.C. But documents are rare till the first century.). From disparate sources such as these it is not to be expected that statistics of the relative incidence of literary finds can have much value. The capricious nature of finds at a single site can be graphi­ cally illustrated from the case of Thebes. Its great temples (Homer's 'hundred-gated Thebes') and memories of the great days of the eighteenth dynasty made it a focus of Egyptian nationalism more than once in the Ptolemaic period. Under the Romans it was reduced to a cluster of villages. But it was a 'must' for ancient tourists, as is clear to the moderns when they see the names of Roman governors, even emperors, cut on the colossus of Memnon. Of papyri from this region the most valuable classical finds are the Harris-Arden and Stobart rolls of Hyperides, which reached the British Museum in 1852/3 and 1856 and are said to have come out of a wooden coffin at Gournou. A group of texts of the fourth century after Christ, from the collection of the Swedish consul Anastasi, includes chemical and alchemical prescriptions (P. Leiden χ and P. Holmiensis), a Mithras liturgy, the papyrus of Abraxas, and various rolls of magical spells in Greek and Coptic. To this group the Poimandres (P.G.M. 1. iii) has been assigned. Another group of texts,

Place of Origin and Place of Writing

47

Ptolemaic, dating to about 130 B.C., consists of transactions made through the royal bank at Thebes and Hermonthis (Armant). Other groups from the necropolis, mainly Ptolemaic, consist of the business papers of priests: they include the socalled 'document of Nechutes', a sale of land of 103 B.C., the third Greek papyrus text to be published, edited by A. Bdckh in 1821; and the papers ofHermeias, nowin Turin and Paris. At the other chronological extreme of our period the site of the monas­ tery of Epiphanius at Deir-el-Bahri has furnished rolls and documents, principally in Coptic, of which the finest examples came to the British Museum, while others were recovered in excavations by the Metropolitan Museum of New York. At the neighbouring monastery of Phoebammon at Castrum Memnoniorum (Medinet Habu, Coptic Djeme) James Bruce is said to have bought Coptic Gnostic books in 1770; among Greek texts from it may be mentioned the will of Abraham, Bishop of Hermonthis and head of the monastery, which was long thought to be the latest Greek papyrus, but is almost certainly now surpassed by the finds at Syene and Apollinopolis. This account has dwelt so far on dangers of which many users of papyri seem unaware. So that ignorance be not perpetuated, a list of provenances (i.e. places of discovery of papyri) has been drawn up and will appear in A Reference Book of Greek Papyri. In it an attempt is made to set out the chronological range of finds of papyri made at any particular place. But the concept of place of origin or provenance is, of course, of use to others than the statistician and the sociologist. To know the provenance of a text may be a vital clue in reuniting two (or even more) fragments of it that have found their way into different collec­ tions, whether the text is literary or documentary. It may also be the means by which one can trace the contents of an 'archive' —a term which a papyrologist uses for a body of (possibly disparate) papers, documents, and books which there is reason for thinking were found assembled together, but may since have been dispersed.3 An archive is bound to be of greater interest than unrelated papers, even if the latter are of the same date. There are likely to be answers to letters; the principal figure is reflected in his correspondents and friends, and they are re­ vealed through the comments of third parties and through their literary tastes. It is by attention to records of provenance and

48

Place of Origin and Place of Writing

acquisition that V. Martin established the unity of the archive of Abinnaeus, cavalry-commandant at Dionysias in A.D. 34050: the main bulk of the papers are in the British Museum and the Geneva Library; Martin reunited with the main bulk a number of isolated texts in these collections and also an impor­ tant document acquired by U. Bouriant.4 Martin's inquiry was written in 1954, though it did not appear in print till ten years later. By a similar investigation5 J. Schwartz has assembled from eight different collections the papers of Sarapion, son of Eutychides, and his family, who lived in Hermopolis between A.D. 90 and 133. The most famous such archive is that of Zenon,6 agent to Apollonius, finance minister of the second Ptolemy: the many thousands of his papers, which span a period of just over twenty years (c. 260-240 B.C.), include letters of Apollonius and his friends at court, letters from overseas, ac­ counts, petitions to Zenon, and almost certainly some literary rolls (their connexion with the archive is discussed in Chapter VI, p. 78). The archive of Dioscorus of Aphrodito,7 seven cen­ turies later, is perhaps even better known because of this lawyer's possession of a papyrus codex of Menander. Between these chronological limits lie a number of other archives which will be enumerated elsewhere. Archives such as these will consist of letters, documents, and books written at many different places; and a whole archive may have been assembled in one spot and carried else­ where by its central figure. This seems to have been what happened with the papers of Apollonius,8 strategus of Apollinopolis-Heptakomia, a nome created between Antaeopolis and Hypselis in the Thebaid by Trajan. Like many another govern­ ment servant, this hero of the Jewish rising under Trajan and Hadrian carried his papers home to Hermopolis when he re­ turned to private life, and perhaps refought his battles in the study. Similarly a certain Theophanes,9 a civil servant of the early fourth century, brought to Hermopolis at his retirement the day-to-day record of progress and expenditures on a journey he made to Antioch. He also brought the letters sent him from home by his sons, and the correspondence of a lively circle of friends who worshipped Thrice-Great Hermes. Abinnaeus, as already mentioned, carried his personal and army papers home to Philadelphia.

Place of Origin and Place of Writing

49

It is, indeed, of great importance to make a distinction between the place of finding and place of writing of a text. A document concerning Oxyrhynchus and found at Oxyrhynchus may be presumed to have been written there; but a docu­ ment found at Oxyrhynchus which is addressed, for example, to the strategus of the Lycopolite nome,10 or contains a list of cultivators of state lands in the Arsinoite nome,11 presumably travelled from these places to Oxyrhynchus in ancient times. The simplest way of accounting for the presence of official documents of this type in Oxyrhynchus is to suppose that they were carried there on retirement from office by Oxyrhynchite citizens who, in obedience to the rule of the Roman administra­ tion that a man should not hold an important administrative office in his own area, performed a tour of duty elsewhere.12 This explanation has an important bearing on the view which will be put forward in a later chapter (p. 90) about the nature of literary texts written on the back of documentary rolls. It makes it probable that such texts are private copies, made locally on behalf of the person who had access to what could be treated as 'waste-paper'. To the accidental wanderings of papyri we owe a not in­ considerable body of knowledge about parts of Egypt which have themselves provided none. Alexandria may serve as an example. On the site of this great capital, as we have already seen, no papyri have been preserved. But since papyri travel easily from place to place, it does not follow that we have no papyri from Alexandria.13 The government post carries official papers, decrees, instructions, answers to petitions, tax demands; private individuals carry letters for their friends; Alexandrian citizens have estates in the country, take their own books there and presents of books for their friends, carry copies of Alexan­ drian political pamphlets directed against Rome, and also files of their own law papers. These latter are easily recognizable, since Alexandrian citizens enjoyed special modes of legal pro­ cess, for instance in conveyancing. The most informative text about Alexandrian civil law in the third century B.C., the socalled roll of Dikaiomata,14 was in fact found in Elephantine, on the southern border of Egypt. Documents from the Fayyum or Oxyrhynchus allude incidentally to the Greek letters which stand for quarters of Alexandria, to its tribes and demes, to its 814262 E

50

Place of Origin and Place of Writing

topography, to buildings such as 'the Serapeum at Rhacotis' or 'the Atrium Magnum', or to the etiquette of the Ptolemaic court. Waste-paper, too, travels easily. A connected series of documents, letters, and petitions of Alexandrian citizens in the time of Augustus has been preserved because it was disposed of, we do not know how, to a dealer who employed it to make papier mache mummy cases for persons who were buried at Abusir-el-Malaq. The case of Alexandria illustrates the unpredictability of papyrus evidence. Almost anything may turn up, yet what is expected often does not seem to. From such finds one may argue positively but not negatively: the argument from silence is especially dangerous. This little discussion also underlines what has been implicit in this whole chapter. Our surviving papyri are, in the main, of provincial origin. They have been preserved in what Alexandrians called the chora, the country of Egypt in contrast to the city. Provincial origin no doubt explains why so few of the books found in Egypt deserve the description 'calligraphic', and why their illustrations (when they have them) are usually routine work, if not downright bad. Since it is through Alexandria that Egypt must have main­ tained its contact with Rhodes or Athens or Rome, a similar unpredictability must govern the chance of finding texts brought into Egypt from outside. Now we know of a number of docu­ ments and letters brought into Egypt from places outside and quite far away. Some owners of slaves carried with them the documents of purchase which proved their title to these slaves: one such, written in Greek and Latin, was drawn up at Ravenna,15 another in Latin was written at Seleucia in Pieria,16 three in Greek were written at Side in Pamphylia, Ascalon, and Pompeiopolis in Paphlagonia respectively.17 Letters were writ­ ten from Puteoli, Ostia, and Rome by serving soldiers or sailors and by clerics,18 from Constantinople by notaries on behalf of clients in Egypt.19 What books or Christian texts might not have been carried in? A surprising find is a small piece of parchment, the outer sheet of a quire, which carries on the left-hand side some verses of the Gospel of St. Luke (xxiii and xxiv) in the German Gothic version, with the Latin vulgate on the righthand page20 dated to the sixth century. This scrap was found at Sheik Ibada, near Antinoe. 'Presumably [itwas] writtenin Italy',

Place of Origin and Place of Writing

51

writes E. A. Lowe. A Greek literary work which, prima facie, was written in Italy is an end-title21 which reads 'Grammatical Questions (£etemata grammatika) of the grammarian Apollodorus of Athens on the 14th Book of the Iliad', followed by the note Cojcvov. The note has been connected plausibly with the Sosii, publishers at Rome mentioned by Horace. These examples are mentioned in order to alert the searcher to the possibility that other literary (and religious) books, Latin or Greek, found in Egypt were the product of scriptoria outside Egypt. The evidence by which such texts will be identified, if they can be identified, will be of a palaeographical nature, and the place to discuss it a later chapter. We must return to the con­ cept of provenance, and consider a fundamental difficulty im­ peding its determination in any given case. As we have seen, almost all the great discoveries of papyri have been made by the native inhabitants of Egypt, usually while engaged in the routine of work in the fields. Any statement about provenance made by a finder or a dealer in antiquities is open to suspicion. Such persons are not likely to reveal the source of discovery while the stream is still running nor possibly to put themselves and others within reach of the law concerning antiquities. A dealer is likely to say the find was made at, say, Giza or Achmim or Assiut: but these places, to which Luxor and Assuan may be added, are the principal centres of the trade in antiquities, and corroboration is needed before they can be accepted as the place of origin of texts acquired in their bazaars. In spite of this, however, a judgement regarding provenance can at times be made, even in cases when the collector has not himself seen the text taken from the sand. Documentary texts often carry re­ liable determinants about origin: the place may be specifically mentioned, the text may contain recognizable geographical or characteristic personal names, local deities, formulas of prac­ tice, regionalized abbreviations, etc. Some of the latter indica­ tions may occasionally help to give a local habitation to literary papyri. The difficulty of determining provenance may be illustrated by a discussion of a recent modern find which may have come from Panopolis, modern Achmim, in Middle Egypt. Early in the nineteenth century a find of Byzantine papyri, the papers of Pachymius, a dyer of purple, was made either here or at This

52

Place of Origin and Place of Writing

(Tineh) on the opposite bank, and divided between Berlin and the Louvre. The roll of Hyperides' In Athenogenem of the second century B.C. is also said to be from here. A number of fragments of the Roman and early Byzantine period (Demosthenes, Euri­ pides' Rhesus, Hesiod, Palatine Anthology) were obtained from here in 1887 through Urbain Bouriant and G. Maspero. A geographical fragment, a set of mathematical tables, a wooden tablet eventually deriving from Athribis, and a fragment of the Acta Alexandrinorum are also said to come from this spot. The statement of provenance should probably be treated with some reserve: for the Comedia Florentina of Menander (P.S.I. 126), bought at Luxor but stated by the seller to derive from Panopolis, is stated by Schubart to be part of the same codex as the Berlin papyrus published in Gr. Lit. Pap. 22 ii. which comes from Hermopolis. Classical scholars will think, however, of Panopolis as the possible source of another codex of Menander, P. Bodmer iv. This contains the Dyskolos complete, and parts of two other Menandrean comedies, and was probably written at the end of the third century A.D. (this is not the editor's date). The evidence for Panopolis as provenance is inferential only. It is as follows: 1. Within the thirty-year period 1930 to i960 a considerable number of intact or nearly intact papyrus books were acquired by collectors, some by M. Bodmer, some by Sir Chester Beatty, others by institutions which include the University of Missis­ sippi and the Papyrological InstitutesofCologne and Barcelona. The earliest of these texts are to be dated about A.D. 200, the latest are of the sixth and seventh centuries. Mostly they are papyrus codices, and most of them contain books of the New Testament or Christian writings, some in Greek, some in Cop­ tic. It has been established that some of these Christian manu­ scripts have been divided between their purchasers. Of P. Bodmer xx, for instance, a Martyrium in Greek, a few scraps were found among Sir Chester Beatty's texts. P. Bodmer xxii and Mississippi Coptic codex ii are part of the same manu­ script. It is an economical hypothesis that all these papyri, whether works of Greek literature, documents, or Christian texts, are from one source and constitute a unitary find. 2 . Under the title P. Bodmer i two rolls are published con­ taining Iliad ν and vi on the verso, and on the recto a land

Place of Origin and Place of Writing

53

register written in A.D. 208/9 containing local names from the Panopolite nome. The recto is still unpublished, and there is no possibility as yet of learning more about it. 3. A recent acquisition of Sir Chester Beatty's, P. Beatty Panop., published by T. C. Skeat, is a single-quire codex the writing surface of which was formed by gumming together face to face the used rectos of documentary rolls, resulting in a thick page of two virgin 'versos'. Two rolls were cannibalized thus, and they are the letter books (incoming and outgoing) of the strategus of Panopolis in A.D. 298 and 300. 4. The transformation just mentioned of documentary rolls into a codex is interestingly paralleled by another example originating from Achmim. Four papyri obtained here in 1887 by Urbain Bouriant (P. Achmim 6-9)22 were made up into a codex in the way just described. Documentary rolls of the third century after Christ were glued face to face 200 years later to make a book to contain homilies. 5. A document belonging to the library in Geneva published by V. Martin in Recherches de Pap. ii, pp. 37-73, is a register of property in Panopolis, giving names of districts, local deities, etc. Another recently published text in Geneva is P. Leit. 10, a petition from the citizens of Panopolis to the senate of Pano­ polis. I do not know whether either of these texts is of recent acquisition. The proved connexion of P. Bodmer i and P. Beatty Panop. with Panopolis (leaving P. Gen. Inv. 108 and P. Leit. 10 out of account) is not evidence that would be sufficient in a court of law to establish Panopolitan origin for either the Menander codex or the rest of the manuscripts enumerated. There may have been more than one find (it is said, for instance, that P. Bodmer xvii did not belong to the original find). With this find it may be wrong to associate P. Bodmer i and the Chester Beatty codex and the documents mentioned in (5). Yet these pointers are worth bearing in mind, especially as Panopolis was noted for its monasteries. Just across the river from Panopolis lies the White Monastery, presided over by Schenute in the late fourth century. The stones of this monastery have already furnished the British Museum with a unitary find of a Coptic psalter and homilies, and a number of other Coptic texts.

HOW A PAPYRUS TEXT IS EDITED In his reminiscences A. H. Sayce looked back to the summer of 1890:

The days passed quickly in which, as Mahaffy said, we lived over again the days of the Renaissance. Now, as then, lost fragments of classical literature were constantly coming to light along with copies of existing works centuries older than any manuscripts of them pre­ viously known. Day after day we pored over the precious texts in my College rooms until the dinner hour arrived, when we discussed our discoveries and hopes with other scholars over the dessert and wine of the Common Room. It was an ideal time.1 Any scholar who has experienced it will recall the excitement which accompanied the first reading of a formerly lost work of Greek literature, or the finding of an answer to a muchdiscussed question. He may also perhaps have felt a certain glee at the overturning of established opinion. It is exhilarating to realize that the last word has not been said, that a new and immediate contact has been reopened with the ancient world. This is one side of the coin: turn it over and remember that the creation of new knowledge also carries responsibilities. To work on something new is to accept the possibility of making mistakes. Correction of one mistake should not lead to the commission of others. The scholar who works on papyri has more opportunity than most to see how even the most sensitive and conscientious of scholars have fallen into error. He is not likely to join the critics who savage another man's editio princeps of a new text—he will be aware of the toil and labour which has gone into producing an end-product which for them is a starting-point. But he will also be aware that scholarship advances through the critical reactions provoked by the edition of a new text—reactions which must be weighed, and will then be either verified or rejected. He cannot be complacent towards error. He will use the hindsight offered by new discovery, not to scoff, but to examine his own methods of working and see

How a Papyrus Text is Edited

55

where error is most likely to arise. This is the viewpoint from which this chapter is written. It could not have taken the form it does if it had not had as predecessors the illuminating dis­ cussion in H. C. Youtie's book The Textual Criticism of Documen­ tary Papyri,2 and his lecture given in Ann Arbor in 1963, The Papyrologist: Artificer of Fact.2 To be forewarned about the hidingplaces of error is to be forearmed. A piece of papyrus lifted straight out of the sand may be immediately legible. Much more probably it will require tech­ nical attention first. A roll will need to be unrolled, which is best done in a laboratory with simple humidifying apparatus. A sheet of papyrus may have been folded, screwed up, or crushed in antiquity. If so, it will have to be 'relaxed' or 'damped out': the process is straightforward, but time-consuming. The compacted mass is placed between damp blotting-paper under a cover; a small quantity of some agent to prevent the formation of mould is usually added. After a night's steeping the papyrus can be manipulated with the fingers, allowing its folds to be straightened and its twisted 'fibres' to be coaxed back into place. A screwed-up piece the size and shape of a fountain pen wil? often produce a whole sheet when so treated, a lump the size of a spectacle case may prove to be compounded of three or four sheets screwed up together. When relaxed and cleaned the most satisfactory procedure is to pro­ tect the text by laying it between sheets of glass. Glass is to be preferred to polythenes or resins; for though it may break, it remains transparent and it is known that the papyrus does not permanently adhere to it. Neither of these good qualities can be firmly guaranteed of resins or polythenes. Promising experi­ ments are at present in progress with an envelope of nylon or of silk applied under pressure. This type of treatment is relatively simple: more complex processes may be required for other materials. The deposits of salt on ostraca, if not somehow removed, will form incrustations that cause the written surface to flake. Yet the surface must be protected (e.g. by a plastic film) if the sherd is to be immersed for a sufficient period of time to dissolve out the salt. Wood will require slow drying, a mummy which is thought to contain cartonnage must be taken to pieces layer by layer. Of the Chester Beatty codex containing Gospels and Acts, Kenyon wrote; 'When

56

How a Papyrus Text is Edited

it first arrived in London it could only be described as a lump of papyrus composed of a number of small leaves in very deli­ cate condition, much frayed at the edges.'4 This lump was dis­ sected into its constituent pages by the skill of Dr. H. Ibscher. He, and afterwards his son, Rolf Ibscher, effected a similar miracle on the Manichaean codices belonging to Sir Chester Beatty, the papyrus sheets of which were particularly thin and fine. A different technique was devised by Mr. A. Fackelmann of Vienna to unroll the carbonized papyri from Derveni. He loosened this solidified roll by the heat of electric lamps, and lifted its edges with static electricity generated on perspex so as to take off the layers piece by piece. It would be of very great interest to know whether the carbonized rolls of Herculaneum will yield to such a process. If not earlier, then certainly at this stage, forgeries will be detected. Anticas of all kind are manufactured (in some cases in Europe) for sale to travellers in Egypt, and it is hardly to be expected that fake papyri will not also be on offer and at times find a purchaser. But they are rarely done with sufficient skill to take in the expert, and chemical tests (^g. of the age of the ink) will rarely be called for. The forger has insufficient palaeo­ graphy and scholarship at his command; usually his repertoire of letters and signs is limited, and he repeats the same few combinations of signs over and over again: these signs usually mix forms current at different dates and in different languages, and are meaningless. Nothing daunted, the seller will term them 'magical'. Normally the forger will use an empty sheet of ancient papyrus, or else botch up a sheet or a roll out of small scraps. Yet even a botched-up roll, with traces of ancient writing showing on the outside and blank pieces on the inside, may contain something worth while. Two such composite rolls, one arriving in Paris in 1868, another in London in 1892, contained additional fragments of a long roll of Hyperides, itself brought to London in two parts by A. C. Harris and Joseph Arden in 1847 and 1853. The Paris 'forgery' had thirteen scraps, that in London had four.5 The next step is to 'read' the papyrus, that is, to make a copy of what it says. If it is written in a slowly made and beautiful (i.e. calligraphic) hand this task may not seem specially formid­ able. Certain conventions, however, will have to be assimilated.

How a Papyrus Text is Edited,

57

Greek scribes of the Graeco-Roman period did not as a rule group letters into words (as Mycenaean scribes did, or as was done on many archaic Greek inscriptions down to the early fifth century before Christ, and also in many Latin inscriptions and Latin written documents). The reader must himself divide the continuous writing into words. Regular reading of such continuous texts may make the reader quick at dividing words; yet both the ancient and the modern reader have frequently done it wrongly. (Let me mention one example only, the mysterious word πpocayiov in P. Abinnaeus 63, line 42, πόται (= 7τότε) rrpocayiov φηciv. The correct division is πότε irpocciyi (— Trpocayei) op φψιν; 'when will he bring to court the man of whom he is speaking?' Yet the faulty division had remained undetected by Jouguet, Collart, Mitteis, Arangio-Ruiz, and myself. The correct division was pointed out by A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar in Select Papyri, vol. ii, p. 218, which I had over­ looked; and then independently by Dr. John Rea in 1963.) Other difficulties are caused by the fact that the ancient scribes rarely use any punctuation, and their spellings may prove puzzling. However, there is only one way to learn, and that is by experience and constant practice. If the hands begin to be difficult to read, then it will help to see what earlier editors have made of them, for only by reading many texts can one obtain expertness and confidence. There are many good reproductions of published texts to help the student. He should take a standard collection such as W. Schubart's Papyri Graecae Berolinenses,6 or Medea Norsa's Scrittura letteraria greca7 or Scritture documentaries and work systematically through the examples. I myself prefer to sit by a window with a north light, and I place a small handmirror on the side of the text opposite the light source so as to secure as even as possible an illumination. But some palaeo­ graphers prefer to use a low-powered electric lamp brought down to within an inch or so of the working surface so that the text is illuminated by peripheral rather than by direct light. Use an aplanat, if necessary, of say χ 6 magnification. Even with easy handwritings it is worth while to construct an alphabet of letter forms, making the pen retrace exactly the path it took in the hand of the ancient scribe. The student should make this alphabet for himself, rather than take a standard 'table of alphabets' from a manual. For it is not the finished form of the

58

How a Papyrus Text is Edited

letter which should be studied but the order in which its con­ stituent parts were drawn. Did the scribe make it in one, two, or three strokes? Did he start at the top and bring his pen downwards? The direction in which the pen travelled can often be determined by observing the little blobs of ink that gather at the point where the pen first touched the writing surface, the blot where it halted, and the trail where it was lifted off; or it may be revealed by nothing but the relative firmness and thick­ ness of upright, oblique, and curving strokes. By constantly asking 'How did the scribe make this letter?' and by searching for parallel groupings made elsewhere on the same page by his scribe the student will begin to build up a picture of the prac­ tices of scribes at different periods, and lay the foundation in himself of a habit of observation which is essential if he is eventually going to make the form of the writing give evidence about itself—that is, attain to palaeographic knowledge. He will also, right from the outset, ask whether the text he has reconstituted is intelligible. It may seem platitudinous to insist that even to a good scholar the language of his texts will be a considerable obstacle to ready understanding of them. They will contain words not found in any dictionary, technical and colloquial expressions that have to be worked out analytically, names and places not previously recorded. Above all, common words may wear an unfamiliar, almost unrecognizable look because they are mis­ spelled, or because they are represented by a spelling that makes them approximate to the pronunciation of the Hellenistic and Roman period. By the first century of the Roman period the finely nuanced vowels and diphthongs of classical Greece had been reduced to roughly five varieties (long a; e = ai; unac­ cented a, e, ο often interchangeable; η and si and ι are identical, and not much later the same iota sound is given also to 01 and υ; ου and ω). Mis-spellings due to vowel contaminations of this character are encountered frequently in literary texts as well as in documents: their presence or absence in a literary text is a pointer to the degree of education of the scribe, not necessarily to the quality of the underlying text. In private letters and documentary texts such mis-spellings, combined with unusual consonantal values, can produce words baffling to the eye, but which may give up their meaning to the ear. For the distinction

How a Papyrus Text is Edited

59

between the popular tongue, the modern demotiki, and the 'pure' tongue, modern katharevousa, had certainly begun to ap­ pear by the first century of the Roman era. A knowledge of demotiki will often give a clue to the meaning of an unfamiliarlooking term, and odd turns of language must always be explained according to its laws of development. The reader will not be content with knowing what the words of his text mean: he will also want to know what his text is about, and what may reasonably be expected in it. Knowledge about the subject with which it is concerned serves a double function: it helps to an understanding of the content of a text and at the same time serves as a check on its interpretation. One Oxford scholar recommends would-be editors of new classical texts to learn by heart such works of their author as are extant; and they must certainly be steeped in the words of that author, know his tricks of thought and imagery, and be familiar with existing fragments of his work. An editor confronted with a horoscope in papyrus will inform himself of the essential con­ stituents of a horoscope by studying parallel examples. If he is copying so humdrum a text as a lease of land or a receipt for payment of a debt, he will need to know what are the clauses normally found in this kind of legal document, and how they are expressed at different times and places. The latter require­ ment will imply that he can also give a date to his own text. That date may be given by one of the standard formulas of dating (by year of a king or emperor or priest or consul, by mention of an official or individual whose career is otherwise known, by use of a local era, etc.) or by recognition that the contents (persons, events, law cases) belong to a known series of documents or incidents; or else it may depend on a palaeographical assessment of the date of the handwriting, based on features in that handwriting and the whole layout of the text that have come to be regarded as significant (these will be briefly discussed in Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World). A would-be editor will therefore require to have or obtain informa­ tion about the contents of what he is reading. A small and miscellaneous collection of papyri might be regarded as a lucky dip into the bygones of a past age. An editor engaged in cataloguing such a collection will need to be an Admirable Crichton indeed. The rational course of action will be to enlist

6o

How a Papyrus Text is Edited

the collaboration of an expert in each particular field, and to seek occasions such as seminars composed of scholars of different disciplines at which preliminary editions of difficult texts can be exposed to informed criticism. But there is one area of knowledge in which he will have increasingly to depend on himself, for that is his special province—namely the field of palaeography. Now of a palaeographer two things may be required as a minimum. The first is that he shall be able to 'read' the texts he studies—that is, to report exactly what they say; the second is that he shall, from his knowledge of comparable texts, be able to make valid judgements about any particular example—for instance, when it was written, with what public in mind, per­ haps where it was written. We shall be concerned with the second requirement in section two of the next chapter. At the moment we are attending only to the first duty, that of reading the texts accurately. The student whom we have launched on a course of reading papyrus texts will soon become aware that understanding his text is not a simple matter of first copying the letters it appears to contain and then interpreting these transcribed letters. The processes of transcribing and interpreting go on side by side. Our student will stumble on abbreviations and symbols which have no self-evident reason for carrying the form they do and which may even be imbedded in mid phrase in documen­ tary texts.9 They are not easy to recognize as the abbreviations which the student has already seen set up in conventional typo­ graphical forms or interpreted (perhaps wrongly) in published editions. Now it is possible to help by drawing up a table and a series of photographs of the more frequently used abbrevia­ tions, and attempting to account for their form, and I have given some examples in Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World.10 But when an abbreviation, as often, does double or treble duty, only by taking thought is it possible to decide which employ­ ment is the right one. The same kind of difficulty will occur as the student moves on from handwritings in which the letters are capitals separately made to texts quickly written, where two or more letters or parts of letters are linked together and written in a long wavering line without the pen being lifted from the paper. In ligatures (the name given to strokes which combine in whole or part two or

How a Papyrus Text is Edited

61

more letters) the basic shape of the letter may be distorted by what precedes and what follows. Sometimes what one would have thought of as essential components of a letter are omitted entirely. The letters, or parts of them, grouped together may run across the end of one word and beginning of the next. And the words themselves may be complicated because symbols and abbreviations are incorporated in them. The reader will of course start from the easier and clearer portions where his text can be established with a fair degree of certainty and work outwards from them to the more difficult portions. In decipher­ ing handwriting of this kind more will be needed than per­ severance and practice and a quick eye: the text will also have to satisfy the reader's critical faculty. In the text of Menander shortly to be discussed, of which the surface is badly stripped, one verse appears clearly to read αλλ' iXeeivoic 12 = 299 in P. O x y . 2656. 12. Anth. Pal. ix. 251; Chapter V I I I , p. 144. 13. Another list has been given by W . Peremans, Les Etudes classiques, 12, 1943. PP- 259-63. 14. See B.I.C.S., Supplement, No. 17. 15. J.H.S. lxxv, 1955, pp. 69 ff. 16. Three examples from P. O x y . xxxi: 2535 (to show the text is a hypomnema); 2545 (ekthesis of hexameter verses incorporated in trimeters); 2553 (reconstruction of a ritual calendar). T h e second example is reproduced in Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World. 17. P. Hib. ii. 215. 18. P. Giss. 40. ii. Cf. Chr. Sasse, Die Constitutio Antoniniana, Wiesbaden, 1958. A n d the debate continues! See A Reference Book of Greek Papyri. i8 a . e.g. it had not been suspected that at Dysk. 239 (a Homeric brother-in-law) of the ancient quotation concealed the slave name Aae. 19. P. O x y . x. 1231, fr. i, col. i. 20. P. O x y . xxi, p. 122. T h e diastole after c of is something of a puzzle. 21. T h e novice may take heart as well as warning from examples of errors made by masters of the craft. Grenfell and H u n t were incomparable decipherers. T h e writer has recently had occasion to check carefully their transcription in an early volume of the Oxyrhynchus papyri of the difficult fragments of Menander's Kolax, P. O x y . 409. W h e n subsequent editors have discarded their readings, they are almost always at fault. But one place that has never been suspected w a s w r o n g l y read in the original. For Koi 11 the correct reading is 22. T h e system was devised in 1931, and is set out in full b y j . B i d e z - A . B. Drachmann, Emploi des signes critiques, ed. 2, Paris, 1938, par A . Delatte et A . Severyns, pp. 17 ff. T h e system may be set out in tabular form thus: = letters about the reading of which there is a genuine doubt, or letters which are so mutilated that without the context they might be read in more than one way _,. , or — 1 0 — , or ± 1 0 = illegible letters, the approximate number of which is known [ . . . . ] ' o r C — 1 0 — ] ' o r E ± I 0 ] = missing letters, the approximate number of which is known ], or [ ] , or [ = missing letters, the number of which is unknown = letters restored by the editor of the text = lacunae in the text (omissions of the scribe) = additions made by the editor in order to fill such lacunae = resolutions of abbreviations

i8o

Notes to Chapters I-VIII

{αβγ8} o r { . . . . } o r {αβγδ} = interpolations (that is, letters or words wrongly added by the scribe, and cancelled by the editor of the text) Ja/JyS]] = erasures by the scribe *αβγδ' = interlinear additions Delatte and Severyns record some criticisms of this system; its main weakness is that there is no means of indicating in the text of papyri that the text is corrupt, and that recourse must be had to the apparatus. Some other points may be noted in passing: (1) An older generation of papyrologists used strokes below letters thus, αβγδ, to indicate letters which were mutilated in the original, but concerning which no serious doubt existed. The usefulness of such nota­ tion is championed still by H. C. Youtie. (2) Confusion between the function of a dot as punctuation and as indicating missing or unreadable letters is avoided if the dots indicating the latter are set below the line. (3) It has become the custom in recent years to use half-brackets ιαβγδj (the lower half of square brackets) to indicate a passage of text that can be restored with certainty because it is known from other sources. Delatte and Severyns proposed the use of the upper half of square brackets rOjSyS1 to indicate corrections made in the text. CHAPTER VI References for archaeological work and for the provenances of texts will be given in A Reference Book of Greek Papyri, and therefore are usually omitted in this chapter. 1. Oxford, 1948. Other historical works are listed in the preliminary note to the references for Chapter VIII. 2. U. Wilcken, 'LJber den Nutzen der lat. Pap.', Atti del iv. Congresso intern, di Pap., Milan, 1936, pp. 101 ff.; R. Cavenaile, Chron. d'£g. 1951, pp. 391 ff.; Aegfptus xxxii, 1952, pp. 191 ff.; S. Daris, 'Il lessico latino nella lingua greca d'Egitto', Aegyptus, xl, i960, pp. 177 ff. 3. J.E.A. ix, 1923, pp. 29 ff. 4. Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, iv, 1963, p. 38. The Chester Beatty biblical codices are listed pp. 161-2. 5. Cf. n. 37 below and chap. VIII pp. I34ff. 6. Pack2 616. A. H. Sayce in W. M. Flinders Petrie, Hawara, Biahmu and Arsinoe, p. 24. 7. C. H. Roberts, The Legacy of Egypt, p. 253. 8." Vienna-Munich, 1961. Cf. A. F. Shore, PortraitPaintingfrom Roman Egypt, London, 1962. Bibliography of Hermione in G. Richter, Greek and Roman Portraits, iii, fig. 2059; K. Parlasca, Mumienportrats &c., pp. 101-3. 9. Les Grecs en Eg}pte, pp. 11-12. 10. P. Lond. Inv. 2652B = Pack2 397. i t . P. Lond. Inv. 2652A = Pack2 130. 12. P. Ryl. iv. 581 (ii. 8); P. Tebt. i. 84, 9.

Notes to Chapters I-VIII

181

13. A . E. R . Boak and E. E. Petersen, Karanis, Topogr. and Archit. Report 1924-8, p. 9. Cf. PL I. The letters are in P. Mich. viii. 490, 491. 14. In the baths of the gymnasium of Panopolis, P. Got. 7 (on its provenance see T . C. Skeat, P. Beatty Panop., p. xxxiii). 15. P. Ross.-Georg. iii, i, 18. Cf. SB 7574, 7. The term might, however, mean a niche. One wonders whether it might not correspond to a cupboard or archive chest (cf. W . K . Pritchett, Hesperia, 1956, pp. 220 ff.). 16. Hermoupolis-la-Grande, Lausanne, 1918, p. 42. 17. For Karanis cf. P. Ryl. iv. 594, introd., and A . E. R . Boak in Historia, 1958, pp. 248 ff. Cf. H. Braunert, Die Binnenwanderung, Bonn, 1964. 18. P. Fay. 110 ff. 19. P. Oxy. xxvii. 2458, cf. Antiquite classique, xxxii, 1963, pp. 120 ff. T o the list of places noted there as having theatres Memphis (P. Fouad I Univ. xiv) and Panopolis (P. Beatty Panop. i. 333 n.) should be added. 20. E. Majer-Leonhard, A y p a n f i a r o i , Diss. Frankfurt, 1913. R . Calderini, Aegyptus, xxx, 1950, pp. i 4 f f . a i . P. Tebt. ii. 383. Cf. iii. 890, P. Bouriant 9, 3, SB 5117. 22. A new example in SB 7561. Cf. the phrase jiavdavow ypa/x/xaTa, P. Flor. 382, P. Oxy. xviii. 2190. 23. H. C. Youtie, Chron. d'Mg. xli (1966) pp. 127-43. 24. Cited from Majer-Leonhard. R . Calderini adds other examples, and notes the women who emphasize their literacy (P. Oxy. xii. 1473 and 1467). 25. P. Oxy. ii. 326, B. Olsson, Pap. Briefe, No. 31. 26. P.S.I. 1248. 27. Cf. P. Oxy. xxii. 2338; A. Calderini, Studi ital. difilol. class, N.S. 27/8 1956, pp. 59 ff.; Studi U. E. Paoli, ii, pp. 155 ff. Cf. n. 39 below. 28. C.P. Herm. 125. ii = W . Chrest. 40 and C.P. Herm. 124, interpreted by G. Meautis, Hermoupolis-la-Grande, pp. 175-6. Eur., Ion, 732. 29. H. G. Pflaum, Journal des Savants, 1959, p. 83, n. 1. But cf. W. Chr. 39, i 7 - r 8 30. N. Lewis, 'The Non-Scholar Members of the Alexandrian Museum', Mnemosyne4, xvi, 1963, pp. 257-61. His list can be supplemented (see A Reference Book of Greek Papyri). 31. P. Fay. 87, cf. P. Fay. 82. 15. O n 'philosophers' in the Museum cf. Dio Cassius, 77. 7. 3, O . G . I . 714. 4 n., P. R y l . 143. 2. 32. Cf. J. F. Gilliam, Mnemosyne4, xvii, 1964, pp. 293 ff. T h e provenance of P. Cornell Inv. ii. 25 is not stated, but many of the Cornell papyri are known from internal evidence to come from Philadelphia. 33. SB 6012. 34. P. Merton i. 19, 3; P. O x y . xviii. 2192. Cf. J.E.A. xxxviii, 1952, pp. 91-92. 35. P. Oxy. xxvii. 2471. 36. O r it may be neuter, Topics in Comedy. 37. In this connexion we should note an entry on the back o f a 'Prose farce' in the British Museum, Milne, P. Lond. Lit. 97 j 38. Sir H. I. Bell, Aegyptus, ii, 1921, pp. 281 ff. Full text in K . Ohly,

182

Notes to Chapters

I-VIII

Stichometrische Untersuchungen, pp. 88-89. Cf. J.E.A. xxxviii, 1952, pp. 90-91; P. J. Sijpesteijn, Aegyptus, xliv, 1964, pp. 20 ff. 39. ' T h e Wandering Poets', Historia, xiv, 1965, pp. 470 ff. 40. P. O x y . iii. 425, see Greek Manuscripts in the Ancient World, PL II. In regard to another example, P. O x y . ii. 213, a modern myth (J. G. Winter, Life and Letters in the Papyri, p. 219) has grown up that there is a note on the back 'this text was written by a schoolboy'. There is no such note on the original. 41. P. O x y . i. 119. 42. T h e most up-to-date list is that of G. Zalateo, Aegyptus, xli, 1961, pp. 160 ff. But the list includes too much. 43. 326 D. Cf. B.I.C.S. xii, 1965, pp. 67-69. T h e London tablet is reproduced in Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, PL II. Similarly guide-lines are often found in inscriptions on stone and bronze. Another calligraphic exercise on papyrus is given by A . Bataille, Studi Calderini-Paribeni, pp. 277 ff. Cf. G . Zalateo, Aegyptus, xli, 1961, pp. 2 1 4 - 1 5 . 43 a . Pack 2 1439. 44. P. Mich. viii. 468 (i. 18). 45. The Greek Literary Texts from Graeco-Roman Egypt, pp. 68 ff. 46. W . Schubart, Das Buch2, p. 163. 47. J.E.A. xxxviii, p. go. 48. Pack 2 2642. 49. Cf. J . W . B. Barns, C.Q_. xliv, 1950, pp. 132 ff. 50. M.P.E.R. v, pp. 141 ff. A fuller list will be given in A Reference Book of Greek Papyri. 51. Gardthausen, Gr. Pal. ii, pp. 427. 52. P. Ant. i. 29, introd. 53. See M.P.E.R. v, p. 145, n. 4. Galen, xvii. A 613; E. Lobel on P. O x y . xxx. 2526A, fr. 6, 3; T . W . Allen, Papers of British School at Rome, v , 1 9 1 0 , pp. 1, 176 ff.; Manuscript Marcianus 416, at end of Demosth. xi 54. Especially 55-

. . .

%eta in incertis, Gardthausen, Gr. Pal. ii. 414. .

. .

_

.

.

or

1 P. O x y . xxiv. 2387, fr. 1. E. Lobel ad loc. T h e plural also occurs (Ch. V I I , n. 37, below). 56. P. O x y . xxiv. 2390 (fr. 2 ii. 5); xxxi. 2536, cf. Chapter V I I , n. 38. 57. W e should compare for the phrase the Ptolemaic copies of H o m e r ; or the note (subscription to Aristophanes' Peace in cod. V ) . 58. Cf. also M . Naoumides in Charis K. I. Vourveris, Athens, 1964, p. 331. 59. Zentralblatt fur Bibliothekswesen, Bciheft 61, Leipzig, 1928. 60. Pack 2 438, 733, 2189. T h e last is one of the relatively few prose works that seem to carry stichometrical letters (opp. col. v. 45). T h e copy of Plato's Gorgias, Pack 2 1416, illustrated in Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, does not bear any stichometry. 61. Pack 2 1361. 62. P. O x y . xxxi. 2536, cf. Chapter V I I , n. 44.

Notes to Chapters I-VIII

183

CHAPTER VII The substance of this chapter has already appeared in print in French in Chron. d'lig. xxxvii, 1962, pp. 135-52, 'L'erudition alexandrine et lespapyrus'. 1. Harvard, 1942. General surveys are also given by J. G. Winter, Life and Letters in the Papyri (to about 1929), pp. 192 ft".; J. U. Powell and E. A. Barber (editors), New Chapters in Greek Literature, Oxford, 1921, 1929, 1933. 2. Pack2 88; 241, 243 (R. Petri, Ueber d. Roman d. Chariton, 1963); 1186,40. 3. Eur. frr. 819, 821; Analecta Euripidea, p. 158; Pack2 453. 4. Pack2 338. A fragment has now been identified from Oxyrhynchus, P. Oxy. xxxi. 2539. 5. P. Lond. 878, Aus Antike und Orient, Festschr. zum 75. Geburtstag W. Schubarts, p. 126; Α. Η. M. Jones, La Nouvelle Clio, v, 1953, pp. 1-4 and Journ. Eccl. Hist, v, 1954, pp. 196-200; K. Aland, Forsch. u. Fortschritte, xxviii, 1954, coll. 213 ff. 6. M. Papathomopoulos, Recherches de Pap. iii, p. 38. I exclude Pack2 446. 7. I follow the analysis of Friedrich Schmidt, Die Pinakes des Kallimachos, Kiel, 1924. 8. Fragments of a bibliographical register in a papyrus in Florence give titles, citations of incipits, and total of stichoi: Pack2 2090; F. Lasserre, Aegyptus, xxxvii, 1957, pp. 243 if. 9. Pack2 81, frag. 9. D. L. Page, Poetae Melici gr. frr. 14, 16. 10. The archon for 497/6 was not hitherto known. 11. Η. T. Deas observes to me that the reason why the author uses Olympian 4 and not Pythian 8 as evidence may be that he had a list of Olympian victors but not a list of Pythian victors. 12. Fouilles de Delphes, iii. 1. 400 = Tod, G.H.I. 187. Cf. Fouilles de Delphes, iii. 5. 58, 42, 331 B.C. A fragment of a list of Isthmian victors found at Corinth is published in Hesperia, xxviii, 1959, p. 324. 13. 274 F. 14. I exclude the so-called 'Tragic Songs' (Pack2 426), the Hibeh Eleetra (Pack2 1569), the Sorbonne Hippolytus (Pack2 393) as being extracts or anthologies and therefore not part of the direct tradition. I also omit the Orestes music (Pack2 411) and some other early Euripidean texts (e.g. P. Hamb. 119), which can hardly be evaluated for the present purpose. The pieces quoted are Pack2 397, 392, 400. W. S. Barrett, Eur. Hippol. p. 56 n. 1, 439 takes a different standpoint. 15. Pack2 819, 894, 875. S. West, The Ptolemaic Papyri of Homer (Cologne 1967)·

16. Pack2 1388, 1409. 17. Pack2 1395. 18. Pack2 1504. The date is unquestionably third century B.C. 19. B.G.U. vi. 1563; O.G.I. 669, re-edited by H. G. Evelyn-White and J. H. Oliver, The Temple of Hibis in el-Khargeh Oasis, pt. ii: The Greek Inscrip­ tions, New York, 1939, Nos. 3-4; G. Chalon, VEdit de Tiberius Iulius Alexan­ der, Lausanne, 1964. 20. P. Oxy. xxvii. 2475-7, xxxi. 2611.

184

Notes to Chapters

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21. A Companion to Homer, pp. 223-4. 22. Cf. , C h a p . V I , nn. 53-55. 23. G . M . Boiling, The Athetized Lines of the Iliad-, M . H . van der V a l k , Textual Criticism of the Odyssey. 24. M . Carroll, Aristotle's Poetics c. XXV in the light of the Homeric Scholia, Baltimore, 1895. 25. Schol. B on II. ii. 649. 26. Pack 2 774. S. West, op. cit. n. 15 above. 27. Pack 2 1205. 28. Cf. B. A . V a n Groningen, Mnemosyne4, xvi, 1963, pp. i f f . ; Traite, p. 35. Examples of in inscriptions in L e Bas-Waddington, 1630; Pleket, Gr. Inscr. Rijksmuseum Leyden, 50. 5; G . Klaffenbach, S.B. Berlin. Akad. i960, 6, pp. 16-17. In papyri comes to mean 'officially issued', or 'released' (the English word 'copy' is itself misleading); cf. the clause in papyrus documents. 29. T h e literary evidence for the systems of signs is set out in V . Gardthausen, Gr. Pal. ii, pp. 410-15. T h e passage in which Diog. Laertius discusses the values of these signs in manuscripts of Plato has appeared in a papyrus in Florence, Melanges Eugene Tisserant, i (Studi e Testi, 231), pp. 25 ff. O n ' R o m a n ' critical editions cf. S. F. Bonner, Hermes, lxxxviii, i960, pp. 354 ff. It would be wrong to suppose that all scholars used the signs in the same way, or that they necessarily had the same meaning in all genres of literature. For instance the paragraphus, coronis, and asteriscus are reported by Hephaestion as marking metrical divisions in lyric poetry, but papyri of Sappho and Alcaeus do not use the asteriscus, cf. E. Lobel, p. xvi. In his ekdosis of Aristophanes Heliodorus seems to have used the coronis to mark the entrance and exit of actors on the stage (or the entrance of the chorus), the diple to mark a metrical break (O. Hense, Heliodorische Untersuchungen, Leipzig, 1870). 30. W h i c h F. Leo calls vepl literature, Ausgewahlte Schriften, ii, pp. 390 ff. 31. See the illuminating observations by E. Lobel, e.g. P. O x y . x x i . 2307, P- 95! P- O x y . xxv. 2429, p . 3 5 . 32. Technically known as 3 3 . C f . Index i of J. W . White, Scholia on the Aves of Aristophanes, s.vv. % and 34. Harvard Studies in Class. Philol. xlii, 1931, p. 76. 35. Pack 2 310. This is not the usual interpretation of this text. 36. P. M a z o n , Introduction a ITliade, p. 73, n. 1. 37. P. O x y . xxv. 2427, fr. 53. i. 6, 'the x was not in Theon's copies', and the commentary of E. Lobel. T h e form of the note suggests that the manuscript of the text was copied independently of the commentary. 38. Index i of J . W . White, Scholia on the Aves of Aristophanes. 39. Ed. Fr. Osann. Cf. note 29. 40. 31 L . - P . ; M . Manfredi in Dai papiri della societa ital.: omaggio al xi Congresso intern, di Pap., no. 2, pp. 16 ff. (1965). 41. Pack 2 1173 (Plate in Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World), 1186, 1205. 42. Pack 2 1209.

JVotes to Chapters I-VIII

185

43. Pack2 429. 44. P. Oxy. xxxi. 2536. Cf. Chapter VI, n. 62. Cf. the remarks of M. Naoumides, T.A.P.A. xcii, 1961, p. 388: 'Dictionaries were not copied with the same accuracy as the texts of the classical authors.' 45. Pack2 1535-6. 46. Pack2 1496. 47. Pack2 1327. 48. e.g. P. Oxy. xxxi. 2536, and notes; P. Amh. ii. 12 Άρ^τάρχου 'Ηροδό­ του a υπόμνημα. The word appears written as a compendium in P. Oxy. 2392 and elsewhere. Some papyri (end-titles?) contain an adjective formed from an author's name, e.g. P. Oxy. xxv. 2433 Ciμωνιδζίων υπόμνημα. Ε. Fraenkel has interpreted iv TOLC Mevavhpeioic (a phrase found in the Aristophanes scholia) as = 'the scholia on Menander', Riv.fil. 1963, pp. 459-60. A collec­ tion of examples taken from medieval scholia of the use of the term hypomnema is given by Erich Diehl, Hypomnema, 1936, p. 315. 49. Pack2 103. 50. Pack2 1414, 46. 51. Pack2 1356 ('3rd. cent.', M.P.E.R. I p. 145; '6th. cent.', ibid. Ill P- 96). 52. Einl. in die gr. Trag., pp. 195 ff. 53. Pack2 138, 145. Plate in Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World. 54. Pack2 419. 55. Pack2 186: Plate in Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World. 56. It will be seen that I side with G. Zuntz in refusing to believe in an Alexandrian scholarly edition which like Venetus 454 ('A') had text and comment systematically set out side by side (An Inquiry into the Transmission of the Plays of Euripides, p. 275, n.), but am not willing to dismiss the Callimachus codex as 'a crude precursor . . . of the classical Byzantine type'. Plate in Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World. 563. Pack2 205, 211; Scholia min., e.g. 1162; Virgil glossaries, e.g. 2939» 2940. 57. e.g. in explaining Alcaeus, G 1, 8 L.-P. τόυδε κεμηλιον (P. Oxy. 2165 τόνδΐκϊμήλιον, 2i66 c 6, 9 margin ] ΚΕΜΗΛΙΟΝ). 58. Einfuhrung, p. 88. 59. The most rigorous exemplification is in P. Maas, Textual Criticism, Oxford, 1958 (= Textkritik2, 1950). Maas was himself aware of the effect of contamination, but considered it relatively rare. 60. R. D. Dawe, The Collation and Investigation of Manuscripts of Aeschylus, Cambridge, 1964. 61. As is the case with the tradition of Aeschines or Apollonius Rhodius. CHAPTER VIII A select critical bibliography covering topics mentioned in this chapter will be given in A Reference Book of Greek Papyri. References can be given here only to particular texts discussed. I assume that readers will have continual recourse to A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar, Select Papyri, Loeb edition, London, i, 1932, ii, 1934. A survey of the political, administrative, and social history

Motes to Chapters I-VIII of Egypt as revealed by the papyri is to be found in Η. I. Bell, Egypt from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest, Oxford, 1948. A. H. M.Jones's History of the Later Roman Empire, Oxford, 1964, draws heavily on papyri. Η. I. Bell has also set out the religious material to be found in the papyri in Cults and Creeds in Graeco-Roman Egypt, Liverpool, 1953. All have good bibliographies. The juristic side is treated as a whole by R. Taubenschlag, The Law of Graeco-Roman Egypt in the Light of the Papyri, 2nd ed., Warsaw, 1955, which contains tabulations of the different kinds of private and public documents. Texts important for Roman law are collected in Negotia (Part iii of Fontes Juris Romani Antejustiniani, Florence, 1943). In Roman Egypt, Baltimore, 1936, Part ii of Tenney Frank's Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, A. C. Johnson lists documents of the Roman period important for economic and social history, and translates a large number of them. He and L. C. West attempt in Byzantine Egypt: Economic Studies, Princeton, 1949, to do the same for the Byzantine age. For the Ptolemaic period the reader will go to C. Preaux, L'Economie Royale dies Lagides, 1938, and Μ. I. Rostovtzeff's Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, Oxford, 1941. S. LeRoy Wallace, Taxation in Egyptfrom Augustus to Diocletian, Princeton, 1938, is a thoroughly comprehensive survey. 1. C.P.J. ii. 151, p. 29. 2. The Acts of the Pagan Martyrs, ed. H. A. Musurillo, Oxford, 1954, esp. No. iv, Acta Isidori; P. Oxy. xxv. 2435; speech of Vespasian (?), SB 9528. Cf. note 25 below. 3. Cf. W. Peremans, 'Heuristique des papyrus grecs', Les Etudes classiques, x", 1943-4» PP- 257 ff· , 4. K. Weickert, Demetrii et Libanii qui feruntur τύποι emcToAiKoi et i m οτολιμαΐοι χαρακ-rfjpec, Teubner, 1910; P. Bon. 5. 5. See, e.g., P. Mich. viii. 484, 3-5. 6. Most recently discussed by H. Koskenniemi, Studien z. Idee und Phraseologie des gr. Briefes bis 400 n. Chr., 1956. 7. P. Bremen 63, 25; P. Mich. viii. 482, 10. 8. P. Cairo Zenon 59092 = Select Papyri i. 182, Oipicrpov; Theocritus xv, 69, depicTpiov; P. RyL iv. 627-8 (cols, i and ii of 627 for the clothes). 9. G. Mickwitz, 'Economic Rationalism in Graeco-Roman Agriculture', Engl. Hist. Review, ccviii, 1937, pp. 577-89; G. E. M. de Ste Croix, Greek and Roman Accounting in Studies in the History of Accounting (London, 1952). 10. Select Papyri i. 1. 11. See especially C. Preaux, Chron. d'Eg. xxxv, i960, pp. 223 if. 12. SB 9264; MegoIia, 17, plus P. Ryl. iv. 612 and V. Arangio-Ruiz, Mus. Helv. x, 1953, p. 240; unpubl. text from the 'cave of the letters' (oral information). 13. P. Mich. ii. 121 verso (Plate in Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World) and 122. 14. Mitteis, Gdz., pp. 102 ff. An example in B.G.U. 959 = M. Chr. 194. 15. P. Oxy. ii. 237, col. 8 = Select Papyri ii. 219. 16. The transaction is discussed at length by the editor in J.E.A. xx, 1934, pp. 20 ff.

Motes to Chapters I VIII

187

17. SB 7532; P. R y l . iv. 580. Cf. R . Taubenschlag, J.J.P. vi, 1952, p. 302: the assignment of burial benefit is critically examined by H . J . Wolff in Scritti in onore U. E. Paoli, 1955, pp. 735 ff. 18. A recent series of such instructions is P. O x y . xxxi. 2588-91. 19. See P. O x y . xiv. 1654 and U . Wilcken in Archiv, vii, 1923, p. 96. 20. Brussels, 1964. Claudius' letter = P . J e w s ; Gnomon = B . G . U . v. 21. It seems likely that the great masses of tax receipts on ostraca were found in one or two depositories. C . Preaux has argued that they may have been held on behalf of the payers by an agent, M.P.E.R. v, pp. 105-6. 22. P. Dura 82. 23. Select Papyri ii. 242. 24. Most recent discussion by C . B. Welles, P. Dura 128. 25. F. Zucker, S.B. Berlin. Akad. 1910, pp. 710 ff. = W . Schubart, Papyri Graecae Berolinenses, Bonn, 1911, no. 35; U.P.Z- i. 106 = E. Bevan, A History of Egypt under the Ptolemies, p. 106. A letter which it is claimed was written by the young Severus Alexander, elevated as a young man to the imperial purple, is published by J . W . B. Barns in J.E.A. lii, 1966. 26. See P . O x y . xxxi. 2572-6. 27. P. Beatty Panopolis 1. 28. Select Papyri ii. 397. 29. M . Hombert and C . Preaux, Recherches sur le recensement dans I'figypte romaine, 1952. 30. P. T e b t . i, P. Mich, iv, B . G . U . ix, P. Col. vi. 31. P. R y l . iv. 595; H . Braunert, Die Binnenwanderung, Bonn, 1964. 32. O . Gueraud, Enteuxeis; M . T . Cavassini, Aegyptus, xxxv, 1955, pp. 299 ff33. P . Y a l e Inv. 843, Bull. Am. Soc. Papyrol. i, 1964, p. 24. 34. W . L . Westermann, Apokrimata, 1954. T h e best re-edition of this text is that by H. C . Youtie and A . A . Schiller, Chron. x x x , 1955, pp. 327 ff., which is not even mentioned in the republication in SB vi. 9526. 35. P. Abinn. 1 (which survives because Abinnaeus was dissatisfied with it and had it recopied), P. R y l . iv. 617, and others listed in introduction there. 36. R . A . Coles, Reports of Proceedings in Papyri, Brussels, 1966. 37. Select Papyri ii. 301. 38. SB 7599. 39. P. Lugd.-Bat. vi, Nos. 14, 15, 17, 24. 40. SB 9050. 41. F. Oertel, Die Liturgie, 1917; P. London Inv. 2565 = SB 7696; N . Lewis, Leitourgia Papyri, New York, 1964. 42. e.g. P. Tebt. i. 34; iii. 758; 750. 43. P. T e b t . i. 5, 58. 44. P. T e b t . iii. 789. 45. P. Cairo Zen. ii. 59202, 8-9. 46. A m m . Marc. xxii. 16, 23. 47. SB 7738. 48. SB 9315. 49. P. O x y . xix. 2234, of A.D. 31. Cf. P. Mich. iii. 175, A.D. 193. 50. P. Abinn. 44, A.D. 342. Cf. P. Abinn., introd., pp. 18-19.

188

Notes

to Chapters

I-VIII

51. Sec 'dating' in A Reference Book of Greek Papyri. P. R y l . iv. 583; E. Bikerman, Chron. d'£g. liv, 1952, pp. 396-403; T . C . Skeat, J.E.A. xlvii, 1961, pp. 107 ff. 52. P. O x y . xxxi. 2565. 53. T h e debt of the great prosopographies to the papyri needs no emphasis. T h e Prosopographia Ptolemaica is now well under way. It is time for P.I.R. to be redone. T h e Byzantine prosopography is making good progress. But there is still no prosopography of the Zenon archive or of Oxyrhynchus. For the latter M . Paul Mertens has assembled a large collection of index cards of the third century A.D. A bibliography of lists of officials and types of document will be given in A Reference Book of Greek Papyri. 54. A beginning has been made by J . Lallemand, L'Administration civile de l'£gypte de I'avenement de Diocletien, Brussels, 1964. 55. Tale Class. Stud, xvii, 1961, pp. 149 ff. 56. E. G . Turner in Recherches de Pap. ii, pp. 117 ff. and Studien z- Papyrologie und antik. Wirtschaftsgeschichte, F. Oertel . . . gewidmet, Bonn, 1964, PP- 32-3357. H. C . Youtie, ' T h e Kline of Sarapis', H.T.R. xli, 1948, pp. g f f . ; P. M . Fraser, Opusc. Ath. iii, i960, pp. 1 ff.; C . B. Welles, Historia xi, 1962, pp. 271 ff.; xii, 1963, p. 512. 58. P. Sarapion 83 a, 14. 59. P. O x y . 1477 = Select Papyri i. 195. T h e identification was made independently by G . Bjorck, Symbol. Osloenses, 1939, pp. 86 ff., and T . C . Skeat, Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies, iii, 1954, pp. 41 ff. There are other unpublished pieces of Astrampsychus' book of fate in the Oxyrhynchus collection. Napoleon's Book of Fate, London, W . Foulsham, 1958. 60. Brussels, 1937. For P . G . M . see p. 164. 61. Philadelphia, i960. 62. M . Vandoni, Feste pubbliche e private nei documenti greci, Milan, 1964. 63. H. Thierfelder, Die Geschwisterehe im hell.-rdm. Agypten, Miinster, i960; J . Schwartz, Chron. d'Eg. xxxvii, 1962, pp. 348-9. 64. P. Hib. ii. 199. 65. P. Oslo iii. 77; P. O x y . xxxi. 2553; P. Corn. Inv. ii 33,5 (Recherche de Pap. iii pp. 25 ff.) 66. P. Herm. Rees 2-6. 67. SB 9527. 68. P. O x y . xxv. 2435 recto. Cf. note ad loc. on 1. 4, and, e.g., Luke xxiii. 21 O n the release of a prisoner cf. also P. Flor. 61. 59 ff., and A . Steinwenter, J. J.P. xv, 1965, p. 9. 69. ' T h e kingdom of heaven', H.T.R. xli, 1948, pp. 1 ff. 70. F. Mayser, Grammatik d. gr. Pap. aus d. Ptolemaerzeit, Berlin-Leipzig, 1906-38; F. Blass-A. Debrunner, Grammatik d. n.t. Griechisch, Gottingen, n t h ed., 1961; Engl, trans, ( g t h - i o t h ed.) by R . W . Funk, Cambridge and Chicago, 1961. 71. Aegyptus, x, 1929, pp. i o s f f ; xl, i960, pp. 177 ff. 72. W . Schubart, 'Das Gesetz und der Kaiser', Klio, xxx, 1937, pp. 54 ff.; H . Zilliacus, Untersuchungen zu den abstrakten Anredeformen und Hoflichkeitstiteln, Helsingfors, 1949.

NOTES ON THE PLATES Plate I. See p. 79 and Ch. VI, n. 13. Plate II. Athens Hydria 1260: E. G. Turner, Athenian Books in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C., p. 14. See also Ch. I, n. 35. Plate III. See p. 77 and Ch. VI, n. 8. Plate IV. B.M. Pap. 114; H.J. M. Milne, P. Lit. Lond. 28; Pack2 1013. Second century A.D., top of the roll. The right-hand column contains Iliad xxiv. 693-711 (omitting 694). The stichometrical (p. 95) letter ζ (— verse 700) is visible in the left-hand margin opposite 1. 11 (actually at v. 703 of the vulgate text). Speakers names are given as if this were a dramatic text, while a monogram of irot = ποιητήο, 'the poet', is set against narrative verses. The original scribe wrote a regular round capital. One or more later scribes have added, often rudely, punctuation, several accents, breathings, and diastolae, and iota adscripts. A hyphen is to be seen below the compound word απύβοωτην, 1. 9. In the left-hand margin at 1. 6 the words αυτικ αν, written cursively, are a correction or alternative reading for αντίκα δ', which the first scribe put in the text in the previous column at v. 654. Plate V. P. Oxy. 1803 ed. Grenfell-Hunt; Pack2 1826. Sixth century. An open leaf of a papyrus codex (the symmetrical worm-holes in the upper margin were made when the leaf was closed). Binding string of hemp re­ mains in the centre of the leaf, and bands of colouring run up the central margin. Each word explained in the glossary is separated from the next entry by a paragraphus. Right-hand page 1. 3 cirov και την τροφή ν απ Xwc OJC Ξενοφών ev β' Ava /Jaceajc. Plate VI. Published by G. Calza in Le Arti (Rassegna bimestrale dell'Arte, Florence), I, 1939, opp. p. 391. Relief from a building in Ostia. Firm elements for dating are not known to me. The bearded figures would suit second/third century A.D., or after Julian. Professor J. M. C. Toynbee tells me she inclines to the earlier dating, Dott. Raissa Calza to a date in the fifth century. A central figure, who may be a rhetorician or a teacher, stands on a platform, a roll in his left hand, his open right hand raised in a gesture. At either side a scribe seated at a low wooden table writes with a stylus (its blunt reverse end is readily identifiable) on wax tablets, the six wooden folds of which are supported on the table. Behind the scribe on the left are three men, one of whom is gesturing in dispute; behind the scribe on the right are two men, one of whom turns to look at his neighbour, whose hand is raised to attract attention. It has been suggested that the central figure is Christ, and that the scribes are the Evangelists writing down the Gospels. But the iconography is unusual and four Evangelists would be expected. The relief is noteworthy because it has often been categorically asserted

igo

Notes on the Plates

that in antiquity scribes did not write on tables or desks (cf. B. M . Metzger, Revue de Qumran 4, 1959, p. 513, nn. 20 and 21). T o the further question, on which also there is no evidence, on what support a scribe placed the text he was copying, this relief makes no contribution, since the writers are evidently either making notes of the proceedings or taking down from dictation. Plate VII. A private letter from Oxyrhynchus. P. O x y . xxxi. 2594, ed. P. Parsons. Second century. T h e name of the writer and his correspondent were set out in the first line, which has been torn away from the top.

'. . . to . . . his brother, greetings. W h e n I saw you, too, I told y o u w h a t to do about the maids, but y o u think that I have other feelings about y o u and was not advising you as a friend, although I have suffered from them. Well, m a y what y o u have done turn out to your advantage. Write to m e about your wishes. Y o u r children, w h o m the evil eye shall not touch, and your sister and all your friends send y o u their best wishes. Give my best wishes to Thaesis. I pray for your health.' Plate VIII. Aeschines In Ctesiphontem, §§ 52-53; P. O x y . xxiv. 2404, ed. E. G . T u r n e r ; Pack 2 13. T h e lower part of a single column of a papyrus roll. T h e nature of the writing and size of the margin show that this was a luxury copy. T h e same calligraphic handwriting is to be recognized in other copies of literary works found at Oxyrhynchus, e.g. a copy of Erinna (P.S.I. 1090) and of unidentified lyric verses (P. O x y . 2373). A second scribe has added punctuation (high stops), a single accent, and has corrected (cf. p. 93) the original version by making additions above or on the line, and by erasures (using dots above letters 1. 5, cancelling strokes 11. 17, 18). In the editio princeps it was argued that the revised text was inserted from a second exemplar, and is an improvement on the text known from the medieval manuscripts. T h e traditional text has been defended by R . Merkelbach, Studien z- Textgeschichte und Textkritik Gunther Jachmann gewidmet ( K o l n - O p l a d e n , 1959), pp. 162-4.

PLATES

I. A papyrus letter found in a house in Karanis (P- 79)

I I . S a p p h o r e a d i n g her b o o k (Athenian vase of 5th century B.C.)

I I I . M u m m y - p o r t r a i t of H e r m i o n e , grammatike (P- 77)

Actual size

I V . A p a p y r u s roll of H o m e r ' s Iliad (the ' B a n k e s ' H o m e r )

Five-eighths original size

V. A leaf of an open papyrus codex (a glossary)

VI. Scribes writing on wooden tablets supported on tables Relief from Ostia

V I I . A private letter from O x y r h y n c h u s Nine-tenths original size

V I I I . P a r t of a c o l u m n f r o m a p a p y r u s roll c o n t a i n i n g Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon Original size

GENERAL INDEX abbreviations, 60, 61, 70, 95, 96, 113, 114, 115, 127, 150,_ 154, 179. — graphological origins, 179. — regionalized, 51. Aberdeen, 158. Abgar, letter of, 38. Abinnaeus (cavalry commandant at Dionysias), 47, 48, 57, 77, 142, 148, 158, 177, 187. Abraham (bishop of Hermonthis), 47. Abraxas (papyrus of), 46. Abusir, 24, 32. Abusir-el-Malaq, 32, 46, 50. accounting methods, 131. accounts, 87, 90, 127, 130, 131, 142, 143, 186. •—official, 130. -— Roman military, 82. Achmim, see Panopolis. Acta Alexandrinorum, 49, 52, 128, 164, 186. •— crowd reactions, 151. acting copies (of plays), 81, 108. actors, 108, 109. — entrance and exit of, 184. 'Acts of the Pagan Martyrs', see Acta Alexandrinorum. Adler (E. N.), 159. administration (in Egypt), 148, 151; local, 84. — administrators (Greek), 75, 81, 84, I36: 137— authority (abuse of), 109. — bribery, 145, 14,6. — bureau (prefect's), 137. •—bureaucracy, 45, 144. •— clerks, 139; district, 143; village, 143, 144; royal, 143. — correspondence, official, 130, 137, 138, 139)144,168 — daybook (of posting station), 139,140. — declarations, 137; birth, 129, 140, 147, death, 129, 140; real property, 140; census, 129, 140; on oath, 130; households, 140. — executive (Ptolemaic), 141. Aegyptus, 155, 157, 177, 180, 181, 182, 183, 187, 188. 814262

O

Aelius Aristides (of Adrianutherae), 98. Aeschines (orator), 2, 185. — In Ctesiphontem, plate V I I I . •—textual tradition of, 185. Aeschylus: — Agamemnon, 116. — Supplices, 125; dating of, 125. — hypotheses to, 122. — manuscripts of, 185. — prosopa to, 124. -satyr-plays, 98, 159. — 'select' plays, 123. Africa, 39. afsh, 27, 29. agoranomeion (ayopavo/ietov), 134. agoranomos (iyopavofioc), 134. alabaster mines, 138. Aland (K.), 154, 183. Albright (W. F.), j, 172. album, 6. Alcaeus (of Lesbos), 98, 117, 119, 122, 184, 185. — hypomnema on, t i g . alchemical prescriptions, 46. Alcidamas (ofElaea), On Homer, 81. Alcman, 21, 116, 118. •—commentary on, 104, 118. — cosmological poem of, 118. — nationality of, 104, 118. Alexander (the Aetolian), 102. Alexander (the Great), 9, 19, 74, 99, 185. Alexander, J. R. (director of American Missionary School at Assiut), 22, 176. Alexandria (in Egypt), (see also Museum), 43, 49, 50, 74, 81, 83, 84, 94, 100, 127, 128, 135, 136, 142, 150, 151, 164, 165, 178; palace quarter of, 102. — Atrium Magnum (Alexandria), 50. — Brucheum (library of), 102. — central depositories, 136, 138, 144. — church of, 150. — gymnasium, portico of, 142. — severance from Egypt, 178. — University of, 37. Alexandrian citizens, 49, 50, 80, 81, 128, 137, 151.

194

General Index

Alexandrian citizens (cont.) — civil law, 49. — demes, 49. — Library, 102, 103, 111; accessions, 103; authors in, 102. — political pamphlets, see Acta Alexandrinorum. — topography, 50. -— tribes, 49. Algeria, 39. Ali-Gamman (Sheikh), 33. Allberry (C. R. C.), 175, 176. alphabetization, 100, 102, 103, 114. alum, g, 179. Aly (W.), 163. Amherst (Lord A. of Hackney), 159, 185. Ammianus Marcellinus, 145, 187. Ammonius (commentator on Homer), 118. Amphilochus (bishop of Iconium), 16. Amsterdam, 172. — University of, 164. amulets (Christian), 150, 165. Amundsen (L.), 167, 168, 171. Anacreon (of Teos), g8. anagraphe 134. d'Anastasi (Giovanni, Swedish Consul General), 20, 46. Anaximenes (of Lampsacus), 120. — Philippica, 120. anchorites 42. Andriscus (of Hermopolis), 88. Anecdotum Romanum, 117. Ann Arbor (Michigan), 55. L'Annee philologique, 155. annotators, 94, 104. Anonymus Argentinensis, The, 154. Antaeopolis, 48. anthology, 52, 85, 91, 123, 179, 183. — types of, 91. Anti (C.), 37. antigraphon , 94. Antinoe, 34, 37, 50, 77, 80, 82, 86. Antinous, 80. Antioch (in Syria), 37, 48, 131. Antiochus IV, Epiphanes, King of Syria, 147. antiquities, law concerning, 51. — dealers, 51. — service, 26, 33, 35. •— trade, 51.

Aphrodito (Kom Ishqaw), 33, 45, 48, 166, 169. Aphroditopolis (Atfieh), 33, 34. Apis, 149. Apocrypha, 15. — Christian, 150. apocryphal books, 22, 29, 160. Apokrimata, 142, 157, 162, 187. Apolinarius (strategus of Panopolite nome), 139. Apollinopolis-Heptakomia (nome of), 48. Apollinopolis Magna (Edfu), 27, 36, 45. 47. 162, 163, 171. Apollodorus of Athens (grammarian), Apollonides (scholar of Oxyrhynchus ?), 87. — Grammatical Questions 3I -

Apollonius (Minister of Ptolemy Philadelphus), 6, 35, 48, 144. Apollonius (strategus of ApollinopolisHeptakomia), 48, 178. Apollonius, also called Dionysius (Prytanis), 83. Apollonius Rhodius, 98, 122. — scholia to, 100. — textual tradition of, 185. apparatus, see Critical apparatus. Appian (of Alexandria), 97. Arabia (Roman province of), 39. Arabic papyri, 21, 29, 33, 160, 165. Arabs, 16, 38, 75. Aramaic papyri, 32, 39. Arangio-Ruiz (V.), 57, 158, 186. archaeology, 64, 76, 78, 80, 88, 153. Archias (Archon of Athens, 497/6 B.C.), 105. Archilochus (ofParos), 2,68,78,98,116. Archiv fiir Papyrusforschung, 23, 34, 35, 156, 161, 164, 176, 178, 186. archives {see also Papyri: Abinnaeus, Zenon, etc.), 16, 17, 21, 29, 30, 32, 33> 35, 38, 39) 45) 4 6 . 47. 48, 5°. 59. 64, 76, 77. 78, 83, 90, 127, 131, 134. i3 6 . '37. i43> "47. i59» l 6 °> l 6 l > : 63. '77. J 88; defined, 47, 48; Athenian, 106. — administration, 144. — chest, 181. — depository 76, 143. — keepers, 63.

General Index Archon list (Athenian), 104, 105, 160. Arden (Joseph), 45, 56. Argos, 105. Aristarchus (of Samothrace), 110, 111, 112, 113, 117, 118, rig. — Against Philetas, 114. •—Against the ' Chorizontes', 114. •—Herodotus hypomnema, 113, 121, 185. — Homeric hypomnemata, 113, 118. — On the Camp of the Ships, 111, 114. — On the Iliad and Odyssey, 114. Aristomedes, 120. Aristonicus (grammarian), 93, 182. Aristophanes(of Byzantium), 112. •—Lexeis 114. •— On Callimachus' Pinakes, 114. — On Courtesans, 114. — On Plagiarism in Menander, 114. •—collection of hypotheses, 123. Aristophanes (comedian), 97, 98, 123. — Archamians, 119. — Birds, 117. — Frogs, 99. — Peace (subscription in Cod. V), 182. — Plutus, 87, 88. — commentaries, 123. — Heliodorus' ekdosis of, 184. — hypomnema on lost play of, 119. •—scholia to, 100, 115, 184. — scholia (medieval), 123. Aristotle (of Stagira), 97, 104, 106. — Constitution of Athens, 22, 23, 24, 90, 96, 98, 106. — Poetics, 11 o. -— Pythian victor list, 106. arithmetic (exercises), 85. Armant, see Hermonthis. army (Ptolemaic), 46, 75, 77. army (Roman), 38, 39, 48, 50, 75, 81, 82, 135, 137, 138, 140, 142, 146, 148, 163. — arsenal, 139. •—battle order (Upper Egypt), 140. — cavalry, 48, 82, 142. •— centurions, 146. — cohort, 38, 8a. •—commanding officers, 137, 146, 147. — garrisons, 82. — pay (soldiers'), 140. — quartermaster, 38, 137, 138. •— recruits, 79. -—supplies (military annona), 140.

195

— veterans, 81. — watchword, 137. Arnim (H. von), 157. Arsam (satrap of Egypt), 8. Arsinoe II Philadelphus (Queen of Egypt), 150. Arsinoe (Ptolemais Euergetis), 21, 22, 44, 80, 81, 82, 133, 142, 159, 164. — record office of, 133. Arsinoite nome, 44, 49, 141, 143, 144, 150. Arthur (King), 17. Ascalon (Phoenicia), 50. Asclepius, 149. Asia Minor, 77. Assiut, 51. Assuan (see also Syene), 27, 32, 40, 42, 45, 5 1 Assyria, 2. asteriscus, 184. Astrampsychus of Phrygia, 149, 188. astrology, 98, 149. Astrom (P.), 173. astronomy, 149, 166. Astydamas, Hector, 81. Atfieh, see Aphroditopolis. d'Athanasi (Giovanni), 20. Athanasius (St.), 165. Athenaeus (of Naucratis), 88. Athens, 6, 50, 67, 89, 91, 95, 102, 104, 106, 109, n o , 132, 169, 182. — Athenian (classical), 85, 172. — Athenian dramatists, 109. — Constitution of, see Aristotle and 'Old Oligarch'. athletes, 84, 86, 109. athletic contests, 84, 104. Athribis, 52. Augustine (St.) (bishop of Hippo), 8, 16. Augustus (Emperor), 31, 32, 50, 94, 128, 186. Auja-el-Hafir, 38. Aurelius Dionysodorus (assistant to Aurelius Leontas), 138. M. Aurelius Epagathus (prefect of Egypt), 147Aurelius Isidorus (procurator of Lower Thebaid), 139. Aurelius Isidorus of Karanis, 36, 78, 83, 131, 148, 161. Aurelius Leontas (strategus of Ombite nome and Elephantine), 138.

194

General Index

Aurelius Plution (senator of Hermopolis), 85, 86. authenticity (of writings), 5, 100, 101, 103, 113, 120, 136, 138, 139. Avroman (Mountains), 37. Bacchias, 80, 160, 166. Bacchus (St.), 38. Bacchylides (of Ceos), 25, 64, 98, 116. — Dithyrambs, 98. — Epinicians, 98. — Kassandra, 119. — Paeans, u g . •—hypomnema on, 119. Bagnani (C.), 37. Bahr Yusuf, 28, 44. Baillet (M.), 158. Baker (S.), 3. bank, 135, 136. — accounts, 136. — royal, 47, 157. bankers, 81. Bankes (William John), 20, 21. — Homer, go, 97, plate IV. Barabbas (robber), 151. barbarian invaders, names of, 152. Barber (E. A.), 183. Barcelona (Papyrological Institute of), 53bark, 6. Barns (J. W. B.), 159, 160, 166, 173, 182, 187. Barrett (W. S.), 183. Barth61emy (D.), 177. Bartoletti (V.), 169. Baruch (Book of), 161. Basil (St.), 16. Bassi (D.), 171. Bataille (André), 163, 182. Beazley (J. D.), 174. Becker (C. H.), 165. Bedouin, 28, 177. Behnesa, see Oxyrhynchus. Bell (Sir Harold Idris), ix, 36, 74, 156, 158, 165, 166, 171, 178, 181, 186. Bellerophon, 6. Belzoni (Giovanni Battista), 21. Benoit (P.), 158, 177. Berchem (D. van), 158. Berciu (D.), 177. Berlin, 8, 15, 20, 23, 25, 52, 154, 157, 160, 169. — Museum, 22, 141, 160, 169.

Bes, 149. Bevan (E.), 187. Bible (see also individual books, New Testament, Minor Prophets, Septuagint): — origin of word, 1. — Greek, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 33, 35, 36, 39> 75. I 53 ;154, 158, 160, 161, 168. — Coptic, 36, 176. — Hebrew, 38. — Latin (Vulgate), 50. — Gothic, 50. bibliotheke enkteseon 134. Bickermann (E. J.), 178, 188. Bidez (J.), 179. Bilabel (F.), 156, 160, 170. binder's thread, plate V ; holes, 14. bindings, 8, 13, 14, 174. Bingen (Jean), 168, 171. Birket-el-Quarun, see Moeris (Lake of). Birmingham, 164. Bjorck (G.), 169, 188. Black Sea, 39, 77. Blanchard (Alain), 179. Blass (F.), 156, 178, 188. Boak (A. E. R.), 161, 167, 181. boats (in Egypt), terms for, 152. Bodleian Library, 64, 76, 97, 129, 171, 173Bodmer, M. (see also Papyri: Bodmer), 36, 52Bockh (August), 20, 47, 175. Boiling (G. M.), n o , 184. Bonner (Campbell), 166. Bonner (S. F.), 184. book-bucket (revxoc), 101, 140. book buying (in Graeco-Roman Egypt), 87. book-keeping (double-entry), 131. Book of the Dead, The, 76. books, ancient, 76, 79, gg, 107. — collection of, 102. — 'compound', 102. — genres of, 102, 103. — list of named, 88. •— 'simple', 102. — survival of, 124. Borchardt (L.), 32. Borgia (Cardinal Stefano), 18, 175. Boswinkel (E.), 159, 170. Bouriant (Urbain), 22, 25, 48, 52, 53.

General Index braces (use of), 70, 180. brackets (use of), 93. — double square, 70, 180. •—half brackets, 180. — half square, 180. — round, 70, 179. — square, 70, 179. Braunert (H.), 181, 187. Breccia (E.), 33, 37, 177. British Museum, 3, 10, 14, 20, 21, 22, 23. 25, 36, 37, 46, 47= 48, 53) 56, 64, 78, 100, 107, 173, 176, 177, 181, 189. Brooklyn Museum (New York), 171. Bruce (James: explorer), 18, 47. Bruckner (A.), 158. Brugsch (Karl Heinrich), 20. Brunet de Presle (W.), 168. Brussels, 140, 157, 165, 171. Bruyere (B.), 162. Budge (Sir Ernest Wallis), 22, 23, 25. Busiris, 145. Buttner (H.), 164. Byblos, 1, 172. Byzantine age, 146, 148, 153, 186. — papyri, 4, 21, 29, 30, 32, 45, 51, 52, 121, 152, 161, 165, 167, 168. Cadell (Helene), 169. Caesareum, 138. Cairo, 26, 27, 36, 42, 44, 161. — Museum, 35, 40, 141, 161. Calderini (A.), 152, 167, 181. Calderini (Rita), 83, 181. calendar, 146. — of festivals, 38. — ritual, 179. Caley (E. R.), 165. California (Univex-sity of), 31. Callatis, 39, 77. calligraphy, 16, 50, 56, 90, 94, 108, 181, plate V I I I n. Callimachus (of Cyrene), 68, 97, 98, 102, 103, 104, 106, 119, 122, 123, 185. — Hekale, 67. •—Pinakes 102,103,114,183. — Diegeseis to, 81, 124. •—list of dramatic victories, 106. — modern interpreters of, 103. Calza (Dott. Raissa), plate V I n. Cameron (Alan), 88. canvas (as a binding material), 14. Caracalla (Emperor), 75.

197

carbonized papyri, see Papyrus rolls, carbonized, cardboard (papyrus cartonnage), 14. cargoes, receipts for, 130. Carroll (M.), 184. cartonnage 14, 24, 31, 32, 34, 35, 45, 46, 50. 55. 78, 108. Casson (L.), 162. Castanet dancers, 81. Castrum Memnoniorum (Medinet Habu, Coptic Djeme), 18, 47. catalogues (library, ancient), 88, 102. catholicus, 148. Catullus (Gaius Valerius C.), 173. Caunus (in Caria, Asia Minor), 77. Cavassini (M. T.), 187. Cavenaile (R.), 155, 158, 180. 'Cave of the letters' (marriage contract from), 186. caves (as repositories), 2, 6, 18, 37, 38, 39, 186. Cazzaniga (I.), 167. cedar oil, 3. cemeteries (source of papyri), 36, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 39, 40, 46, 47. census, 129, 140, 159, 161, 187. Cerny (J.), 172. Chaerephanes (Archon of Athens 452 B.C.),

105.

chalk, 9, 174. Chalon (G.), 183. Champollion le Jeune, 20. Chariton (of Aphrodisias), Chaereas and Callirhoe, 81, 99, 183. charta 4, 9, 89. Charta Borgiana, 18, ig. cheirographon , 135. — annulment of, 135. chemical prescriptions, 46, 165. Chenoboskion, 40. Chester Beatty (Sir), 2, 13, 14, 35, 36, 52, 53; 55, 56, 75, 76, 174, 176. Chew Stoke (Mendips, Somerset, England), 39. Chicago (Museum), 162. chora 50. 'Chorizontes' 114. chorus, coronis to mark entrance of, 184. Chrestomathien (L. Mitteis and U. Wilcken), v, 156. Christianity, 75, 84, 150, 151, 165. — local deviations, 150.

194

General Index

Christian Texts, 50, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 157. 158, 170; dated, 150. Chron. d'Egypte, 157, 180, 181. chronology, 105, 106, 107, 120, 146. Church, 38, 81, 150. — Fathers, 150. Cicero (Marcus TulliusC.), 7, 173,174. citizenship (Roman), 68, 75. classification (in the Alexandrian Library), 100-4, 106, 108, 110. Claudius (Emperor), 128, 134. — letter to the Alexandrians, 137, 187. Ti. Claudius Demetrius (member of the Museum), 87. clay, 1, 5, 130, 172. C16dat (J.), 32Cleon (son of Cleaenetus), 66, 85. Cleopatra II Philometor Soteira (Queen of Egypt), 147. Clermont-Ganneau (Chr.), 32. clothing 131, 132, 186. Cockerell (Douglas), 175. codex (see also Papyrus codex, Parchment codex), 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 93, 97. 122, 123, 172, 173, 174. — leaves, size of, 13; conjugate, 15, 62. — marginal notes, 122. — medieval, 93, 97, 185. -— original Latin sense, hinged boards, 7, plate V . — recto and verso (see also Recto and verso), 14. — single quire, 13, 15, 53, 174. —

— — — —

8.

ansatus, 7. Bembinus, 12. Cairo, 14, 33, 124. Chester Beatty, 2, 13, 14, 35, 36, 52, 53) 55. 56, 75. 76, 174, 176— Freer, 14, 35, 176. — Heidelberg, 14. — Mississippi Coptic (Crosby), 15, 176. — Sinaiticus, 9, 15, 175. — Vaticanus, 12, 15. — Venetus, 182. coffin, see Sarcophagi. Coles (R. A.), 187. Collart (Paul), 57, 116, 157, 158, 161, 165, 168, 173. Collomp (P.), 169. Cologne, 159. Cologne, Papyrological Institute of, 5*-

colometry, 63. colophons (see also End titles), 65, 66, 94. 96Colotes (Stoic), 170. Colt, see Dunscombe Colt (H.). Columbia (University), 36, 141, 142. columns, of writing, 16, 66, 94, 95, 120, 122, plate V I I I . — height of, 63, 64. — size in prose texts, 63. comedy (Greek), 87, 92, 181. — Old, 116. commentaries (hypomnemata), 63, 92, 94, 95. 96, 99. 104. 109; 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 157. — popular, 124. — marginal, 123. — association with text, 114, 115, 117, 122, 184, 185. commentarii see Journals. commentators, 104, 113, 114, 117, 120. — respect shown to commentators' words, 120. Comparetti (D.), 163, 175. computation (astronomical), 149. conjugation (exercises), 85. Constantine the Great (Emperor), 45, 75, 100, 148. Constantinople, 50. Constanza (Roumania), 39. Constitutio Antoniniana, 68, 179. containers, Greek words for, 152. — of papyri, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 43. contracts, see Law. Copenhagen, 64, 164. copies, Athenian, 95, 109, 110; commented, 123; uncommented, 123. — of letters, 140. — private, 49. — privately commissioned, 87, 95, 96, 181. — scholars', 87, 118, 181. — 'working', 96, 120. Coptic, 150, 152, 176. — books, 14, 18, 36, 40, 53, 158, 161, 170. — ostraca, 171. — papyri, 21, 46, 47, 52, 158, 160, 166, 176. — receipt for parchment, 174. 'copy' books, 89.

General Index copying, faulty, 91, 93, 107, 108. — houses, see Scriptoria. Corinna (of Tanagra), 104. Corinth, 183. corn-collectors , 136, 139Cornell (University), 36, 162. coronis (use of), see Orthography, corrections of published papyri, 156. — scribal, 70, 94, 95, plates IV, V I I I . corrector, see Reviser, correspondence, see Administration, court (Ptolemaic), 77, 102. Courtois (C.), 170, 177. Crawford (D. S.), 163, 167. credit, see Papyrus documents. Crete, 1, 81, 100, n o . criteria (of Alexandrian scholars), 104, n o , 111, 118. Critias (the Oligarch), 104. critical apparatus, 71, 180. — signs, 71,92, 93,94,95, 113,114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 122, 125, 179, 180, 184. X> Xh116,117association with commentary, 114, 115. dash, 114. diple 113, 115, 117, 184. high strokes, 70, 180. • hyphen, plate IV. obelus 113. — 'sic', 93. criticism, ancient, 104, 106, n o , i n , 112, 113, 114, 119. — higher, 99, 103. — historical, 120. critics (Alexandrian), 106,110,112,114. crocodile gods, 79, 80. crocodiles, 31, 32, 37; mummified, 80. Cronert (W.), 170. Crum (W. E.), 166, 171, 174. Ctesias (of Cnidos), 8. cults, 149, 150, 185. — municipal, 150. — village, 150. culture (literary), 78. Cumont (F.), 37, 149, 162. Curschmann (D.), 165. Daiphantus (father of Pindar?), 104. damp (effects of on papyri), 18, 26, 30, 34. 44-

199

Daniel (Book of,) 162. Darb-el-Gerza, see Philadelphia. Daris (S.), 152, 180. dating (see also Handwriting (dating)), 59, 68, 72, 146, 147, 150, 187. — clauses, 146. Davenport (C.J. H.), 173. David (M.), 159, 170. Davison (J. A.), n o . Dawe (R. D.), 185. Dawson (W. R.), 20, 175. Day (J.), 162. Dead Sea, 2, 38, 132. Deas (H. T.), 115, 183. Debrunner (A.), 188. declamation, see Rhetorical exercises, declarations (to officials), see Administration, declension (exercises), 85. decrees, 49, 100, 109, 137. defixiones, 6, 173. Deir-el-Bahri, 47. Deir-el-Balizeh Euchologium, 154. Deissmann (A.), 164, 167. Delatte (A.), 179, 180. Delphi, 104, 106. Delta (of Nile), 18, 43. deltas 6. Demetrius the bookseller, 87. Demetrius (of Phalerum), 102, 106. Democrates (reputed author of Eur. Andromache), 104. Demosthenes, 2, 10, 23, 24, 52, 97, 114, 119, 121, 157, 172. — Against Androtion, 115. — Letter to Philip, 120. — MS. Marcianus 416, 182. Demotic Egyptian, 83, 148, 168, 170, 171— papyri, 46, 148, 158, 159, 160. Denderah, 42. depositories (regional), 136, 144. depository, of Hadrian, 136. — of the Nannaion, 136. — of property records: bibliotheke enkteseon 134, 135, 136; 136. — Prefect's, 142. — (public) 136, 186; superintendent of, 143. Derveni (Macedonia), 1, 18, 24, 39, 56, 77, 175desert, 25, 26, 28, 38, 40, 42, 44, 79, 81.

194

General Index

desiderata (lists of ancient literary), 88. Deuteronomy (Book of), 33, 161, 162, 176. Deutsch (Otto), List of works of Schubert, 100, 103. diastole 112, 17g, plate IV. diastromata 134. dicolon, 93. dictation (school), 91. Dictys Cretensis, 81, 100. didascaliae 104, 105, 106. Didymus (the Blind), 35, 176. Didymus ('Chalcenterus'), 25, 114, 119, 120, 129. — About Demosthenes 114, 121, 157. Diehl (Erich), 185. Diels (Hermann), 119, 157. Dietrich (A.), 165. Dimai, see Socnopaei Nesus. Dindorf (Wilhelm), 99. Dio Cassius (C. D. Cocceianus of Nicaea), 16, 181. Diocletian (Emperor), 9, 44, 45, 75, 76, 93. 148, 174, 186. Diodorus (scholar of Oxyrhynchus?), 87, 88. Diodotus, 85. Diogenes Laertius, 117, 184. Diogenes (of Sinope) (Cynic) [Letters], 174-. Dionysia, 66. Dionysiac artists (society of), 109. Dionysias (village of) (Qasr-Qarun), 44. 48Dionysius (of Halicarnassus), 120. diorthosis 102, 113. diorthotes , see Reviser. Dioscuri, 80. Dioscurus (of Aphrodito), 48, 177. diplomatic, ancient, n o . diptych, see Tablets, district, see Nome. — capitals of nomes), 80, 81, 86, 87, 90, 142. — officers, see Strategus. dithyrambs, 119. divorce, 132. •—contracts, 129. Djeme, see Castrum Memnoniorum. documents, see Papyrus, documents. — Aramaic, 174. — Greek (see also Law, Greek), 4, 16,

19, 84. 25. 30. 32. 34. 35. 36, 37. 38, 43. 44. 45, 46, 47. 49, 50, 51, 53. 57, 58, 59, 60, 63, 64, 67, 68, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 86, 88, 89, 90, 95, 100, 109, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137. 138, 139, 140, 141, 144. 146, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153, 156, 161, 163, 165, 168, 170, 173, 174, 184, 186. — Latin, 132, 133, 134. — bona fides of, 128, 138. — context of, 127, 128, 146, 147. — draft, 128. — earliest dated Greek papyrus, 132. — negotiable, 135. — non-notarial, 135. — original (of duplicates), 138. — private character of, 127. — stereotyped pattern, 63, 68, 128. — title to property 134. — types of, 129, 146. Domitian (Emperor), 143. Donadoni (S.), 37, 177. Doresse (J.), 40, 174, 177. dossier 140. dot (double), see Dicolon. dots, 70, 179, plate V I I I . Dow (S.), 172. dowries, 132, 134. Drachmann (A. B.), 179. Driver (G. R.), 172, 174. Drovetti (Bernardino, French Consul General), 20. Droysen (J. C.), 20. Dryton (of Pathyris), 77. Dublin, 24. ducenarius, 86. Dunlap (James, E.), 166. Dunscombe Colt (H.), 38, 176, 177. Dura-Europus, 8, 10, 37, 97, 134, 138. Duris (ofSamos), 117. dyke corvee, 1 g, 81. Eberhart (Hermann), 164. Ecclesiasticus (Book of), 162. Edfu, see Apollinopolis Magna. Edgar (C. C.), 57, 129, 131, 161, 167, 169, 177, 185. Edgerton (W. F.), 167. edicts, 109, 129, 183. — imperial, 68, g3. — of the Prefect, 109, 135. editio princeps, 54, 69, 154, 156.

General Index editions, critical, u 6 , 185; Roman, 184. — definitive ancient, 101, 102, 109, 1x2, 113; Alexandrian (defined), 112-13. — de luxe, 93, plate V I I I . — standard, 124. editors (modern), 125, 126, 152, 153, 156,179, Coeducation, 76, 88, 89. •— elementary, 85. — higher, 85. Eger (O.), 163. Egger (E.), 178. Egypt, 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 26, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 63, 68, 74, 75, 79, 80, 82, 84, 88, 95. 96, 97, 123, 132, '34, H5, ^47, 150, 170. •— Byzantine, territorial divisions, 148. — coalition monarchy (Ptolemaic), 147. — Duke of, 148. •—Graeco-Roman, 74, 97, 128, 131, j 36, 137, 146, : 47, 150— and outside world, 147. — permission to leave, 129. — Prefect of, 68, 128, 135, 138, 139, 142, 145, 147, 148; bureau of, 137. — visits of Emperors, 147. Egypt Exploration Fund, see Egypt Exploration Society. Egypt Exploration Society (Egypt Exploration Fund), 26, 30, 31, 34, 40. Egyptian, see Demotic Egyptian. — home rule, 46. — language, influence of, 152; submerged by Greek, 75, 150. — traditions, 82. Eisener (L.), 165. Eitrem (S.), 167, 168. ekdosis , 113, 184. el-Faris, 21. el Hibeh, see Hibeh. Elephantine, 27, 32, 42, 49, 132, 138, 163. Emery (W. B.), 172. Emperors, Roman (see also by name), 128, 142, 147. — arrival of; 139, 147. — letters of, 128.

195

— sittings before, 128. — speeches of, 128. — titles of, 68. 'encounter' (enteuxis, , 141, 187. end titles (see also Colophons), 13, 120, 121, 185. Engedi, 39, 132, 177. engineers (Greek), 44, 75, 147. Enoch (Book of), 13, 22, 162. enteuxis , 141, 163, 187. ephebes , 84. Epicharmus, 116. — commentary on, 117. Epicurus, 18. Epigrammata Bobiensia, 16, 175. Epiphanius (monastery of), 47. Episdes (N.T.), 75. epitomes, 63, 87, 88. erasure, 173, 180, plate VIII. Eratosthenes (of Cyrene), 106. Erinna (of Telos), plate V I I I n. Erlangen (University of), 163. Erman (H.), 173. errors, in interpreting papyri, 65, 70, 179— scribal 95, 107, 108. Eshmunein, see Hermopolis. Esther (Book of), 162. Etruria, 41. Etruscan, 6. etymology, 119, 120. — dictionaries of, 120. Euhemeria, 8i, 86. Eumenes (King of Pergamum), 9. Euphrates (river), 37. Eupolis, 98. Euripides, 85, 97, 98, 107, 120, 183. •—Andromache, 104; authorship and date of, 104. — Cresphontes, 81. — Cretans, 81. — Electra, 183. — Heracles, 66, 85, 107. — Hippolytus, 78, 107, 108, 183. — Hypsipyle, 95. — Ion, 85, 181. — Iphigeneia in Tauris, 107, 108. — Melanippe Desmotis, 123. — Oedipus, 123. — Orestes, 183. — Peirithous, 104. — Phoenissae, 92, 123.

194

General Index

Euripides (cont.) — Phrixus (First), 99,100; (Second), 99, 100. — Rhesus, 52, 104. — Sisyphus, 104. — Telephus, 95. — Troades, 119. — chronology of plays, 67. — complete edition of, 101, 104. — hypomnema on, 119. — hypotheses to plays, 63, 101, 124. — manuscripts of, 124. — scholia to, 100, 104. — 'Select' plays of, 123. — synopses of, gg. Eusebius (bishop of Caesarea), 100. — Life of Constantine, 100. Eustathius (Archbishop of Thessalonica), 105. Eutychides (of Hermopolis), 48. Evans (J. A. S.), 148. Evelyn-White (H. G.), 183. exegetes , 84. Exodus (Book of), 161. explicits, see Colophons and End titles. Ezekiel (Book of), 162, 168. Fackelmann (Anton), 56. farce (prose), 181. Farina (Giulio), 33. farm accounts, 90, 131, 186. farmers, 144, 149, 186. — Egyptian, 82, 145. — Greek, 83. — public, 81. — royal, 81. Fayyum, 19, 21, 22, 26, 27, 31, 35, 36, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 78, 79, 80, 86, 160, 163, 166, 175, 176, 177, 181. Fayyumic Coptic, 176. festivals, 137. — Egyptian, 149. — Roman, 150. fines (on officials), 145. Fink (Robert O.), 162. Flauius Marcius Se Dionysodorus (member of the Museum), 86. Flinders Petrie (W.), 24, 25, 26, 31, 32, 36, 43, 108, 164, 168, 180. Florence, 89. — Papyrological Institute, 64.

•— University of, 40. floruit , 105. Fondation figyptologique Reine Elizabeth, 157. Fondation Hardt, 173. fore edge (of codex), 13, 174. formulae, 63, 64, 67, 68, 82, 83, 107, 114, 115, 130Forshall (J.), 20. Fraenkel (E.), 185. Frankel (H.), [98]. Frank (Tenney), 186. Frankfurt (University of), 163. Fraser (P. M.), 188. Freer Collection, see Codex, Freer. Freiburg (im Breisgau), 163. Frisk (H.), 64, 160, 164. Fuks (A.), 158. Funk (R. W.), 188. Furia (L.), 20, 175. Gabra (S.), 37. Gaius (Caligula) (Emperor), 164. Gaius (jurist), 12. Galen (Claudius G. of Pergamum), 7, 93> I09> 174. 182. Gallienus (Emperor), 84, 85. Gardiner (Sir A. H.), 172. Gardthausen (V.), 182, 184. Garnot (J. Sainte Fare), 162, 163. gatherings, 12, 13. Gayet (A.), 34. Gaza, 38. Gebel Silsileh, 42. Gebelen (Pathyris), 77. Gehman (H. S.), 168. Gelzer (M.), 163. Gemellus (of Euhemeria), 81. Genesis (Book of), 162, 163. Geneva, 25, 36, 64. — Library, 48, 53. — University of, 36. Genoa, 169. George I V (King of England), 18. Gerhard (G. A.), 160, 165. Germanicus (Nero Claudius Drusus G.), 151. Gerstinger (H.), 158. Ghoran, 32, 45. Giessen, 68, 163. Gignac (F.), 152. Gilliam (Elizabeth H.), 160. Gilliam (J. Frank), 162, 181.

General Index Girard (P. F.), 36. Girton College (Cambridge), 77. Giza, 19, 51, 176. glossaries, 38, 185, plate V . — Greek-Latin, 124. glosses , 114, 11 176. glutinatores, 174. gnomai , 85, 89. Gnostics, 18, 36, 40, 47, 177. God, writing of name of, 150. gods, 82, 149, 150. Goethe (Johann Wolfgang von) , 1 9 . Goodrich (S. P.), 168. Goodspeed (E. J.), 161, 162, 169. Gospel of Peter, 22. •— of Thomas, 29. Goteborg, 160, 164. Gothic texts, 50. Gournou, 46. Gradenwitz (O.), 164. Graf (Theodor), 22, 158, 175. grain, 136. Grammatical Questions . 51grammatice 77, plate III. granaries, 79, 81. Grant (JamesSandilands), 25. grapheion , 134. gratuities, payment of, 131, 146. Greek language: Aeolic, 119. — consonantal values, 58. •—Demotiki, 59, 152. — dialects (literary), 99, 103. •—diction (epic), 114. — diphthongs (reduction of), 58. •—dual (number), 117. — gender, 117. — grammars, 151, 152, 188. — in Egypt, 75, 180. — Katharevousa, 59. — Koine > , 152. — legal style of, 153. — modern, 152. — speech (everyday), 122, 151. — standard, divergences from, 152. — vowel contamination, 58. Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, viii, 59, 60, 6s, 93, 173, 179, 182, 184, 185, 186. Greeks, in Egypt, 74, 77, 82, 83; and Egyptian ideas, 149. greetings (in letters and documents), :38, I11,

195

Gr^goire (H.), too. Gregory (C. R.), 12, 174. Grenfell (B. P.), (see also Grenfell and Hunt), 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 72, 164, 168, 177. Grenfell and Hunt, 10, 19, 27, 29, 30, 3i, 32> 33; 45. 137, 159> 161, 163, 164, 165, 168, 169, 175, 177, 179, plate V I n. Griffith (F. LI.), 159. Grohman (Adolf), 160. Groningen (B. A. van), 159, 163, 170, 172, 184. Grundzuge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde (Wilcken and Mitteis), v, vi, 34. 155. GMa-Gebal, 1. Gu£raud (O.), 36, 91, 161, 163, 166, 187. gum, 2, 3, 5, 15, 140. Gurob, 24, 26, 31, 45, 108, 164, 176. gymnasia, 80, 81, 84, 142, 181. — gymnasial class, 140. — membership of, 82. — officials in, 84. gymnasiarch , 83, 84. gypsum, 6. Habron (Archon of Athens 458/7 B.C.), 105. Hadrian (Emperor), 48, 80, 136, 143, 149— depository of, see Depository. Haeberlin (C.), 171. Haelst (J. van), 150, 154, 175. Hall (H. R.), 173. Hamburg, 31, 107. handwriting, 65, 88, 92, 93, 94, 136, 138. — capital, 60. — cursive, 60, 96. — dating of, 10, 38, 59, 99. — documentary, 96. — of scholars, 92, 94. — 'school', 89, 92, 94. — of scribes, identifying, 92. — spacing of, 71, 95, 114. Harpocrates, 149. Harpocration (scholar of Alexandria), 87, 88. — Lexicon to the Ten Orators, 87. Harris (A. C.), 2i, 46, 56. Harris (J. R.), 172.

194

General Index

Harris (Rendel), 164. Hasenoehrl (E. S.), 162. Hausmann (U.), 173. Hawara, 24, 26, 76, 77, 93. Haworth (Jesse), 76. Hebrew texts, 8, 38. Heichelheim (F. M.), 159. Heisenberg (A.), 167. Heliodorus (metrist), 184. 'Hellene' (defined), 82. Hellenism, 82, 84, 86. Hemaka (vizier), I, 172. Henne (Henri), 36, 178. Hense (O.), 184. Hephaestion (metrist), 184. Heptakomia, see Apollinopolis-Heptakomia. Heracleides (of Oxyrhynchus), 88. Heracleides Ponticus, 110, i n . Heracleopolis (see also Ihnasya), 21, 22, 3°. 3iHeracles, 66, 85. heralds, 84. Herculaneum, 17, 18, 39, 41, 56, 171, i75-_ Hermeias (priest), 47. Hermeias (of Hermopolis), 88. Hermes Trismegistus ( = Thoth), 48, 85, 86, 150. H e r m i o n e , 77, 180, plate III. Hermonthis (Armant), 47. Hermopolis Magna (Eshmunein), 21, 22, 25, 32, 33, 37, 48, 52, 78, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 88, 131, 139, 149, 169, 181. — senate of, 85. Herodas (of Cos), 22, 24. — Mimes, 98. Herodian (of Alexandria) (grammarian), 99. Herodotus (of Halicarnassus), 6, 74, 97, " 7 , 121, 159, 172, 173, 174. Heroninus (of Theadelphia), 131. Hesiod (of Ascra), 52, 97. — Catalogue, 98. Hettich (E. L.), 162. hexameter, 63, 179. — ekthesis of in trimeters, 179. Hibeh, 32, 45, 64. hides, use of, 8. Hieratic Egyptian, 148, 171. Hierocles Stoicus, 25, 157.

hieroglyphs, 1, 20, 43. high priest, 83. high strokes, see Critical signs. Hildesheim, 37. historical writing (Hellenistic), 98. history in commentaries, 120, 121. — contribution of papyrus documents to, 142, 147. Hodges (H.), 174. Hoesen (H. B. van), 149, 168. Hogarth (D. G.), 26, 163. Hombert (M.), 157, 159, 161, 187. Homer, 6, 8, 21, 40, 45, 51, 81, 89, 9°. 97> 99) 108, 109, n o , 113, 115, 116, 117, 122, 165, 182, 183. — Iliad, 13, 15, 52, 76, 81, 91, 93, 97, 107, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 118, 160, 173, 174, 184, plate IV. — scholia to Iliad, 100, 109, i n , 112, 115, 184. — lexica to Iliad, 114. — Grammatical Questions on Iliad, 51. — Odyssey, 15, 97, 107, n o , 114, 119, 184. — scholia to Odyssey, 109, 124. — Alcidamas on, 81. — formulae in, 67, 107. — hypomnemata to, 118, 119. — of Heroines, 119, 124. — Lexicon, 114. — MSS. classified by origin, n o . — parallels in, 117. — Scholia Minora, 124. homologiae , 134. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), 51, 178. horoscopes, 59, 129, 149, 168. houses, 79, 80. Hummel (J.), 165. Hungary, 39. Hunger (H.), 158, 172, 175. Hunt (A. S.) (see also Grenfell and Hunt), 26, 30, 31, 57, 72, 129, 131, 169, 185. Husselman (E. M.), 167. Hyperides, 21, 22, 46, 56, 98, 178. — in Athenogenem, 52. — 23, 24. — Chasles fragments, 178. hyphen, see critical signs. hypomnemata , 63, 96, 107, i l l , 112, 113, 114, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 179, 185.

General Index — citations of parallels in, 118, 120. — contents of, 118. -—form of, 114. — learning in, 121. — oral origin of, 113. •—transition to Scholia, 123. — without lemma, 115. hypomnematographus 87. Hypotheses to Euripides' Plays (P. Oxy. 2 455); 63, 101, 124. Hypselis, 48. Hypsicrates: Komodoumenoi Men made fun of in comedy), 87, 181.

195

irrigation, 27, 40, 44, 140, 143, 145, 177. Isaiah (Book of), 162, 176. Isis, 149. Isocrates, 97; . 23, 24. Israel, 38. Italy, 16, 50, 51.

Jachmann (G.), 107. James (St., Apostle), Epistle of, 161. Jebb (Sir R. C.), 99. Jena, 165. Jennett (Sean), 173. Jeremiah: — Book of, 161, 162. — Lamentations of, 161. Ibscher, H. (Dr.), 15, 56, 164, 165, Jernstedt (P.), 168, 169. '75Jesus Christ, 150, plate V I ; trial of, Ibscher (Rolf), 56. '51Idios Logos , Tariff (Gnomon, Jesus (sayings of), see Gospel of Thomas. Jewish Revolt (A.D. 132), 38, 39, 48. of. 137. 157Jews, 36, 38, 128, 133, 148, 158, 165, Ihnasya (Heracleopolis), 21, 31. 166. Illahun, 7. illiteracy, 76, 78, 82, 181. — status of, 128. illustrations (in texts), 50. Joachim (Prince), 171. Imberdis (Father), v, 17. John (St., Evangelist): Immerwahr (H.), 173. — Gospel of, 13, 14, 15, 160, 161, 174, immigrants (Greek), 44, 74, 75, 82, 176. 108. — Revelation of, 162. Incipits (see also Initial title), 183. John (of Stobi) (Stobaeus), 91. inflation (monetary), 148. Johnson (A. C.), 168, 186. infra-red (light), 61. Johnson (J. de M.) 34, 169. initial letters, 101. Jomard (E. F.), 19, 80. •—title, 13. Jones (A. H. M.), 100, 183, 186. ink, 39, 56, 61, 89. Joshua (Book of), 33, 176. — carbon, 2, 3, 18. — Coptic, 176. — metallic, 12, 61. Jouguet (Pierre), 32, 36, 57, 91, 161, inkwell, 84. 163, 165, 169, 173. inscriptions, 7, 34, 113, 127, 156, 170, Journal of Juristic Papyrologp {J. J .P.), 184. 157— bronze, 182. journals (vmfivr/jiaTicftol; Commentarii), — compared with papyri, 127. I36> !37> 138. — Greek (archaic), 57. Jude (St., Apostle), Epistle of, 160, 161. — honorific, 86. Tiberius Julius Alexander (Prefect of — stone, 182. Egypt) (later Praetorian Prefect), insertion, editorial, 70. 68, 109, 183. — signs, 70, 179. Iulius Asclepiades ('philosopher' of the Institut fr. de I'archeologie orientale, 36. Museum), 86. intermarriage, 82. interpolations, 180. Kalbfleisch, (K.), 157, 165. iota: Kalen (T.), 160. — adscript, gi, plate IV. Kapsomenos (S. G.), 175. •— confused with rho, 61. Karaba$ek (Joseph), 21, 158, 175.

194

General Index

Karanis (Kom Aushim), 27, 36, 37, 43, 78-80, 81, 141, 162, 167, 181, plate I. Kase (E. H.), 168. Kasser (R.), 160, 161. Kehl (Aloys), 159. Kelsey (F. W.), 36. Kenyon (Sir Frederic G.), 10, 23, 34, 55, 75, 156, 161, 162, 166, 172, 174, 175, 176. Kerkeosiris, 136, 141. Kerkesoucha Orous, 134. Keyes (C. W.), 162. Khamsin, 32. Khargeh (Oasis of), 25, 183. Khosiba (Jewish leader), 38. Kiessling (E.), 156, 170. Kilpatrick (G. D.), 75, 176. Klaffenbach (G.), 184. Kling (H.), 163. Knossos, j. Knox (A. D.), 154. Knudtzon (E. J.), 166. Kochel (Ludwig), List of works of Mozart, 100, 103. Koenen (L.), 165. Korte (A.), 1 =,6. kollema 1, 5, 140, 173. Kom Aushim, see Karanis. Kom el-Asl, 27. Kornemann (E.), 163. Kortenbeutel (H.), 157, 178. Koskenniemi(H.), 186. kosmetes , 84. Kraemer (C. J., jr.), 162. Krall (J.), 158. Kruger (O.), 168. Kiihn (E.), 157. Kunst (K.), 157. Kurdistan, 37. labour contracts, 129. Lachish, letters, 172. Laconia, see Sparta, lacunae, 126, 179. Lagercrantz (Otto), 165. Lake (Kirsopp), 162. — (Silva), 162. Lallemand (J.), 188. Lamacraft (T. C.), 14, 174. Lampsacus, 120. land: lease of, 59; settler's, 143; state, 140.

— register, 52, 53, 134. — survey, 140. — tenure (modalities of), 148. landlords, 82. language, of administration, 75, 153. — development of, 59, 122. — of individual authors, 59, 121. — of papyri, 58, 151, 153. — of poets, 68, II 2. Larsen (T.), 164. Lasserre (F.), 183. Latham (R. E.), 175. Latin, 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 17, 34, 50, 57, 75, 82, 100, 140, 142, 153, 180. — in Greek texts, 152. — papyri, 4, 16, 17, 34, 50, 57, 82, 128, !47> '53, 155, 158, 163, 164, 167, 170, 178, 180. Laughton (E.), v. laundry-lists, 131. law, Greek, 39, 48, 49, 50, 59, 68, 153, 186. codes, 129. • 'contract keeper', 133. contracts, 38, 77, 83, 86, 130, *32> 133, '34, 135; Coptic, 160; working, 134. conveyancing, 49, j 34. decisions (legal), 139. demosiosis , 135, deposit (thema, , 136. guardians, 133. investigation (legal), 142, 143. justice, 141. leases, 129, 134; contract of, 135; memorandum for (hypornnema, > 135legi , 138. legitimation, 132. note of hand (cheirographon, , 135payment (methods of), 136; to notaries, 142. penalties, 145. property, real, 140, 144. register, 53, 129. publicity , 135, 142registration of contracts, 133, 134, 135; of real property, 134, 135, 143; of repayment of loan, 135. sales, 129, 134, 135; of land, 47.

General Index searcher, in Prefect's depository, 142. title, to land, 135. — •—trials, 129, 143. • witnesses, 132, 133. —Jewish, 39, 133. — Roman, 131, 132, 134, 157, 186; effects of local law on, 133. contracts, 133; in double form, 133; enforcement of, 133, 134. courts, 133, 135, 137. wills, 32, 47, 75, 77. lead (as writing material), 6. Leaf (Walter), i n . leases, see Law. leather, parchment, 8, 9, 173, 174. — binding, 14. •—preparation of, g, 174. Le Bas (Philippe), 184. Leemans (C.), 20, 166. Leeuwarden (Friesland), 39. Lefebvre (Gustav), 33. 'Leiden' system of transcription, 70, 179, 180. lemma , 63, i n , 114, 115, 118. •—relation to commentary, 115. Lenger (M. T.), 137, 165. Leo (F.), 184. Lepsius (Karl Richard) ,20. Lerici (Dr.), 41. Le Roy Wallace (S.), 186. Leschi (L.), 170, 177. Lesquier (J.), 165. Letopolite Nome, 145. Letronne (Antoine Jean), 20, 168. letters, see Papyrus, letters. — capitals, 89. — divided by dots, 89. •— doubtfully read, 70, 179. — grouped into words, 57, 60, gg. — names of 5 divisions of Alexandria, 49•— forms of, 89, 99. — height, 89. — Ionic, 95. — learning, 85. •— omitted, 89. — order of making parts, 57, 58, 60, 61, 89. 'letters' ,83,181. leucoma , 6, 89. Leviticus (Book of), 177. Lewald (H.), 163.

i95

Lewis (Naphtali), 19, 86, 165, 172, 173, 175, 181, 187. Lex Iulia de maritandis ordinibus, 132. lexica, 34, 94, 103, 112, 114, 152. — format of, 114. Libanius (of Antioch), 97. libraries, 28, 40, 75, 76, 102, 106. library , 6, 75, 181. Lichacov (Nikolaus), 169. Liebesny (H.), 162. Lifshitz (B.), 177. ligatures, 60. Lille (University of), 165. limestone (as writing surface), 6. Linage (Ide), 163. linen, use of, 6. lines, additional, 107, 108, 109. — initial, 99, 102, 103. •—left out, 107. — length of, 63, 64. — numbering of, 95, 103. literacy, 88, 130, 172, 181. literary copying (terms in), 76. — criticism, gg, n o ; categories of, n o ; order of words, 108, 118. — origins confirmed, 100. — taste, 67, 76, 88. — texts, see Papyrus, literary texts. on ostraca, 89. — works: rare in archives, 77; repetitive elements in, 63. literature, care for, 78, 81. — Christian, 11, 38, 50, 52. — contracting horizons of, 123. — Greek, corpus of surviving, 103; history of, 104. 'liturgy'I ,143,145,165,187; nominations to, 143, 144; defined, «43liturgy, Christian, 160. •— Hermetic, 86. — of Mithras, 46. Lobel (Edgar), ix, 6g, 71, g4, 106, i6g, 173, 182, 184. local deities, 51, 53. — names, 53. London (city of), 39. Lowe (E. A.), 50, 158. Lucas (A.), 172. Lucian (of Samosata), 98. Luke (St., Evangelist), 13, 14, 15, 50, 151, 161, 174, 176, 188 (Gospels); 13, 15, 161 (Acts of the Apostles).

194

General Index

Luxor, 42, 51, 52. Lycophron (of Chalcis), 102. Lycopolis, 88. Lycopolite Nome, 49. Lydia, 104. lyric poets, 68, 94, 98, 114; hypomnemata on, 119. — verse, 63, 90, 98, 184, plate V I I I n.; popular, 89; monodic, 116, 117; choral, 116, 117. Lysias (son of Cephalus), 97. Maas (Paul), 185. Macan (Dr.), 23. Macedonia, 24, 39, 77, 96. Macedonians, 82, 141. Magdola, see Medinet-en-Nahas. magic, 46, 56, 149, 153, 154, 164, 167. MahafFy (J. P.), 24, 54, 168. Mai (Cardinal A.), 20. Majer-Leonhard (E.), 82, 181. Mallowan, (M.), 172. maltha, 6. Manfredi (M.), 184. Manichaeans, 2, 35, 56, 160, 172, 175, 176. Manteuffel (Jgrzy), 162, 163, 170. manuals: •— grammar, 11. •— philosophy, 11. manuscripts, see also Copies, Corrections, Papyrus, Scribes—classified: by city, n o ; by person, n o . •—families of, 125. — from outside Egypt, 16, 24, 39, 50, 77, 96. — medieval, 105, 107, 112, 124; compared with papyri, 125, 126, plate V I I I n. marginal notes, 92, 116, 121, 122, 124, 174, plate IV. margins, 63, 94, 95, 113, 114, 121, 122, 123, 124, 134, plates IV, VI, VIII. Marichal (R.), 158. Mariette (August F. F.), 21. Marinatos (S.), 172. Mark (St., Evangelist), ri, 151, 176. marriage, betrothal, 132. — brother-and-sister, 149. — contracts, 77, 129, 132, 133, 159. — deed, 32. — of Jews, 39, 132, 133. — settlement, 39, 132, 133.

— 'unwritten' (agraphos gamos, — 'written' (engraphos gamos, , 132Martin (Victor), 14, 48, 53, 158, 160, 161, 169, 174. martyrs, see Acta Alexandrinorum. masks (Prosopa, lists of, 123, 124. Maspero (G.), 22, 52. Maspero (J.), 16J. Massilia, 110. mathematical tables, 52. mathematics (Greek), 98. Matthew (St., Evangelist), 29, 151, 161, 176. maxims, copybook 85, 89. — metrical, 91. Mayerson (P.), 162. Mayser (F.), 188. Mazon (Paul), 184. M '23. 157Wilbour (Charles Edwin), 25, 171. Wilcken (Ulrich), v, vi, 21, 23, 25, 30, 3b 34, 35, 72, 155, '56, 157, 161, 163, 170, 171, 173, 178, 180, 187. Willis (W. H.), 175, 176. Winckelmann (Johann Joachim), 18. Winter (J. G.), 167, 182, 183. Wisconsin (University of), 36. Wittek (M.), 171. Wolff (H. J.), 187. women, 82, 83, 127, 132, 133, 142, 151, 181. — rights of, 133.

wood, drying of, 55. wooden boards, 6, 14, 89. — tablets, see Tablets. worm holes, 62, 63, 65, 68, 70, plate V . worms, 79, 144. writing, errors in, 93. — exercises, 89. office (grapheion, 134, 136-7, contractor of, 134; expenditure, 134. — 'slow', 88. Xanthus, i n . Xenophon, 103, 117. — Cyropaedia, 117. Xoual (M.), 165. Yadin (Y.), 39, 177. Yale (University), 36, 37, 187. Young (Thomas), 20. Youtie (H. C.), 55, 67, 7°, 83, 155, 161, 162, 167, 171, 179, 180, 181, 187, 188. Zagreb (Yugoslavia), 6, 173. Zakar-Baal, 1. Zalateo (G.), 182. Zaloscer (H.), 77. Zenodotus (ofEphesus), 102, 111, 113. — Glosses, 114. Zenon (manager for Apollonius, minister of Ptolemy Philadelphus), 35, 45, 48, 64, 77, 78, 131, 144, 145, 161, 162, 167, 177. Zereteli (G.), 168, 169. Zilliacus (H.), 153, 159, 160, 188. Zucker (Friedrich), 32, 156, 157, 165, 187. Zuntz (G.), 185.

INDEX OF GREEK WORDS (not i n c l u d e d i n G e n e r a l I n d e x )

112, 179, plate IV. 140.

140.

i (a)

I (b)