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GREEK PAPYRI IN EGYPTIAN TOMBS.*
The finding of written documents in the fab-
ric of Egyptian mummy cases, by W. Flinders
Petrie, in 1889, attracted the attention of all
interested in the land of the Nile. These dis-
coveries, remarkable in many ways, have been
explained and elaborated by Professor, Ma-
haffy, in a work of absorbing interest not only
to Egyptologists, but to classical scholars, and
to students of history, jurisprudence, and pa-
laeography as well. While Mr. Petrie was ex-
ploring the necropolis of Tell Gurob, on the
shores of the vanished Lake Moeris, he noticed
that some of the mummy cases were made of
layers of papyri glued together and painted.
In these he detected traces of writing, and
straightway set about the almost hopeless task
of separating and cleaning the various frag-
ments. The ink in many places was entirely
effaced by the glue or the lime used to form a
surface for coloring. But through good for-
tune and great care, he rescued a large num-
ber of more or less legible lines, and brought
them to England. Here they were commkitted
to the very competent hands of A. H. Sayce
and J. P. Mahaffey, who sorted, arranged, and
began to decipher them. Soon it became ap-
parent that the mutilated pieces from which
later generations had made a kind of papier
maché for burial purposes, were portions of
the valued and official papers of their prede-
cessors who lived in the third century before
Christ.
There is hardly anything in literary annals
more delightful than the account of the days
spent at Oxford in the Long Vacation of 1890,
by the two scholars, in pouring over these most
strangely revealed records of the past. Gradu-
ally there emerged the remains of a very care-
----
fully and beautifully written roll containing
the Phædo of Plato, in an earlier text than
any heretofore known, and probably represent-
ing its condition before it was edited by the
critics of Alexandria. Then there came to
light portions of three pages of the last act of
Euripides’ celebrated play Antiope, which
we have only in an imperfect condition, going
far to complete it. Next appeared a few short
pieces of poetry, seeming to be elegant extracts
for use of schools, some fragments of the
Iliad containing several terminations and be-
ginnings of lines not found in any known
manuscript of Homer, but identified in part
with a passage in the Eleventh Book; scraps
from other classical authors, a quotation from a
lost play, and a page from a discourse on Good
Fellowship, all writ in the purest Greek.
One small fragment has a curious interest
and importance. It is from the work of Alki-
damas, the contemporary and rival of Isocra-
tes, entitled the Mouseion, the original tract
which supplied part of the material for the ex-
tant "Contest of Homer and Hesiod." The
book known by this name was produced by
some Hellenistic sophist not earlier than the
second century A.D., since it cites an opinion
of the Emperor Hadrian. Twenty years ago
a German scholar, F. Nietzch, made a critical
examination of it and the legend it is based
upon, and, from a few stray hints in the only
known authorities, came to the conclusion that
the story of the Contest was old and widely
spread long before Hadrian’s day, that our
present account of it was put together by its
author from ancient materials fo which the
main source was the Mouseion of Alkidamas,
from whom the contest of the two great poets
received its earliest literary form, and that cer-
tain lines were literally transcribed from the
original work, and were not the invention of
a later day as some claimed. The text here
recovered brilliantly confirms the judgment of
this acute critic. It shows the Contest
was not an invention of Hadrian’s age, but ex-
isted in much the same form four hundred
years earlier, than it then probably had great
popularity, and that reading which Nietzche
defends was the reading in the third cen-
tury B.C., and therefore almost certainly the
genuine text. It rarely happens to a scholar
in this field to receive such unexpected proof
of the correctness of a theory, and to have it
proved to be based upon such profound learn-
ing and sagacity.
Together with these classical treasures were
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many legal or official documents, bearing dates
which were a great surprise to their investiga-
tors. Up to this time no Greek papyri had
been discovered in Egypt of a period before the
Christian era. But there was a long series of
official copies of wills, labor accounts, records
of judgments and other papers in the Grecian
language, unmistakably dated in the reigns of
the second and third Ptolemies, or from 280
to 220 B.C. There were also portions of pri-
vate letters, some in clear and beautiful hand-
writing, begging petitions, acknowledgements
of money received, and reports of work done,
all of about the same period, imbedded in these
cases. The private letters were usually written
on long narrow strips of papyrus which have
been torn in two by the coffin makers, and so
mutilated that it is difficult to decipher their
meaning. The writing was however, peculi-
arly large and fine, by way of showing respect,
or as evidence of politeness, as Professor Ma-
haffy supposes. He instances the words of St.
Paul: "See with what large letters I have
written you in mine own hand." One epistle
from a steward to his employer, Sosiphanes, is
complete except the writer’s name. It opens
with a greeting and much thanks to the Gods
that his master is well, and informs him that
the whole vineyard has been planted and the
climbing vines attended to, that the olive yard
has yielded six measures, and that they are
making conduits and watering; which shows
that vines and olive trees were then cultivated
in the district of the Fayoum.
Only such a scholar as Mahaffy could have
reconstructed from these fragmentary materi-
als, and the stories of his own learning, the his-
tory of the Grecian colony in Egypt to which
these reconstructed manuscripts belonged. But
he has made it as vivid as though the men
who read and enjoyed these classic works, who
executed these wills and contracts and wrote
these letters, were living in our midst to-day.
We see the Greek soldiers of Ptolemy Phila-
delphus, who paraded the streets of Alexandria
at his coronation, dismissed with handsome
gifts, and settled as landed proprietors on the
fertile shores around Lake Moeris. So minute
are the descriptions of them in some of these
papers that we know from whence they came,
whether, Thrace, Arcadia, or Argos; their age
and height, their features, the color of their
hair, and weather it was straight or curly,
their battle scars, usually about the head, and
the names of the old regiments in which they
had served, whether the cavalry or the heavy-
----
armed infantry. We see them engaged in the
culture of the vine and olive, transacting
business, and introducing Grecian customs,
forms, and literature. We read the evidences
of similar settlements of Grecian veterans in
this part of the Fayoum under later kings, and
the indications that called to foreign
wars under the military tenure by which they
held the soil, a native insurrection broke out
at home. And they doubtless returned to find
themselves dispossessed, and unable to recon-
quer their lands; and so their precious things
were despised by those of another race, and
their books and letters and documents were
discarded, and fragments put to the cu-
rious use which has preserved them to our
day.
The subject proper is enriched by the learned
author of this Memoir with most interesting
disquisitions upon papyri in general, the de-
motic writing, the bibliography of Ptolemaic
Greek documents, the history of the times of
the first two Ptolemies, the texts of the Petrie
Papyri, and the palæographical results of their
decipherment, each most worthy to be the theme
of a separate and special article. There is
space only to indicate some of the principal
conclusions which Professor Mahaffey derives
from the marvellous discovery of the Flinders
Petrie Papyri. He finds these to be the recov-
ery of by far the oldest specimens of any cla-
sical text the modern world has yet seen, and
of the best of all the classical manuscripts
found in Egypt; ample materials for new stud-
ies of the times of the Ptolemies and for a his-
tory of them such as has not yet been written;
the reconsideration of hitherto accepted
theory of jurists as to the development of the
right of bequest; and much new light upon
the rapidly expanding science of Greek palæ-
ography. He tells us, as well may, that this
Memoir contains materials enough to satisfy
the most exacting lover of antiquarian novel-
ties. But it is the privilege of the lover of an-
tiquarian novelties of Egypt never to be satis-
fied, for each year reveals new wonder of
this kind; and hence, as Professor Mahaffy
says, that he has still in hand a store of un-
separated fragments sent him by Mr. Petrie
from the same wonderful source, which he is
now endeavoring daily to explicate and read,
we may confidently hope to be ere long de-
lighted with the revelation of still other treas-
ures from among these papyri, so marvellously
preserved and brought to light.
EDWARD G. MASON.
*The Flinders-Petrie Papyri. With Transcriptions,
Commentaries, and Index. By the Rev. John P. Mahaffy,
D.D., LL.D. Autotypes I. to XXX. ("Cunningham Me-
moirs" No. VIII.) Dublin: Royal Irish Academy.
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