265 



PAPYRUS. 



PAPYRUS. 



268 



contained a list of kings till the 19th dynasty, with the dates of their 

 reigns, and a chronological introduction ; the Prisse Papyrus, con- 

 sisting of a book of moral instruction written by Ptahhetp, an officer 

 of the 5th dynasty, and the oldest known papyrus; the I. Sallier, 

 containing an account of transactions between the Hykshos king 

 Apapus, and the Egyptian monarch Taakan of the 17th dynasty ; the 

 II. Sallier, the instructions of Aineneniha I. of the 12th dynasty 

 to his son Usertesen I. ; and those of Sakarta to his son Papi 

 on his return from the college at Silsilis, the IV. Sallier, an Almanac 

 of fasts and festivals, with the religious reasons for the same, and the 

 luck or misfortunes of each day ; the D'Orbiney Papyrus, the romance 

 of the two brothers written by Knna for the young prince Seti II. in 

 the reign of Merienptah, a kind of novel, the plot turning on the 

 misconduct of the wife of the eldest, the death of the younger, his 

 revival and metamorphosis into a bull, and persea trees; the III. Sallier, 

 or poem of Pentaur celebrating the exploits of Rameses II., against the 

 Khita, and the grand triumph of .Egypt over that people. Besides 

 these which are literary, several documentary hieratic papyri remain, 

 as those at Turin, dated in the reign of Thothmes III., Amenophis II., 

 Raineses II., III., V., VI., the contents of which are as yet unpublished, 

 and the Abot papyrus dated in the 16th year of Rameses IX., con- 

 taining an account of the violation of certain royal tombs and the 

 examination by the police. The Anastasi papyri appear to be copies 

 of correspondence and instructions entered on the Egyptian patent 

 rolls. In Sallier I. are ten letters of Ameneman, and one of Pentaur, 

 about agricultural affairs, the advantages of learning, and instructions. 

 I. Anastasi describes a journey in Palestine, III. Anastasi miscel- 

 laneous matters addressed by Amenemap to Pinebsa, giving an account 

 of a military life. IV. Anastasi admonitions and other affairs, V. VI. 

 VII. VIII. of the same series, letters and miscellaneous entries about 

 judicial and other matters. A series of papyri at Leyden refer to j 

 cimilar matters, or magic. At Berlin a papyrus contains the receipts 

 of an Egyptian physician. 



The demotic or enchorial papyri consist principally of contracts for 

 the sale of lands, houses, mummies, and tombs, commencing in the 

 reign of Psamuietichus I., B.C. 850, and continuing till the reign of 

 Xero ; besides which, there are in the same handwriting, memoranda, 

 accounts, letters, translations of fragments, or later rituals by the 

 Gnostics, Basilidians, or Valentinians, occasionally accompanied with 

 valuable interlinear translations and words in Greek. They are chiefly 

 important for the light they throw on the chronology of the Persians 

 and Ptolemies, and on the changes which the language underwent at a 

 later period. Two Phoenician papyri have also been found in a tomb 

 of the Thebaid. 



The few Coptic papyri consist principally of portions of the Old and 

 Xew Testament, religious works, deeds and donations to monasteries 

 at Gemi in the Thebaid. There are no early Arabic papyi i, but this 

 language is found in the Neskhi character, probably written in recent 

 times on old mat. i i >l. 



are the Greek papyri found in Egypt less important ; and recent 

 discoveries have not only added considerably to the stock of Greek 

 literature, but excited hopes of finding still greater treasure?. The 

 150 papyri found in the vicinity of the Serapeum of Memphis have 

 revealed the inner life and government of that temple the mode of 

 transacting public business, the administration of justice, the value of 

 commodities, the state of the chancery of the Ptolemies, the rules of 

 the religious orders, and many other curious particidars connected with 

 the history of that temple. [SEBAPECM.] Those exhumed from the 

 ruins of Thebes have also been of great interest, throwing considerable 

 light upon the history of the place, especially the sale of the mummies, 

 liturgies, and houses, the quarrels of the various classes of undertakers 

 and others in that declining city. Besides these, letters of private 

 individuals, advertisements for nmaway slaves, a treatise on astronomy, 

 a horoscope, and a treatise on grammar, with extracts from lost 

 authors, and other miscellaneous writings have been found. The dis- 

 covery of a book of the ' Iliad,' and of two lost orations, and portions 

 of two others of Hypereides, have proved what important manuscripts 

 in this material may come from the Theban tombs. The Psalms of 

 David, in uncial characters, on papyrus, in the form of a book, have 

 also been found in Egypt. 



Although there is no doubt from the mention of papyrus, cither in 

 its natural or manufactured state, by Homer, Alcicux, ./Eschylus, 

 lf<T<lotus, and Plato, that the Greeks were acquainted with its use at 

 an early period, yet it is doubtful if it was universally employed, not- 

 withstanding the spurious letter of Sarpedon, said to have been written 

 from that monarch when at Troy, and sent to Lycia. It appears from 

 an Athenian inscription that a sheet of papyrus, charta, in the days of 

 Pericles, cost 1 drachm 2 obols, or about If. IJc/., which, taking the 

 value of money at that period as four times greater than at pre- 

 sent, amounts to about it. 6d. [Rhangabu 'Ant. Hell. I.,' 1842, No. 

 66 59; Egger, 'Rev. Contemp.' 1856, p. 171.] Probably the state- 

 ment of Varro is substantially correct, and it was not much in uxe 

 till the time of Alexander the Great before which period the Greeks 

 used palm-leaves, linen, lead, or wax. Among the Ionian Greeks 

 diftherce, or skins, appear to have been anciently employed, for they 

 gave this name to papyri. At the time of the Ptolemies papyri and 

 books were exported from Egypt, but the trade was stopped by 

 tUu rivalry of the kings of Egypt and Pergamus Ptolemy Epiphanes 



V. and Attalus, or Eumenes II., in whose reign the grammarian Crates 

 is said to have invented peryamena, or parchment, or rather to 

 have substituted its use, this material having already existed long 

 before in Egypt rolls of brown leather of the 14th, and of white 

 leather or parchment of the subsequent dynasties existing in the 

 collections of the British Museum of nearly 1000 years older than the 

 parchments of the kings of Pergamus. 



The use of papyrus in Home dated from the earliest period, the 

 books of Numa and the Sibyl were said to have been made of this 

 material, but Varro, in a pasige controverted by Pliny, states that the 

 paper was first inveuted long after, in the days of Alexander the Great. 

 It is clear, however, that it was in use in European and Asiatic 

 Greece, and consequently Magna Gnccia, long before. According to 

 other authorities it was raised in Apulia and Calabria, and even in the 

 marshes of the Tiber, in the vicinity of Rome ; but there appears to be 

 some doubt whether the Romans manufactured paper at Rome or 

 merely improved and adapted the raw papyri exported from Egypt. 

 In the days of the empire various kinds of papyri then iu use were 

 named from their size or fineness. The Romans prepared their paper 

 with greater care, and sized it with a paste of fine flour stirred iu 

 boiling water with a few drops of vinegar, and some leaven, which was 

 filtered and kept for one day ; after sizing it was beaten with a hammer 

 and sometimes sized a second time, pressed and smoothed. The names 

 of the principal kinds were the ekarta Axyusta, 12 inches broad, of a 

 fine and white quality, anciently called the liieratica, because used for 

 religious purposes, rather too thin for books, and used only for letters, 

 hence called epitt'jlaru ; the Liriana, named after Liria,, was the 

 second quality ; the third quality was the amjiliithmtrica, so called 

 from being made near some amphitheatre, of 9 inches breadth, being 

 beaten out from an Egyptian papyrus of 8 inches ; an improved kind 

 called the Fanniana, was prepared by the grammarian Rhemmius 

 Fannius PaUcmon, in the reign of Claudius I., 10 inches in width, and 

 very fine, and capable of being written on both sides; the Claudia, 

 invented by the same emperor, was 13 inches wide, and underlaid with 

 a second layer ; besides which there were the emporeltca, or warehouse 

 paper, for packing, of C inches ; the saillca, made either of coarser or 

 old material, and narrow ; the tccniotica, very coarse, sold by weight ; 

 and other qualities and kinds as the Thtlitiica, Carica, Mtmphitica, 

 named from the places where produced ; the Corneliana, said to have 

 been called after Cornelius Callus ; the regia, or royal, finer, but not 

 large ; and the macrocullia, larger than 13 inches. The quire, scapus, 

 consisted originally of twenty sheets, or playulct, but was afterwards 

 reduced to ten. The defects were roughness, spots, and gaps. The 

 length of the writing on the pages was narrow, and the Herculaneum 

 papyri do not exceed 4 niches ; the writer used an ink made of soot, 

 of pine-wood, burnt pitch, and resin, and special writers, called 

 rltryanyraphi, wrote gold letters ; all wrote with the calamus, a 

 Carian or Egyptian reed, on blind lilies, alol'et, generally on one side 

 only, the back being generally stained with saffron or cedar-oil. The 

 writings or books were rolled up upon a stick, like the Egyptian, into a 

 cylindrical form each cylinder was called rolumcn ; and those of Jlcr- 

 culanei'tn have the stick, bacillus, or the umbilino, concealed in the 

 rolls: at each end was a projecting knob, corn a. ; the edges were 

 coloured black. Volumes were often placed in purple leather cases, 

 called iittylxe ; and the title of the roll, tilulux, was written on a small 

 strip of papyrus or parchment, Inrum, in letters of a light red colour, 

 besides which, a portrait of the author was sometimes drawn on the first 

 page of the roll. The titles of works were suspended to the door-posts, 

 ciiliimnct, of the booksellers, librtirli, who formed an important class. 

 Books were not very dear : a copy of the first book of Martial's ' Epi- 

 grams ' sold for 5 denarii, or about 4.--., in the author's lifetime. The 

 Alexandrian trade iu books was very great ; aud nothing astonished 

 Hadrian more on hia visit to that city than the activity of the paper 

 manufacture at Alexandria, which formed one of the staples of Egyptian 

 commerce, which is mentioned by Philostratus, A.D. 244 ; and the 

 pretender to the empire, Firmus, A.D. 272, boasted that he could feed 

 his army off the papyrus and glue of his paper manufactory. The 

 Alexandrian papyrus is mentioned by St. Cyril, A.D. 409, and a Latin 

 deed of sale is known of the same century, found at Philic. St. Jerome 

 in this century mentions its use as universal. The use of this material 

 continued to be universal in the following century, and there remains 

 of this age the homilies of St. Avitus, A.D. 525 ; the charters of 

 Ravenna,.of A.D. 552 ; the homilies of St. Augustine, written on papyrus 

 with sheets of parchment introduced ; and fragments of Josephus. 

 The most remarkable event of this age is the abolition of the paper 

 duty by Theodoric, recorded in the pompous and flowery panegyric of 

 Cassiodorus, A.D. 562. It is also mentioned in this century in the 

 legend of St. Eugendus, ami by Gregory of Tours, as exported from 

 Alexandria. The Greek charters of Mauricius and Hcraclius, A.D. 606 

 616, and the Latin of Dagobert I., AD. 690, show its use in the east 

 and west in the 7th century; the bull of Pope John VIII., A.D. 876, 

 brings its use down to the 9th ; and in Italy it continued to be used 

 till the llth or 12th, the latest known document being the bull of 

 Paschal II. in favour of the see of Ravenna, but Eustathius, A.D. 1170, 

 speaks of papyrus as extinct in his days ; and it appears to have been 

 quite superseded by the use of cotton-paper, Charta Bombyrlna, or 

 Damatctna, introduced by the Arabs from Asia, of which they obtained 

 the knowledge in A.D. 704, according to some authorities, but no 



