Atkinson — On Prof. Rossi's South-Coptic Texts. 29 



verbs. Of this, the foUomng conjecture of his will give clear proof, 

 xxiv. 14 : — 



eksanhe de se poi la troverai, 



er[e pekbae] anai sard, la tua fine huona. 



As the LXX has lav yap evprj^, Icrrat KaXr] rj reXevry] aov, he could 

 not very well err, but he most assuredly cannot get his translation 

 legitimately out of his text, for, as it stands, it would mean, " if thou 

 /«//", eksan-he, an intransitive verb. It could not possibly be the 

 verb he, "to find", in the text as he has edited it. Then in the 

 apodosis, his ere is wrong, simply because of the previous mistake: 

 he should have given eksanhe eros, "if thou find it, wisdom", 

 8Uid then he would have seen the necessity of having the future na 

 in his apodosis. 



8. His mistake is of course heightened by the fact that he does 

 not know what case he, "to find," governs, for he has edited, at 

 xxvii. 26, ekehe [n]hieib, for the LXX Iva wcri uol apv(.<s ; but the 

 verb he is followed by the directive e, and could not have n in 

 immediate succession to it. 



9. And now we have another conjecture, of the wildest kind, with 

 absolutely nothing to recommend or justify it, xxx. 12 : 



t[efiii5tjb]iii de mpftbbos ma non lava la sua sozzura. 



The preceding half of the verse is absent from the papyrus, and in the 

 beginning of the latter half is a lacuna, which Prof. Eossi has filled 

 up in the most mechanical and farfetched way, reading tef-mntjbin, 

 because his papyrus gave him, as he thought, the final letters .... in, 

 and he did not know any other Coptic word ending in these letters than 

 the word mntjbin, rendered soszwrff. Well, mntjbin is a Coptic 

 word, certainly ; but what word in the LXX original was it intended 

 to represent ? There we have ttjv 8' e^oSov avrov ovk dTrevn{/€v. I do 

 dwell upon his wo?^ lava, in the present tense, for the confusion in his 

 tenses is extreme, and mpf as a prefix of past tense has its rights 

 frequently ignored; but where is the word for mntjbin ? 



The fact is, he has misread his papyrus, which obviously has 

 not .... in [irt], but .... ie [IH], for the word he should have 

 edited was of course tef-hie, "his way", as the representative of 

 Tiji/ e^oSov avTOv. 



10. Here follow in the same word two conjectural emendations, 

 both of which are wrong, exhibiting a very serious want of gram- 

 matical knowledge of the most elementary kind ; for he has edited 



