34 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



know nothing of rat save with pronominal affixes ; as independent 

 substantive, we must use werete, not rat. 



25. The following emendation is yet more noteworthy. His text 

 is given thus, xxix. 7 : 



ano mpf[h]e nkebet nsovrn. 



His translation reads, "ne anco ha mente a conoscere"; to which he 

 appends the note, " letteralmente ha cuore^' ; i.e., he is translating 

 so literally, and, as he judges, so accurately, that he will not even 

 diverge from the text so much as to render ha mente instead of 

 ha cuore, without calling the reader's attention to the fact. 



And it is all wrong : text, translation, and note ! 



I cannot even understand how he got it, for no conceivable pressure 

 can extract his version out of the text he has given : for mpf is a 

 past prefix, and he would have to mean " find" or " get", and then 

 would have had to be followed by the directive e ; and lastly, he 

 has ignored the original altogether, for the LXX has kol tttwx^ ovx 

 virdpx^i voTJs iTTtyvw/j-wv. From this it becomes clear that, as vovs 

 eTTtyi/w/xwi/ is rendered by het nsown, the word 77x0;;^^ is omitted 

 altogether in his text ; hence we see that he has misread his papyrus, 

 for TTTwxos is heke, he eke, i.e., 



not [e]nKe but [H]HKe. 



And then his mpf is further seen to be a mistake for mnte, and 

 the text should read: mnte pheke het nsown, "the poor has 

 not an understanding heart." 



26. It is one of the most certain facts in the use of Coptic 

 compound verbs, that ji and tl denote respectively the passive (or 

 middle) and the active, e.gr. : 



tisbo, "to teach"; 

 tismw, "to praise"; 

 tioms, "to baptize"; 



isbo, "to learn" ; 

 ismw, "to be praised" ; 

 ioms, " to be baptized" ; &c. 



But Prof. Eossi has no sure grasp of this not very difficult principle, 

 for he has edited, xxix. 15 : [jisijpe mpefeiot, " conturba il padre 

 suo," where obviously the ji is quite impossible, for "to mahe 

 ashamed" is tlsipe, whereas jisipe is "to ^e ashamed". 



27. That he does not understand the principle is clear, for in 



another passage, Prov. xxiii. 13, he edits, mprlo ektisbo , 



which he translates by "non cessar di istruir^fe, perche, &c., where 

 the LXX has j/i^ttioj/ TratSerctv, tisbo nwkwi, of course. 



