Atkinson — O71 Prof. Rossi's South-Co2)tic Texts. 93 



184. The wrong -word is conjectured at [24 a 17], where he gives : 

 hm plogis[mos etb]be, Tendering con rafftonamenti pudichz. There 

 is no such word as etbbe , and even the form intended, viz. at -tbbe , 

 would be no more tolerable, because tbbe is still only the proclitic 

 form : he would have had to alter his papyrus, and read et-tbbeu. 

 But there is no need ; the Greek has t(3 crwffipovt A.oytcr/x<3, and for that 

 logis[mos nsa]be were the proper words, sabe being the normal 

 adjective for ^pdvt/xos, and so the rendering pudichi is quite out of 

 place here. 



185. But this wrong rendering of Greek words is much better 

 exemplified in the next passage [25 a 22] : 



mSnsa nai p[inw] 



allora 



petnasope nak 



chi ti dard 



ntimoria 



ajuto ? 



Here he took rt/xcopta to mean "help", (which of course it does 

 sometimes mean, just as crixx^pwy does mean sometimes " chaste",) and 

 as he could not extract sense with this meaning, he simply rendered 

 at haphazard: " tJien^ who will give thee helpV Tet he had himself 

 conjectured p[mw] , for the Greek has OdvaTos ; and even so, he did 

 not see that the Coptic words mean : " after that death will be to thee 

 Q.S punishnenV\ " thy punishment will certainly be death", by which 

 words the Copt has rendered the dTrapatTTjTos Odvaros of the original, 

 " a punishment not to be averted by prayers". 



186. And this ignorance of Greek words extends to other passages 

 also, where the mistake seems as nearly wilful as one can well imagine ; 

 cf. this [26 a 10]: 



mnnsa wltwi gar imperocche dopo breve tempo 



naktin nnatropos i raggi wimutabili 



nadioke mmof lo aecompagneranno. 



Let US see the context : (the cloud obscures the sun's rays for a 

 time only, so slavery cannot obscure my soul's nobility altogether), 

 "for after a short time the im,mutahle rays will accompany iV : what 

 meaning is therein ? He has divided wrongly, and read arpoTros, 

 though " immutable rays" is not an excellent combination; and he has 

 rendered Stw/cetv " to accompany'. But the Coptic means : " the rays 

 of my character (rpoTrot) will chase it away''\ representing the original 

 VTTO T77S aKTtvos Toiv TpoTTwv jxov 8La)(y6y](reTaL. There is absolutely no 

 excuse left here. 



