Atkinson — On a South-Coptic Text of M. Bouriant. 227 



I do not think that I am doing injustice to his translation in 

 holding that those are Five Points in the passage. 

 And every one of them is wrong ! 



(«) anok de pran hijoi je tike ehol iiwkwi [209, i], "as 

 for me, the name is upon me that I am forgiven a little ". 



(h) tihes mpara nethn tephyllake, "I am tortured more 

 than those who are in prison" ; where he has absolutely edited mparan, 

 as if it were a combination with pa -ran, 'my name', though it is 

 mTrapa [!]. How he proposes to analyse tihes, OXi/Soixai, with 

 following ethn &c., I cannot imagine. 



(c), (d), ebolje netmmau men secine mpsolf nneuereu, 

 ''because they [= the prisoners] indeed get the consolation of each 

 other". I do not know how he proposed to deal with his mpsolf; 

 the logic seems to demand mpsolsl, ' consolation'. 



(e) safpot epesteko nfcine mpeusine&c, " goes to the prison 

 to visit them and gives them [the prisoners] presents", " whereas, he 

 continues, I have no consolation from any quarter". 



The drift of the passage thus becomes : 



' ' I have the name of being pardoned, but really I suffer more than 

 those who are kept in prison ; for they get mutual consolation and the 

 gifts of pitying visitors, whereas I have no consolation from any side ". 



I do not think that anything could be worse than his treatment of 

 the second point : (c'est monnom) qui me vaut les peines que m'infligent 

 mes gardiens. This is very bad indeed from a grammatical point of 

 view, but the inexplicable element in the matter to me is how the 

 logic of the paragraph seems to have been hidden from him. 



2. There is a very significant specimen of editing, at [224, 12], 

 ni Vor, ni V argent ne servent de rien pour preserver Vhomme de la mort. 

 That is pure guess-work, for his text gives 



mn nwb wde hat there is not gold nor silver 



nas nhe in what way 



miironie ( ) the man 



ebol hS tanagfke mpmw from the necessity of death. 



His phrase de rien is the equivalent for the words of his text nas 

 nhe, 'in what manner', in very much the same way as on [215, 8] 

 einaswong nas nhe, '■how shall I recognize thee', which he has 

 rendered, y^ n^en sais rien. Further, where is the xevh pour preserver, 



B,2 



