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Dimensions of papyri.

pressed and afterwards dried. It is clear that by joining a
number of such sheets of papyrus together, a roll of almost
any length could be made. The quality of the papyrus
depended entirely upon the class of plant used in its manu-
facture. The colour of the papyri that have come down to
us varies greatly, from a rich brown to a whitish-grey; the
texture of some is exceedingly coarse, and of others fine and
silky. The width of papyri varies from six to seventeen
inches, and the longest papyrus known (Harris, No. 1,
B.M. 9999) measures 135 feet in length. The finest hiero-
glyphic papyri of the Book of the Dead are about fifteen
inches in width, and when they contain a tolerably full
number of chapters, are from eighty to ninety feet long. The
papyri upon which contracts in Greek and Demotic are
written are of a coarse fibre, and vary from ten to fourteen
inches in width; their lengths vary from one to ten feet. The
usual width of papyri employed for literary compositions
is about eight inches. The common name for a roll of
papyrus was
t'amă, Copt. xwe, "a book."

Papyrus letters and legal documents were fastened by being
tied round with a piece of papyrus string, and upon this a
piece of clay was laid, which, being impressed with a ring or
scarab, formed a seal, called in Egyptian

t'ebãt.

The British Museum possesses among its seals impressions in clay of the seal of Shabaka, found at Kouyunjik (see p. 249); a seal (No. 5585) ascribed to Shashanq by Dr. Birch (in Layard, Babylon and Nineveh, London, 1853, p. 1857), which

reads โอ โฮ

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; an oval seal (No. 5584) bearing

the name of a private person and the prenomen of Amāsis II.

(*); and an oval seal (No. 5583), bearing the name of об

Naifaarut, the first king of the XXIXth dynasty.

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The palette of the Egyptian scribe, called mestha, was made of basalt (B.M. No. 12,778), calcareous stone inlaid with lapis-lazuli (B.M. No. 24,576), and ivory (B.M. No. 5524), but more commonly of wood. In shape it was rectangular, and its size varied from 10 in. x 2 in. to 16 in. x 24 in.; its thickness was usually of an inch. At one

end were circular, or oval, hollows to hold ink, the former being in the shape of Q, and the latter of a cartouche . About a third of the length of the palette from this end a sloping groove was cut, which from about the middle of the palette to the other end had an equal depth, for holding the reeds for writing. These were kept in their place either by a piece of wood gummed into the palette about a third of the way above the groove, or by a piece of wood, forming a bridge, under which the reeds could pass freely, and which was left uncut when the groove was made. A sliding cover over the longer part of the groove protected the ends of the reeds from damage. The hollows in the palette for holding the ink are usually two in number, one for red ink and one for black; these being the colours most commonly used for writing upon papyri. Some palettes have as many as a dozen hollows, and these probably belonged to scribes whose business it was to ornament papyri with scenes painted in many colours. The dates of palettes can often be determined with accuracy because, in addition to the name of the owner, the name of the king in whose reign he lived is given. Thus Royal palettes. B.M. No. 12,784 was made in the reign of Amāsis I., B.M. 5513 in that of Amenophis III., and B.M. 5514 in that of Rameses II.; from these three examples we see that the form of the palette changed very little in a whole dynasty. The inscriptions upon palettes were usually in hieroglyphics, but B.M. No. 5524, made of ivory, is inscribed in hieratic, and B.M. No. 5517, made of wood, also has upon it an inscription in hieratic. The palette of a scribe was sometimes placed in the tomb with its owner (see in the Papyrus of Ani, pl. 7, where it lies under the bier), and votive palettes are known, as for example B.M. No. 12,778. This object is made of green basalt, and at the end where the coloured inks were placed is a scene in outline in which the deceased is represented making an offering to Osiris, behind whom stand a goddess and Thoth. goddess and Thoth. The places for the ink are outlined, but not hollowed out, and the groove is only cut a part of the length; the reeds which still remain are fastened in with plaster, and it is perfectly clear that this

The Egyptian pen.

palette was never used by a scribe. On each side is an inscription in hieroglyphics, which records the name and titles of the deceased, and which prays that appropriate sepulchral meals may be given to the deceased, and that he may enter in, and come out from the underworld, without repulse, whenever he pleases. Inscriptions on palettes are often dedications to the god Thoth, "lord of divine words." Stone and faïence palettes with eight, ten, or twelve small vases for ink were also used.

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The reed, in Egyptian gesh, Copt. K&, with which the Egyptian wrote, was about ten inches long, th or th of an inch in diameter; the end used for writing was bruised to make the fibres flexible, and not cut. After the XXVIth dynasty an ordinary reed, similar to that which the Arabs and other Oriental nations use for writing at the present day, was employed, and the end was cut like a quill, or steel pen. The average sized palette will hold about ten writing reeds easily.

The ink which the Egyptian used was made of mineral and vegetable substances, mixed with a little gum and water. The substance which coloured the ink, black, red, blue, green, white, or yellow, was carefully rubbed down on a rectangular slab of granite, basalt, or marble, with a hard stone muller, and then thrown into a vessel, where the necessary quantity of water and gum was added to make it the consistency of moderately thin cream. The professional scribe probably carried about with him pieces of colour similar to the specimens in blue, green, and red which are preserved in European museums, and rubbed down a little at a time according to his need. The green and blue colours are preparations from copper, which can, I understand, be successfully imitated at the present time; fine examples are B.M. 5565, 5571c, and small prepared lumps of colour exhibited in bronze bowl, B.M. 5556. The red and bronze colours were preparations from red ochre mixed with chalk; an interesting example of the former is B.M. No. 18,337, and of the latter B.M. No. 5572.

EGYPTIAN WRITING.

The system of writing employed by the people called Great Egyptians was probably entirely pictorial either at the time of heroantiquity when they first arrived in Egypt, or during the time that they glyphic writing. still lived in their original home. We, however, know of no inscription in which pictorial characters alone are used, for the earliest specimens of their writing known to us contain alphabetical characters. The Egyptians had three kinds of writing-Hieroglyphic, Hieratic, and Demotic; soon after the preaching of Saint Mark at Alexandria, the Christian population made use of the Greek alphabet, with the addition of certain characters which they borrowed from the demotic; this method of writing was called Coptic.

hiero

Hieroglyphics, from the Greek iepoyλupikós, were com- Oldest monly employed for inscriptions upon temples, tombs, coffins, glyphic instatues, and stela, and many copies of the Book of the Dead scription. were written in them. The earliest hieroglyphic inscription at present known is found on the monument of Sherȧ, parts of which are preserved in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and in the Gizeh Museum; it dates from the IInd dynasty. Hieroglyphics were used in Egypt for writing the names of Roman Emperors and for religious purposes until the third century after Christ, at least.

hieratic

Hieratic, from the Greek iepatikos, was a style of cursive writing much used by the priests in copying literary compositions on papyrus; during the XIth or XIIth dynasty wooden coffins were inscribed in hieratic with religious texts. The oldest document in hieratic is the famous Prisse papyrus, Oldest which records the counsels of Ptaḥ-hetep to his son; the com- inscripposition itself is about a thousand years older than this tion. papyrus, which was probably inscribed about the XIth dynasty. Drafts of inscriptions were written upon flakes of calcareous stone in hieratic, and at a comparatively early date hieratic was used in writing copies of the Book of the Dead. Hieratic was used until about the fourth century after Christ.

Demotic, from the Greek Enμoтikós, is a purely conventional modification of hieratic characters, which preserve little of their original form, and was used for social and business

B. M.

2 A

The various kinds of

writing used in Egypt.

purposes; in the early days of Egyptian decipherment it was
called enchorial, from the Greek eyxwpios. The demotic
writing appears to have come into use about B.C. 900, and
it survived until about the fourth century after Christ. In
the time of the Ptolemies three kinds of writing were inscribed
side by side upon documents of public importance, hiero-
glyphic, Greek, and Demotic; examples are the stele of
Canopus, set up in the ninth year of the reign of Ptolemy III.
Euergetes I., B.C. 247-222, at Canopus, to record the benefits
which this king had conferred upon his country, and the
famous Rosetta Stone, set up at Rosetta in the eighth year of
the reign of Ptolemy V. Epiphanes (B.C. 205-182), likewise
to commemorate the benefits conferred upon Egypt by
himself and his family, etc., etc. On the Rosetta Stone
hieroglyphic writing is called
na en neter met,

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"writing of divine words," Demotic,

~901

nã en ŝãi, “writing of letters," and Greek G

sexai en Haui-nebu, “writing of the Greeks."

A century or two after the Christian era Greek had obtained such a hold upon the inhabitants of Egypt, that the native Christian population, the disciples and followers of Saint Mark, were obliged to use the Greek alphabet to write down the Egyptian, that is to say Coptic, translation of the books of the Old and New Testaments, but they borrowed six signs from the demotic forms of ancient Egyptian characters to express the sounds which they found unrepresented in Greek. These signs are

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Coptic

writing.

x =

TCH, like Turk. ;

The knowledge of the ancient hieroglyphics was fast dying out, and the phonetic values of many of those in use at this period were altered. The name Copt is derived from L, the Arabic form of the Coptic form of the Greek name for

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