the exposed monuments, like the great geographical list of Sheshonk I, are perishing with appalling rapidity, and many of them without ever having been properly copied or published. Even the portable stone monuments at present in the museums of Europe suffer more or less; and I have seen valuable stelæ so attacked by the moist air of northern Europe that whole layers might be blown from the inscribed surface by a whiff of the breath. Such an inscription is doomed to disappear in a few years. Papyri when mounted between hermetically sealed glass plates survive indefinitely. 27. These monuments, as employed in Egyptological science, are, for the most part, not accessible in the originals, but are consulted chiefly in publications. Such publications, to omit earlier and cruder attempts, began as far back as the colossal report issued in huge folios by the members of Napoleon I's expedition. Notable and useful as this great work was, its copies of the inscriptions are now quite unusable. To copy an inscription of any kind with accuracy is not easy. So close and fine an observer of material documents as Ruskin, could copy a short Latin inscription with surprising inaccuracy. In his incomparable Mornings in Florence he reproduces the brief inscription on the marble slab covering the tomb which he so admired in the church of Santa Croce; and in his copy of these eight short lines, which I compared with the original, he misspells one word, and omits two entire words ("et magister") of the mediæval Latin.

28. This experience of the great art critic is not infrequently that of the schooled and careful paleographer as well. The best-known of the Politarch inscriptions appeared in eight different publications, each of which diverges in

*Third edition, 1889, 16.

See Burton, American Journal of Theology, II, 600-604

some more or less important respect from all the rest, before a correct copy was obtained. The Greek and Latin inscriptions on the bronze crab from the base of the New York obelisk were long incorrectly read, and the mistake in the date led Mommsen to a false theory of the early Roman prefects of Egypt. In working on a mutilated inscription, the best of copyists will now and again overlook traces which his successors may discover and utilize, while now and then he will "nap," and be guilty of some egregious blunder of omission or misreading in a clear and perfectly preserved passage. Under these circumstances, an inexperienced or careless copyist will commit the most incredible blunders, and every line of his copy will contain many such. In the early days of Egyptology, when a reading knowledge of hieroglyphic was still impossible, it required a copyist of exceptional ability to produce a copy which can be used at the present day.

29. This difficulty was sorely felt by accurate and discerning scholars as far back as the days of Chabas, who in 1872 remarked, concerning the inscriptions of Ramses III: "Ces deux publications [Rosellini and Burton] sont très imparfaites; et les signes inexactement reproduits ajoutent à la difficulté causée par les lacunes." The introduction of hieroglyphic type, while very useful in some respects, has also proved disastrous to accuracy, and the persistence of the old loose methods was bemoaned by Brugsch in the introduction to the last volume of his Thesaurus thirteen years ago. Brugsch already showed surprising appreciation of the necessity of modern methods in such work. He wrote:

The indispensable demands upon the publisher of known or unknown texts may be comprehended in a few words. In the first place, it is not a task to be undertaken by laymen and mere amateurs . but

See II, 632, note.

Études sur l'antiquité historique, 227 f.

only by the schooled specialist, who is thoroughly familiar with the language and writing of the ancient Egyptians, and with the researches and results in all departments of Egyptological investigation. How largely such a conviction is still lacking is proved. . . . by a number of publications by Egyptological tyros [Halbwisser] and laymen, who do not yet seem to have learned that Egyptology has ceased to be the pursuit of amateurs, and has become a very serious study, demanding a man's entire strength and entire time.a

30. Not long after this, Griffith called attention to the hurried, inaccurate, and insufficient methods still often observable, so that numerous publications could only be regarded as provisional. Two years later he referred to such work in these words: "Too often almost every third sign in the printed texts has had to be corrected according to probabilities by the would-be reader." This condition of things has gone so far that we have had publications issued at government expense, containing texts in vertical columns copied with the lines numbered backward, and even translated in this inverted order of the lines. It is safe to say that such a condition of things cannot be found in any other branch of paleographical science.

31. This is not the place to discuss the proper methods to be observed in the publication of ancient documents, but there is no doubt that better methods are constantly gaining ground. From decade to decade the publication of inscriptions has steadily improved, but it is only within the last ten or fifteen years that Egyptian documents on stone have in some cases appeared in a form which satisfies the demands of modern paleographic accuracy. With the exception of

aThesaurus, VI, vi.

bEgypt Exploration Fund Archæological Report, 1893-94, 10, 11.

cIbid., 1895-96, 21.

In the old publications plenty of examples of such inversion exist, especially in Mariette's books; nor are instances lacking in which modern scholars have employed such texts without discovering the inversion.

such perfectly preserved rolls as the great Papyrus Harris, which was long ago accurately published, the same remark is in general true of the papyri also.

32. The result of all this is that many of the most important documents of ancient Egypt are at present accessible to the Egyptologist only in publications so incorrect that in many cases they are absolutely unusable. It will be evident, therefore, that he who wishes to know exactly what the original documents of ancient Egypt state cannot work exclusively in his library, but must go behind the publications and turn back to the originals themselves, in Egypt and the museums of Europe.

33. For the purposes of these volumes it was therefore absolutely indispensable in most cases to go back of the publications. The author, therefore, made and repeatedly revised his own copies of practically all the historical monuments in Europe, before the originals themselves. In the few cases where the original was not accessible, good squeezes and photographs supplied the deficiency, or professional colleagues furnished from the originals specially collated readings of doubtful passages. Of the monuments in Egypt the author copied a great many at all the more important sites, especially Thebes and Amarna, where he made a complete copy of all the historical inscriptions; and in the museum at Cairo (formerly Gizeh). Of monuments in Egypt not included in the author's copies, squeezes were in most cases found in the enormous collection made by Lepsius, and now in the Berlin Museum. Where none of these sources furnished the desired monument, the author had access to the extensive collations made for the Berlin Egyptian Dictionary; and where these failed, he was able, in all important cases, to secure large-scale photographs of the originals. The final remainder of monuments for which the

author was dependent upon the publications alone is very small, and in most such cases the publication was one made on modern methods and almost as good as the original itself.

34. Nevertheless, it must not be supposed that the old publications, however inaccurate, can be ignored. Some monuments have perished entirely since publication, and almost all have lost more or less important portions of the text. In the case of all the longer and more important texts, often reproduced in the old folios, the author took the best copy as a basis and collated with it all the other publications, noting in parallel columns all the variant readings. By this laborious means, some readings were secured which have since disappeared from the original, and all that is now available, whether in publications or in the original, was thus incorporated in the final composite copy, from which the translation was made. In a few cases the author was spared this labor by the industry of a modern editor of the document, as in the publication of the Benihasan tombs or those of Siut; but ordinarily the modern editor has not given himself this trouble, as in the last publication of Der el-Bahri.

35. The dangers involved in such neglect are evident. Thus so careful a scholar as Chabas discussed the so-called "eclipse inscription" (IV, 756 ff.) of Takelot II, using only the publication of Lepsius; whereupon Goodwina called his attention to the fact that the very conscientious plate of Lepsius had nevertheless introduced confusion into the text by the accidental misplacement of a piece of the paper squeeze from which his copy was made, thus inverting the proper order of two sections of the very obscure text. Had Chabas also employed Young's otherwise obsolete copy of the original, this embarrassing error would not have occurred.

aZeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache, 1868, 25 ff.