: KXTKA MEMOIR Of THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND. TWO HIEEOGLYPHIC PAPYEI FEOM TANIS. I.—THE SIGN PAPYRUS (a Syllabary), by F. Ll. Geiffith. II.- THE GEOGRAPHICAL PAPYRUS (an Almanack), , by W. M. F. Peteie. WITH REMARKS BY PROFESSOR HEINRICH BRUGSCH. FIFTEEN PLATES OF FACSIMILES AND INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF TEE COMMITTEE. LONDON TRUBNER & CO., 57 & 59, LUDGATE HILL, E.G. 1889. EXTRA MEMOIR OF THE EGYPT EXPLORATION FUND, TWO HIEEOGLYPHIC PAPYEI FEOM TANIS. L—THE SIGN PAPYRUS (a Syllabary), by F. Ll. Griffith. II.—THE GEOGRAPHICAL PAPYRUS (an Almanack), by W. M. F. Petrie. WITH EEMARKS BY PEOFESSOE HEmEICH BEUGSCIi. FACSIMILES AND INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE COMMITTEE. LONDO^f: TRUBNER & CO., 57 & 59, LUDGATE HILL, E.G. "/^f 1889. : LONDON PRINTED BY GILBERT AND RIVINGTON, LIMITED, ST. JOHN'S HOUSE, CLERKENWELL ROAD, E.G. CONTENTS. T. The Sign Papyeus (by F. Ll. Griffith) . 1 TRANSOfllPTlON OP PlATES 1 —21 .... 7 II. The Geographical Papyrus (by W. M. F. Petrie) . 21 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2014 https://archive.org/details/twohieroglyphicpOOgrif I. THE SIGN PAPYEUS. By F, Ll. Griffith/ This papyrus is tlie first native list of hiero- the parallel lists of hieroglyphics and hieratic gljpliics that lias come down to us from on its dark pages—is a very considerable one. ancient times. It is at once higUy interest- Some account of the discovery and condition of ing and very disappointing. It is of tlie these papyri, the first obtained in the Delta, highest interest as being the only document may be interesting. bearing upbn the system by which the Egyp- In the spring of 1884, after the survey of tians arranged and taught their huge syllabary. the temple area at San had been completed, It is disappointing, because we find so little Mr. Petrie turned his attention to the remains of it. It struck him that system in it. We should have expected a more the town encircling logical arrangement of the signs, and more those houses which had been burnt would yield results. case of fire, the method in naming them ; more indication of the most profitable In a fixed order in the alphabetical signs, if not owner would snatch up his valuables, leaving some correspondence with the order of that the mass of the household property to the flames. alphabet which the Phoenicians seem to have The house falling in would cover them with borrowed from the Egyptians. From the con- rubbish, from which the unfortunate man would siderable care with which the list has been not care to disinter his burnt and broken jars, prepared, and from its extent, we must suppose tools, and papyri. The reddened earth and that if any rigid method was customary it bricks betray the site to the modern explorer, in friable and easily- would have been adopted here ; and we are and a few days' work the driven to conclude that the Egyptians possessed searched rubbish yields him all that the fire ^ no such system. has spared. Putting this theory into practice, Apart from its value in the history of Mr. Petrie obtained a large collection of pottery writing, the papyrus forms a kind of dictionary and other antiquities, together with a number which will give the philologist valuable hints of papyri. In some cases the documents stowed for determining the meaning of many doubtful away in a corner of the house had been damaged words. beyond recovery. Lying in a basket on the The collection fi^om which it was selected for mud-floor the damp had reached them, and the top, had publication by Mr. Poole—who first detected with the weight of rubbish on reduced them to a mass scarcely distinguishable from the clay beneath ; and although the writing ' This memoir was written, and the plates drawn, in was still partly legible, it was found impossible Not. 1885. I made some additions in 1886, when my much-regretted friend, Mr. H. T. Talbot, read through the to remove even fragments of any value. Others, proofs. although not actually burnt, had been baked B 2 THE SIGN PAPYRUS. violently by the heat of the conflagration, and sides of which can thus be seen. The fragments lying amongst less compact rubbish, had better are kept in place under the glass with shell-lac. resisted the destructive damp of the marshes. The task of mounting the papyri was a simple, A number of these were recovered and brought although a delicate one. The rolls had been to England. They are of a yellowish-brown crushed flat, and so consisted of a series of flakes, colour, soft, and with a tendency to turn to each the same breadth as the crushed roll. The dust on being handled. Large flakes, however, flakes were removed with a paper-knife from can be separated from some of them, so as to each side of the roll alternately, the order thus leave the written surfaces successively visible, obtained being fairly correct. In some cases it but the flakes cannot be preserved. Copies was found more convenient to divide the roll in must therefore be made of these by an Egyptolo- the middle, and, beginning from the centre, to gist standing by as they are gradually taken to take flakes alternately from each half. pieces. Amongst them are several minutely Some of the papyri were found to have been written demotic documents, with the red and rolled tightly round a piece of reed, others black ink well preserved. were without this central support. Some still The most satisfactory class in the collection showed the thread with which they had been are those that have been carbonized. Some of tied. The papyrus described in this report these, too, have become a homogeneous mass that seems to have been wrapped round with a piece cannot be induced to flake. Of others little torn from another document, while the geogra- remains but white ash. A few, though flaking phical papyrus had a religious text on a separate easily, are of too thin a substance to be pre- sheet rolled up with it. served, while a large number, probably, as Mr. Mr, Petrie found some papyri associated Petrie suggests, through the use of a vegetable with glazed pottery figures of the style of the ink, have lost the writing wholly, or it is too thirtieth dynasty. But most of those that faded to be read. This, however, may be due have been mounted are of Roman date. In to the practice of erasing a text when no longer these the writing is in linear hieroglyphic, a required, to give place to a new one. Notwith- small and neat hieratic, demotic of several standing all this, Mr. Hunt, of the MSS. Depart- styles—from large and coarse to fine and very ment of the British Museum, to whom the task minute,—and Greek. The Greek papyri give of mounting the papyri was intrusted (and to the names of several emperors, the name of a whom great praise is due for the care and dis- private person, Hadrian, being perhaps the crimination with which he has executed it, latest indication of date in the collection. under Mr. Petrie's directions), has filled sixty The best preserved papyri are stifi", with a frames, of an average surface of two square feet, shiny surface, as if blackleaded; the ink is with fragments of 166 papyri. Some of these black, or yellowish where it was originally red. are mere scraps, and will probably afford no They have been thoroughly charred ; most in information, but many are of real value, not fact have had the largest part burnt away. only giving a connected sense, but containing All, except two, are from the house of matter of high interest, as the two specimens Bakakhuiu, whose numerous rolls contained copied by Mr. Petrie and myself will show. religious as well as legal texts. Some were, The papyrus fragments have been mounted perhaps, connected with the plans of a new in frames formed by two sheets of glass, held or restored temple. The geographical and other apart by a thin piece of cardboard round the lists in the papyrus, which Mr. Petrie has edges to allow for wrinkles in the papyri ; both copied (No. 103), with the scraps of a similar THE SIGN PAPYRUS. 3 one (Nos. 130 and 131), where tlie entries of evident that this last was the outside fold of the nomes, feasts, marshlands, &c., are corrected roll, and that the Egyptian owner had turned hj notes in minute hieratic at the foot,^ and in the end of the papyrus, probably owing to its especially the columns of hieroglyphics in being torn, and to prevent damage to the papyrus 118, in which the gods grant divine writing at the edge. Two small fragments gifts to a king or emperor, whose cartouche is placed by the side of this page must have unfortunately left blank, seem as if they were belonged to an outside wrapping, for which a sketches and notes to be expanded on some piece of papyrus torn from some religious work temple-wall at Tanis. in hieratic was made to do duty. The beginning of the roll can be recognized in the three frag- The Sign Papyrus was found in the house of ments which, when placed together, appear Bakakhuiu. It fills two large frames, and forms doubly forked below. This indicates another one of the most complete documents in the col- turning in of the edge. We may therefore lection. The crushed roll has been burnt at the consider that we have the commencement of lower end, the fire spreading up one side, so that the roll, since part of the external wrapping while the top is nearly complete, the twenty- even is preserved.