(Papyrus niloticus, P. Ægyptiacus, P. antiquorum), a plant of the order Triandria digynia, and of the genus Cyperaceæ, used by the ancient Egyptians in the manufacture of paper. (See Paper.)

paper made of the papyrus-plant, and used by the Egyptians, as also by the Greeks, Romans, and other nations of antiquity. (See Paper.)

Papyrus-Roll, a sheet of papyrus paper, or several sheets united into one, rolled upon a slender wooden cylinder for the purpose of writing thereon letters, contracts, official acts, funereal and sacred books, historical records, and other compositions. Frail and perishable as is the papyrus-paper, very many such rolls, some of them of the remotest antiquity, have come down to us in a high state of preservation; and are commonly known under the name of papyri. As the Egyptian papyri, besides the high intrinsic interest which they possess, have contributed in a very remarkable way to the solution of the great problem of the hieroglyphic question, it seems necessary, although they have been cursorily noticed already under the head Egypt (p. 444), to devote to the subject a special article, which shall also embrace the Greek papyri, and the few which have reached our time in Latin or other ancient languages.

It is impossible to fix with precision the period in Egyptian history at which the practice of writing on papyrus began; but it is unquestionably of the highest antiquity. The hieroglyphics which the extant papyri contain, judging by their form and character, belong to the time of the fourth and fifth dynasties (Lepsius, Chronol. der Ägypter, p. 33); and, indeed, among the hieroglyphical characters on the monuments of that date, are found the papyrus-roll itself, as well as the rest of the writing apparatus. Many of the extant papyri seem certainly to belong to a very remote period. Lepsius refers the well-known papyrus which he himself has edited, under the name of The Book of the Dead, and which we shall have hereafter to describe, to the earliest Pharaonic times; and Bunsen agrees in this estimate of its age. Wilkinson places the Turin Book of Kings in the reign of the third king of the nineteenth dynasty, Rhamses II., whose name it bears upon the back; and the Rev. Dunbar Heath is satisfied that the rolls of which he has published an account, under the name of The Exodus Papyri, are actually contemporaneous with the events to which he supposes them to refer.

The subject naturally divides itself into three heads—Egyptian papyri, Greek and Roman papyri, and papyri of the later empire.

I. The Egyptian papyrus-rolls first came into notice in Europe when the celebrated French expedition opened Egypt, and her history and antiquities, to the researches of the learned. Since that time many collections, of greater or of less value, have been deposited in the public and private libraries and museums of Europe; and a good deal has been done towards the publication and illustration of the more important among them. They are for the most part funereal; and they have generally been found in the mummy-cases, placed between the thighs or the arms, and sometimes upon the stomach, or in the bend of the knees, of the mummy. Considerable collections of them were formed by different travellers or residents in Egypt, and they have for the most part been deposited in the several great libraries of the European capitals; the British Museum, the Bibliothèque Impériale at Paris, the Vatican, the Berlin library, the Vienna library, the library of Trinity College, Dublin, and especially the Royal Library of Turin. The first specimen of the Egyptian rolls of any real in- terest made public in Europe was printed in 1805, by M. Cadet; and afterwards in a most beautifully-executed facsimile in the great French collection, Description de l'Egypte. Since that time have appeared many most costly and elaborate specimens, to the most important of which we shall have occasion to allude; and there can be little doubt that, in the progress of Egyptian studies, and with the increased advantages which modern students possess, every fragment of interest which has been preserved will eventually find its way into print.

The papyri are found written in various characters. Of those in the Egyptian language, some are in the hieroglyphic character, but very many more are in the hieratic, and also in the demotic. (See Hieroglyphics.) Some of the Egyptian papyri are in the Greek language and character. Those in the ancient Egyptian language may be divided into three classes—the funerary, the historical or literary, and those which relate to judicial, domestic, or social affairs. All these, but particularly the first class, have been found in tombs, especially at Thebes and Memphis.

(1.) The funerary papyri were the first to attract attention, from their number and the frequency of their occurrence. It would seem, indeed, that a copy of one of these papyri was regarded by the Egyptians in the light of a passport after death, and a protection to the soul in its journey towards the realms of judgment. An interesting funerary papyrus, found in the collection of Trinity College, Dublin, contains a rubric to the effect, that, "if this book be recited on the earth, and this chapter be put in writing upon a person's coffin, he shall be manifested in the light, with all the honours due to him; when he goes to his house, he shall not be turned back; there shall be given to him bread, liquors, and the choicest meats on the altar of Osiris; and he shall go to the fields of Aaon." Hence there was a busy trade in the production and sale of copies of these papyri. Many of those still preserved were plainly prepared beforehand for sale, blanks being left for the names and titles of the deceased, to be filled up as the occasion arose. These blanks are frequently found filled up in a hand different from the body of the document; and in some copies the blanks still appear, owing to the forgetfulness or neglect of the undertaker. In a very highly-finished papyrus in the Dublin collection, the blanks are left unfilled throughout the entire document. These funerary papyri, numerous as they are, are all, in substance, copies, somewhat varied, of one common original, or of certain portions of it, the most complete copy of which now known is that preserved in the Turin Museum. The papyrus published by Cadet, and in the Description de l'Egypte; those published by Young in the collection of the Egyptian Society; by Léonmanns in the Monuments du Musée des Pays Bas; by Von Hammer at Vienna in 1822; by Mai in 1825; by Sankowski in 1826; by Rosellini, Salvolini, and still more recently, by Brugsch and Forshall, are all evidently drawn from that same original, although different portions are selected in each instance, and although where the same portion is repeated in two or more of the papyri, the forms of expression seem to vary considerably. It will be sufficient, therefore, to describe the nature, and briefly to indicate the contents, of the copy which is found in the Turin Museum, supplying from other papyri some additional illustrations and pictorial representations. This remarkable papyrus was first examined by Champollion, who found it to contain twice as much as that published in the Description de l'Egypte. Champollion regarded it as a copy of the funeral ritual of the Egyptians, an opinion from which Lepais dissents, but without much apparent reason; although, perhaps, the title which the latter writer proposes, Das Todtenbuch, "The Book of the Dead," describes its character more exactly. Champollion, after a careful study of the text, divided it into four parts, according to the supposed order of the subject, each of which he subdivided into chapters. Dr. Lepais, however, who copied the entire in 1836, and published it in a most elaborate facsimile in 1842, proposes a different and apparently more intelligible division into chapters, which is now generally adopted. Each of these chapters (which are 165 in number) has, generally speaking, a title and an illustrative picture prefixed; and the division of the chapters is commonly indicated by two lines, and by the words ke re or ki re ("another chapter"). The first fifteen chapters appear in themselves to form a connected whole, and are entitled Ha t cm e nu her em heru en Hes-ri—("beginning of the chapters of the appearing of the light of Osiris"). This first portion of the Book of the Dead is regarded by Lepais as the most ancient, and indeed as the germ of the entire, out of which all the subsequent parts have grown as developments or additions. It occurs in many papyri, and the illustrative vignettes are generally the same, although differing much from each other in the richness and beauty of execution. In these vignettes are represented the funeral procession, the mourners, the bear with the bier of the deceased sailing upon the sacred river, the train of domestics bearing libations and other offerings; and finally, the deceased himself in the act of adoring the sun. Then follows a series of mystic representations bearing upon the destiny of the deceased, and of invocations to the god Thoth, in which he is entreated, as "Thoth who justified Osiris in the sight of his mercies," to "justify Osiris Anfany, even as he justified Osiris in the presence of the great Tetmesu." The vignettes which follow represent the act of placing under the protection of the several deities before whom the deceased is thus justified, the several limbs or parts of the body of the deceased—his head, eyes, mouth, heart, arms, hands, feet, legs, stomach, &c.; and the various combats which he is obliged to undergo. Next come pictures of his deliverance from various perils; of the refreshments which are vouchsafed to him; of his worshipping various deities; of the reunion of his soul with the body; of his passage through the fields of Tmô (the Egyptian Elysium), in which he is represented as ploughing, sowing, reaping, thrashing, and lastly, rowing across the infernal river a boat containing the cakes which he has made; of his subsequent journey to the mystic region called Rosatton, and his arrival at the hall of the Two Truths, where is represented his denial to the forty-two assessors of Osiris, of forty-two distinct offences with which he is charged before them, and in which is placed the remarkable scene of the Psychostasia, or weighing of the soul in the scale of justice. Most of the papyri contain pictures of this very interesting monument of the Egyptian creed, varying slightly in detail, but all exhibiting the same great features. At the left side of a great hall, with the well-known frieze and pillars, is seated Osiris, who is represented with his habitual whip and crook, and generally (though not in the

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1 Copy figuré d'un rouleau de Papyrus trouvé à Thèbes dans un Tombeau des Rois, Paris, 1805. 2 Description de l'Egypte (Antiquités), ii., pp. 72-75. 3 Catalogue of the Egyptian MSS. in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, by Edward Hincks, D.D., p. 31. 4 Ibid., p. 11. 5 Hieroglyphics collected by the Egyptian Society, 1823. 6 Das Todtenbuch der Ägypter, nach den hieroglyphischen Papyrus zu Turin, mit einem Vorworte, zum erstemal herausgegeben von D. R. Lepais, Leipzig, 1842. 7 In the copies of the Ritual found in the mummy-cases, the deceased is always called by the pronoun Osiris, as if by anticipated adoption. 8 The four attendants or ministers of Osiris—Amset, Hapi, Sin Muft, Kebh-Senu. Turin papyrus) with the tablet of Mā, the goddess of justice, upon his breast. On the right enters the deceased, above whose head appears in hieroglyphics the usual invocation of Osiris. He is received by the goddess of justice, Mā, who is often represented in the two-fold character of reward and punishment. In the centre stands a pair of scales, in one of which Anubis is represented placing as a weight a little figure of the goddess Mā, while in the other scale the deceased is shown placing a heart-shaped weight (sometimes with the word keti, "heart," inscribed upon it), the emblem of his own works, good or evil, during life. The well-known hawk-headed figure adjusts the balance; above sits the forty-two assessors of Osiris, sometimes with the deceased kneeling before them; while Thoth, the justifier of Osiris, and of all the just, is represented writing down the result of the trial. After this most interesting picture come the purgatorial scenes, and those in the Hall of the Propylons, which are exceedingly curious. The deceased demands to be admitted. "I will not allow thee to enter," begins the lintel of the door, "till thou tell me my name." "——" (not satisfactorily interpreted) "is thy name." "I will not allow thee to enter by me," says the left post of the door, "until thou tell me my name." "Hanti-n-tme (Pillar of Truth) is thy name." Similar demands are made in succession by the right post, the threshold, the lock, the key, the bolt, the floor, &c. Without pursuing this farther, however, it will be enough to say that many other equally curious representations, illustrative, not only of the creed of the Egyptians, but of scenes of their every-day life, are found in these singular relics of ancient Egypt; and they have supplied a most valuable key to much that was obscure in the manners and customs of this remarkable people.

Another of the funereal papyri, but of later date, has still more recently been published by Dr Brugsch at Berlin, under the title of Sai an Sinis.1 It is in the hieratic character, and furnishes a very valuable supplement to Lepsius' Tadtenbuch. It will be enough to say, that in these two publications, which are both accompanied by translations and elaborate annotations, the reader will find all the latest and best information on both the general subject of funereal papyri, and on all the details which they ordinarily present.

(2.) The historical Egyptian papyri have come more recently into notice, but they have contributed to throw a great deal of light on many difficult questions of Egyptian history and chronology. The most important of these are the Turin Book of Kings, The Campaign of Rhamses the Great against the Scythians and their Allies, and the so-called Exodus Papyri.

The history of the Turin Papyrus of the Kings is a curious one. It originally came into the possession of the Turin Museum in the collection of Signor Droveti, which was purchased by the Piedmontese government; but this particular papyrus had been so injured by time or by neglect, that it seemed little better than a mass of fragments. Champollion, however, while he was inspecting the Egyptian antiquities of the Turin Museum, at once perceived its value, and carefully selected, from a mass of papyrus fragments among which it lay in a confused heap, all the scraps which contained the names of kings, putting them together in the best order which he could devise. This work, however, has since been done over again with exceeding skill and judgment by Dr Seyffarth, who, by carefully examining with a microscope the fibres of the several fragments, has succeeded in restoring the papyrus to a tolerable degree of completeness. This manuscript was printed by Lepsius in his Auswahl; but, as that copy did not contain the inscription on the back, the papyrus has since been published entire by Sir Gardner Wilkinson.2 Its contents have already thrown light on many points, both in the native monuments of Egyptian history and in the collateral indications supplied by the Bible narrative; and, although there is much in this and all other Egyptian records which disappoints inquiry, it is hardly possible to overrate the importance of the study in itself, or the hopes which may not unreasonably be entertained from a more complete and systematic investigation. This papyrus appears to have been written in the time of Rhamses II. It does not contain the name of any king later than the eighteenth dynasty.

The Scythian Campaign of Rhamses the Great is a papyrus which originally formed part of M. Sallier's (of Aix) collection. It was published in 1835 by Salvolini, the pupil of Champollion. It has unfortunately but little of the strictly historical character, consisting in great part of encomiums of Rhamses, bombastic addresses to his soldiers, dialogues of the king with the gods, and similar rhetorical materials; but it is nevertheless highly curious and characteristic.

The Exodus Papyri,3 of which the Rev. Dunbar Heath has published an account,4 are naturally, from their subject, even more interesting, inasmuch as he considers these remarkable compositions so many contemporary collateral evidences of the Bible history of the exodus of the Jewish people. Much remains still to be done for their full elucidation; but enough is stated by Mr Heath to create a deep interest in the subject. These papyri, which originally formed part of the Sallier and of the Anastasi collections, present many most striking coincidences with the Mosaic narrative. The most important of them is a letter or report addressed by Emma, a scribe, to his superior officer, who had commissioned him to carry out an order that a certain slave people should be allowed four days of holiday for the observance of their festival, complaining that this order had been resisted by a certain Tahpanhes. Now, according to Mr Heath, in these curious documents we meet with a Jannes mentioned five times, a Moses twice, a Balak the son of Zippor at a place called Huozoth, with the word Hebrew, and with the "feast of passing the dead." We find also that a people, among whom a Moses was leader, marched towards Palestine by the route of Tasscarta, Megdol, and Zoar; that they were connected with the names Midian and Aram; that there was a contest at the place of a great water-flood; that an enslaved Aramean people, located about Tahpanhes, met great opposition from the governor in celebrating the four days' feast at the beginning of their year; that a Moses is again named as cattle-owner among them; that a royal or noble youth is described as meeting a sudden and mysterious death; that a royal order is immediately issued for the hasty departure of a people, for their feast of passing the dead; and that miracles are named as performed by their leader in the palace of Lower Egypt. (Pp. 57-8.) And although the coincidences may not be complete, nor the evidences entirely satisfactory, yet they are quite enough to create an interest in the subject of the very deepest kind. Several other papyri in the British Museum and other collections are historical. In the Select Papyri of the British Museum (London, 1844) there are four; and Lepsius (pp. 33-4) mentions two others in Berlin, and a third in his own possession.

Of strictly so-called literary papyri among the Egyptians little is known; but we may mention one very curious one, of

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1 Sai an Sinis; sive Liber Metempsychosis veterum Egypiorum. E duabus Papyris fumbribus hieraticis signis exaratis editis, Latini eortis, notas adjectis, Henricus Brugsch, Berlin, 1851. 2 The Fragments of the Hieratic Papyrus at Turin, containing the Names of Egyptian Kings, with the Hieratic Inscription at the Back, by Sir J. G. Wilkinson, London, 1851. 3 Campagne de Rhamses le Grand contre les Scythes et leurs Allies, Paris, 1833. 4 The Exodus Papyri, by Rev. D. J. Heath, with Introduction by Miss Fanny Corbeaux, London, 1855. which an account is given in the Revue Archéologique for 1852-3 (pp. 385-97). It is the story of two brothers, Anepos and Patou, one of whom is the Egyptian counterpart of Joseph in the Bible history. He is tempted by his brother's wife in exactly the same words employed by the wife of Potiphar, and on his resisting her seductions, is denounced by her to her husband. The subsequent narrative, which it would be too tedious to detail, is a strange medley of the natural and supernatural; but the whole piece presents in a very curious light not only the domestic usages of Egypt, but the popular notions which then prevailed as to the interposition of the gods in the affairs of men.

Under the head of Egyptian papyrus literature, may perhaps be mentioned the well-known and valuable fragment of Homer on papyrus, which was found in one of the tombs at Thebes. It is of course in Greek, but as having been found in an Egyptian tomb, may be considered as Egyptian.

(3.) The Egyptian papyri which relate to civil or judicial affairs are generally in the enchorial character: they relate for the most part to sales or transfers of property, houses, lands, tombs, &c., the particulars of which they describe in most curious detail. The subjects of many of them may to some appear tedious and unimportant; but in reality it is to them that Egyptian antiquarians have been indebted for most of the details of the judicial processes of Egyptian law, as well as of many of the particulars of the private life of the Egyptians.

II. By far the most important Greek papyri are those of Herculaneum, which have been elsewhere described. (See HERCULANEUM.) Unhappily the condition of these rolls is so lamentably defective that at best only fragments can be hoped from their decipherment; and it must be confessed too, that the books which have been hitherto discovered, and of which the Volumina Herculaneana contain the remains, are not of a nature to make the loss a subject of much regret. There are two of them, the titles of which, as bearing upon Homer, might seem calculated to create an expectation of something which might give us an idea of the principles of criticism which then prevailed; but they are miserably meagre and unsatisfactory; and the same may be said even of what bears upon the Epicurean philosophy, although the author, Philodemus, was a follower of that sect.

But the strictly Egyptian papyri in the Greek language are no less valuable, as illustrating the manners and customs of the Egyptians, than those in the Egyptian language; and they have the additional advantage of being at once perfectly intelligible, and of serving as a key to the enchorial language of Egypt. Several collections of these papyri have been published; the most notable are those of Amedeo Peyron, whose labours as an editor of palimpsest literature have been described in another place. (See PALIMPSEST.) He published in 1826 a considerable collection with a very interesting introduction and notes; and a few years later, he added to these a commentary on some papyri selected out of a similar though smaller selection from the museum of Vienna, which had been published by Giovanni Petretti. These papyri, which are all of the class already described, are most curious and highly important for the student of Egyptian domestic and social antiquities. A selection from the Greek papyri of the British Museum has been published by Mr Forshall; but, as the text only is given, unaccompanied by illustrative notes, this publication is far inferior in interest to that of Amedeo Peyron, or to a similar one of his nephew, Bernardino Peyron, printed several years later. An additional item in the value of these papyri, and one which was early appreciated by Young in his hieroglyphical studies, is the fact, that many of them are but the Greek transcripts of the enchorial original of the deed of sale, contract, or judicial procedure, and therefore serve, to some extent at least, if not as a translation, at all events as a guide to the sense of the original.

III. The papyri in Latin and other ancient languages are not of much interest. Of the rolls in Herculaneum, many were in Latin; but unhappily the folds of all these were so firmly agglutinated that they went to pieces in the attempt to unroll them. One scrap alone, in hexameter verse, has escaped, and is published in the second volume of the Volumina Herculanea. It is a fragment of a poem on the battle of Pelusium, and is ascribed by the editors to Rabirius, a writer of whom little else is known.

Of the later period, a copy of St Augustine's Letters is the only Latin relic on papyrus of any interest. A few specimens of charters and similar records on papyrus are given by Silvestre in his Paleographie Universelle. In the same work also are one or two papyri in the Syriac and Arabic languages.

(Besides the works cited above, see Sammlung Demotisch, Griechischer Eigennamen Ägyptische Privat leute, aus Inschriften und Papyrus-rollen zusammengestellt, von Ernest Brugsch, Berlin, 1851. See also Lettre a M. E. De Rougé au Sujet de la Decouverte d'un MS. Bilingue Papyrus en Ecriture Demotico-Egyptienne et en Grec cursif de l'an 114 avant notre etc., Berlin, 1852, by the same author.)