Tag: Manuscripts

The Vlatadon library in Thessalonika

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have had an email back from Veronique Boudon-Millot today, giving the story of how the lost text by Galen, Peri Alupias (On consolation for grief) was found.  It’s very interesting, and I have asked for permission to translate it and place it here. 

She also mentions that Vlatadon 14, the manuscript that contained the new work, also contains the first complete copies of Galen’s On my own books and On the order of my own books, the two works most interesting to non-medical specialists, as evidence for the transmission of texts in the 2nd century AD.  The only previously known copy of the Greek was the Ambrosianus Q 3 sup. in Milan, which has many gaps in the text.  Those gaps previously had, perforce, to be filled from Hunain ibn Ishaq’s Arabic translation, itself extant only in a single forgotten manuscript in the obscure library of Mashhad in Iran.

A key factor in the discovery is that the Vlatadon collection catalogue is itself very obscure and little known.  It was published by S. Eustratiades in 1918.  There is no copy in the United Kingdom, but there is a copy in the French National Library in Paris.  It’s about 136 pages, but ms. 14 is the only medical text.  The remainder are patristic.  And that is exciting!  For if the collection is that little known, who knows what it might contain?!

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The library at Meshed / Mashhad in Iran — unknown classical texts!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Let me direct you all to the comments on my earlier post about the discovery of some lost portions of Galen’s On my own books here.  The material is in Arabic translation, and found in a manuscript in Iran, at the library of Meshed.  I’d never heard of it!

A commenter has dug into the question and produced gold!  It seems that there are other unpublished texts there, including a mathematical commentary by Hypatia on Diophantus.  The library is now in a brand new building as well and has a website.

If you know Arabic and want to discover new classical texts, you need to visit Meshed / Mashhad.

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How long were ancient manuscripts used?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting but unsatisfying post at Ben Witherington, actually by Larry Hurtado: How long were ancient manuscripts used?

George W. Houston, “Papyrological Evidence for Book Collections and Libraries in the Roman Empire,” in Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome, ed. William A. Johnson and Holt N. Parker (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 233-67.

One matter Houston addresses is how long manuscripts appear to have been in use.   On the basis of manuscripts from Oxyrhynchus and from Herculaneum in particular, Houston notes numerous examples of manuscripts discarded when they were ca. 2-3 centuries old.  Overall, he judges that the evidence indicates “a useful life of between one hundred and two hundred years for a majority of the volumes, with a significant minority lasting two hundred years or more” (p. 251).  And, as he notes, the evidence from Qumran leads to a similar view.

This would tally with the sort of evidence we get in Aulus Gellius, of manuscripts of the time of Cicero or Vergil being available.  A set of literary testimonia would be useful, I think.

I’ve found the book, and the article appears to be a very useful one, packed full of data and intelligently analysed.

H/t Jim Davila at Paleojudaica.

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Books, libraries, codices and punctuation in Rome in Galen’s “Peri Alupias”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Galen’s Peri Alupias, (On the Avoidance of Grief), contains many interesting statements about the destruction of libraries in the fire.  The following excerpts are from the translation by Clare K. Rothschild and Trevor W. Thompson 1, of the fire and its aftermath.

6. Likewise, it is no (longer possible to have) the books – corrected versions, copies by my hand (of the works) of ancient men, and those (works) composed by me …

12b. In fact, the most terrible thing – in addition to the destruction of the books – has escaped you: hope of recovery no longer remains because all the libraries on the Palatine burned on that day.

13. It is, therefore, neither possible to find any of the rare books and the ones ‘nowhere else kept’, nor (possible to find) the common ones sought out for the accuracy of the text, the Callinia, Atticiana, Pedoucinia and certainly the Aristarcheia, which include two Homeric works, the Plato of Panaetius, and many other such works, since those writings – which, in the case of each book, the men after whom the books were named either wrote them or had them copied – were preserved inside (the libraries). And, in fact, copies of books from many ancient grammarians were kept (there), also those of rhetoricians, physicians and philosophers.

14. In addition to these (books) so important and so numerous, I then lost on the same day all the books that, after correction, had been written by me onto a pure text, books with unclear and errant readings throughout the texts – planning to produce my own edition. The writings were worked to (the point of) accuracy so that neither was something added nor words taken away, not even a paragraphos – single or double, or a coronis – appropriately placed between books. What is there to say about the period or comma? As you know, they are very valuable in unclear books, so that one who pays attention to them does not need an interpreter.

15 Such items included the books of Theophrastus, Aristotle, Eudemus, Clitomachus, Phanias, most of Chrysippus’ and all of the old physicians’.

16. Further, these things will especially distress you; I found outside (the libraries on the Palatine) books recorded in the so-called catalogs – some in the libraries on the Palatine and some, on the contrary, which clearly do not belong to the author to whom they are ascribed [i.e., in the catalogs] – neither with respect to style nor thought similar to him [i.e., the author]. I also found [books] of Theophrastus, in particular those on scientific matters.

17. – there are also his books on plants expounded in two extended treatises – everyone has them. And, there was the tractate in precise agreement with Aristotle, that I discovered and copied, which is now lost. In the same way, both (the books) of Theophrastus and of some other men of old were not reported in the catalogues, some although recorded in them, are no longer extant. I found, then, many of these in the libraries on the Palatine, but some, on the contrary, I prepared.

18.  In fact, those on the Palatine were destroyed on the same day as mine; the fire not only destroyed the storehouses on the Sacred Way, but also, before them, the (libraries) by the Temple of Peace, and afterwards, both those on the Palatine and the so-called “Tiberian House” in which there was also a library full of many other books; but some, on the contrary – on account of the negligence of those continually robbing (them) …… – at the time I first went up to Rome, were on the verge of destruction.

19. These (books), then, did not cause me a small pain when copying them. As it is, the papyri are completely useless, not even able to be unrolled because they have been glued together by decomposition, since the region is both marshy and low-lying, and, during the summer, it is stifling.

20. The treatise on Attic nouns [i.e., a dictionary] will also probably distress you, especially all the common terms and nouns. There are two parts, as you know, one from the Old Comedy and the other from the prose writers. But, luckily, some copies of the latter had been brought to Campania. If, in fact, those at Rome had burned two months later, the copies of all of my works would then have arrived in Campania.

21. For all (of my works) intended for publication were already transcribed in duplicate, not counting those that were to remain in Rome. On the one hand, my friends at home [i.e., Pergamum] were requesting that all of the works composed by me be sent to them in order that they may place (them) in a public library – just as, in fact, some other (friends) already placed many of my works in other cities – and, on the other hand, I was planning to have copies of everything in Campania.

22.  For this reason, then, there were duplicates of all of my (works), excluding those that were to remain in Rome, as I said.

23a.  So, the fire broke out at the end of winter. I planned, at the beginning of summer, to transport to Campania both those (works) that were meant to remain there [i.e., at Campania] and those that were to be sent to Asia when the Etesian winds blow.

23b–24a. Fortune, then, ambushed me by taking away many others of my books, and, above all, the treatise on nouns [i.e., a dictionary] that I excerpted from the whole of Old Comedy, from which, as you know, Didymus (Chalcenterus) had previously explained both the common and all the rare (terms) in fifty books, from which I prepared an epitome in six thousand lines. …

29–30 None of these things, then – although there were many (books) both useful and difficult-to-find – troubled me, not even the destruction of my commentaries, being of two types. Some were adapted so as to be useful also to others. Some were for me alone, although having the same provision for memory. Then there were many summaries, synopses of a great number of medical and philosophical books. But not even these things distressed me.

31. What then, you will say, is even greater than all the things mentioned that might be able to cause distress? Well, I will tell you this: I was entrusted with the possession of the most remarkable medical recipes, …

33. These medical recipes were preserved, with the utmost care, in two parchment codices that a certain one of the heirs – himself most dear to me – gave to me of his own accord without being asked.

What an invaluable discovery this work is!  The translators tell us:

The letter-treatise, dated to 193, was discovered as codex images on a CD-ROM in January 2005 in Vlatadon Monastery Thessaloniki. The manuscript, Vlatadon 14, is of immense value to scholars of antiquity. As Vivian Nutton rightly observes, “The discovery in 2005 by a French research student of Vlatadon 14 in a monastic library in Thessalonica must rank with one of the most spectacular finds ever of ancient literature” … 

A footnote indicates:

According to private correspondence, the work of Jouanna, Boudon-Millot and Pietrobelli was performed without access to the manuscript, but from a CD-ROM copy of microfilm.

Nutton’s statement is undoubtedly true.  Even from the limited excerpts above, we can see how much this tells us about ancient Rome.  The description of the decaying library in the Domus Tiberiana, where the papyrus rolls were stuck together by damp, is precious all by itself.  Fronto, indeed, tells us 2 that the curator could be bribed:

… in the afternoon we came home. I to my books: so taking off my boots and doffing my dress I passed nearly two hours on my couch, reading Cato’s speech On the property of Pulchra, and another in which he impeached a tribune. “Ho,” you cry to your boy, “go as last as you can and fetch me those speeches from the libraries of Apollo!” It is no use your sending, for those volumes, among others, have followed me here.  So you must get round the librarian of Tiberius’s library: a little douceur will be necessary, in which he and I can go shares when I come back to town.

Note also the reference in Galen to codices, containing the receipes for various medicines.  We all know of Martial’s reference to the codex, but here we see it being used for technical works, and the material — parchment — specified.

Clare Rothschild and Trevor Thompson has done us all a favour by making this translation.  It highlights how important this work is.  If only it was online!

1. Rothschild, Clare K.; Thompson, Trevor W., Galen: “On the Avoidance of Grief”, “Early Christianity”, 2011, pp. 110-129 (20).
2. Ad M. Caesar. iv, 5 (Naber, p.68) Loeb Classical Library, vol. 1, p.179

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A newly discovered text by Galen

Posted on by Roger Pearse

David Wilmshurst has drawn my attention to a find.  It seems that a French scholar discovered a lost work by Galen in a monastery in Thessalonika, not long ago!  Apparently there was a Times Literary Supplement article which mentioned it, and I found this word document — apparently abstracts from a 2007 Classical Association of South Africa conference — which contained the following item.  It seems that Veronique Boudon-Millot is the discoverer:

Véronique Boudon-Millot (Paris IV) 

THE LIBRARY OF A GREEK SCHOLAR IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE : NEW TESTIMONY FROM THE RECENTLY DISCOVERED GALEN’S PERI ALUPIAS.

The Galenic treatise Peri alupias (On the avoidance of pain) was regarded as entirely lost, as well in Greek as in Arabic or Latin. The recent discovery of this treatise in an unknown manuscript of Thessaloniki furnishes some new and important material about the workshop and the library of a Greek scholar in Rome in the 2nd century. The aim of this paper is to present the different aspects of the activity of Galen as scholar, physician and surgeon as well as philosopher and to give some details about his main centres of interest.

In other words, this is not merely a new text, but one that is of wide interest to people like ourselves who are interested in how the ancient world of books worked!

I need to find out more about this.  There ought to be papers on this, I would think.  More later.

UPDATE: There is also an article in PDF here about Galen’s Library by the same scholar, who clearly is the discoverer.  She refers to:

a new manuscript of Galen’s works, Vlatadon 14, which was recently discovered in the Vlatades monastery in Thessaloniki, … it is a 281-folio5 manuscript, measuring 305 x 220 mm, dating from the 15th century and probably coming from Constantinople. Written by a number of copyists, it contains about thirty Galenic or pseudo-Galenic treatises. Apart from Peri alupias which can be found in folios 10v to 14v …

4. See V. Boudon-Millot, ‘Un traité perdu de Galien miraculeusement retrouvé, le Sur l’inutilité de se chagriner: texte grec et traduction française’, in V. Boudon-Millot, A. Guardasole & C. Magdelaine (edd.), La science médicale antique. Nouveaux regards. Etudes réunies en l’honneur de J. Jouanna (Paris 2007) 72-123.

The article contains English versions of much of the interesting material. 

UPDATE: It seems that Veronique Boudon is a very busy Galen scholar indeed!  Her home page here lists many articles, including these two:

« Galen’s On my own Books : New Material from Meshed, Rida, Tibb. 5223 », in The Unknown Galen, Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Unknown Galen : Galen beyond Kühn (Thursday & Friday 25-26 November 1999), London, Institute of Classical Studies, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Supplement 77, 2002, p. 9-18.  [NF4 P520.b.87.68]

« Deux manuscrits médicaux arabes de Meshed (Rida tibb 5223 et 80) : nouvelles découvertes sur le texte de Galien », CRAI 2001, fasc. II (avril-juin), p. 1197-1222.  (Perhaps this is Comptes rendus de l’Academie des Inscriptions et Belles- Lettres?)

This is some Arabic new discovery on the most interesting of Galen’s works, On my own books (a work which she has edited and translated into French).  Mmmm.  I so want to read all this material!  Isn’t it daft, tho, that it’s all offline?

Then there are these:

« Un nouveau témoin pour l’histoire du texte de l’Ars medica de Galien : le Vlatadon 14 », in L’Ars medica (Tegni) de Galien : lectures antiques et médiévales, textes réunis et édités par N. Palmieri, Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, Centre Jean Palerne, Mémoires XXXIII, 2008, p. 11-29. 

« Un traité perdu de Galien miraculeusement retrouvé, le Sur l’inutilité de se chagriner : texte grec et traduction française », in La science médicale antique : nouveaux regards, Etudes réunies par V. Boudon-Millot, A. Guardasole et C. Magdelaine en l’honneur de J. Jouanna, Paris, Beauchesne, 2007, p. 72-123.

« The Library and the Workshop of a Greek Scholar in the Roman Empire: New Testimony from the recently discovered Galen’s treatise Peri alupias », in Asklepios. Studies on Ancient Medicine, Acta Classica Supplementum II, edited by Louise Cilliers, 2008, p. 7-18.

« A Recently Discovered Consolation: Galen’s On the Futility of Grieving », in H. Baltussen (ed.), Acts of Consolation: Approaches to Loss and Sorrow from Sophocles to Shakespeare, A collection of papers presented at the International Colloquium (London, 14-15 December 2007), Cambridge University Press.

I suspect the Asklepios article is the one I found online.  Again, I want to read them all.  And I can’t even access them!

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Notes on the transmission of Aeschylus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The fifth century BC dramatist Aeschylus is one of the few Greek dramatists whose works have survived.  Originally more than 80 plays existed, and official copies were deposited in the Metroon in Athens.  His plays remained popular during the fourth and third centuries BC.  1

Some time after 240 BC, when the Library of Alexandria was created, Ptolemy Euergetes arranged to borrow the official Athenian copies, on payment of a huge deposit; and then calmly kept them, forfeited the money, and returned copies to Athens rather than the originals.  It is perilous to negotiate with those above the fear of law. 

The text was then worked on by the scholars of the Library, who athetised lines that they considered had been interpolated or amended, often by actors or producers in the interests of their own production.  But at the same time, in the second and first centuries BC, Aeschylus dropped out of favour, and became the property of scholars and grammarians, rather than the public.  Horace, Quintilian, and others comment on it during this and the next period.

At some point during the succeeding centuries, perhaps in the third century, a selection of seven plays was made, and an edition produced, with separate commentaries, probably for school use.  These are the only plays that have reached us.  Later still, during the early Byzantine period, a further selection from these of three plays was made — the so-called Byzantine triad, consisting of Prometheus, Seven against Thebes, and the Persians.  At the same time the commentary material was reworked as marginal scholia.  At some later point, two more of the seven plays, the Agamemnon and the Eumenides, were added to the curriculum.  These five plays are well attested in Byzantine manuscripts.

Fortunately in 1423 a manuscript arrived in Florence, written ca. 1000 AD, and containing all seven plays of the original edition, including the Libation-bearers (although the start of this is lost) and the Suppliant Maidens.    This manuscript is now in the Biblioteca Mediceo-Laurenziana (Laur. 32.9) and has the siglum M.  It is a high-quality parchment copy, which also contains the works of Sophocles and Apollonius Rhodius, with the scholia.  It is also the oldest of our codices.

There are about 150 manuscripts of Aeschylus.2  Almost all of these contain only the edition of three, with the plays in the order given above.  The last two plays exist only in M and its copies.  The Agamemnon and Eumenides exist in M and its copies, but also in three other manuscripts, at least one of which is known to be the work of Demetrius Triclinius, and the other two are thought to be his work also, but at a different stage of his life.  There are three further manuscripts: two contain the Agamemnon, one of which (V) is merely a few hundred lines; and the remaining one, at Salamanca, contains the Prometheus and Eumenides. 

None of the manuscripts other than M is older than 1200, a few are 13th century, and most belong to the 14-16th centuries.  A list of selected mss is given in the Loeb, but is perhaps too long for this post.3

The papyrus fragments recovered from the sands of Egypt mainly date from the 2nd century on, when Aeschylus was not in fashion.  Generally they reflect the text of the codices.  However a significant number of fragments from the satyr plays have been recovered.

The text of Aeschylus has suffered generally from Byzantine “corrections”.  The Suppliant Maidens has fewest scholia, and probably has been least interfered with.

M and some of the other manuscripts also contain supplementary material to the scholia.  There is a catalogue of the works of Aeschylus, both the tragedies and the satyr plays.  There is a description of his life; and also the hypotheses or argumenta, summaries of the content of each play, with details of the circumstances of performance.  There are two versions of the catalogue.  The life probably derives from a pupil of Aristotle, and is full of valuable, but not always accurate information.  The argumenta vary from play to play; complete for the three core plays; absent altogether for the two preserved by M; somewhere in between for the others.

There is, as far as I know, no transmission of the text into Latin, Syriac, or Arabic.  This observation, which will not surprise most of us, is necessary because of a remark in a sub-Da Vinci Code novel which I found myself reading this afternoon.  In Chris Roberson’s Book of Secrets (Angry Robot / Harper-Collins, 2009), on p.139, I read the following curious statement:

“Aeschylus, the acknowledged father of the Greek theater; only something like seven of his plays have survived.  Dozens of his plays, praised by the ancient world, are totally forgotten to us.”  She had lapsed into lecturing, but she was a professor so I forgave her. “Of the ones we have, several survived only in translations made later by Arab scholars.”

The translations into Arabic of Greek texts were mainly of technical works, such as the medical texts of Galen.  Nor am I quite sure that Christian people like Job of Edessa or Hunayn ibn Ishaq would appreciate being called “Arab scholars”!  So this all looked a bit strange.  Thus a bit of research online; thus this post.  The statement above is fiction, then; there are no Arabic versions of Aeschylus, as far as I can tell.

The book was filed under sci-fi and fantasy at my local bookshop, and I bought it under that impression, sadly.  It is a little annoying when something you read for light relief tweaks your scholarship muscle! 

But I don’t think we should complain.  Mr. Roberson merely sought to tell a story, and amended reality slightly in order to do so, on a matter which only specialists would detect.  That is, I suppose, what fiction is; and if Swallows and Amazons could take liberties with the Lake District, why shouldn’t Chris Roberson invent an Arabic transmission of Aeschylus? 

Anyway, if anyone reads this obscure novel, and their curiosity is stirred about Arabic versions of ancient Greek literature, surely that is all to the good?  Let us not be too stuffy about these things.

1.  This post began as a summary of information from Thomas G. Rosenmeyer, The art of Aeschylus, University of California, 1982, p.11 f.  Online at Google Books here.
2.  R.D.Dawe, The collation and investigation of manuscripts of Aeschylus, Cambridge, 1964.
3.  Loeb Classical Library edition, ed. H.W.Smyth (1922), volume 1, p.xxxv.  The Loeb is online here.

UPDATE: I gather that the book to read is Alexander Turyn, The Manuscript Tradition of the Tragedies of Aeschylus (Polish Institute Series No. 2. New York City, 1943).   Unfortunately I don’t have access to it.  Why aren’t books like these online?

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Notes on the works of the alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Quite by chance, I came across a PhD thesis online from 2006,1 which contained a rather interesting discussion of the sources for the ancient alchemical writer, Zosimus of Panopolis.  A few notes from this may be of general interest.

Alchemy is usually defined as the attempt to transmute base metals into gold, and the methods adopted led into the creation of modern Chemistry.  It seems to have originated in Graeco-Egyptian circles around the time of Christ, among metallurgists and dyers and jewellers and artisans whose crafts involved colouring things like metal and gemstones.  The texts are in Greek.  Leyden papyrus X and the Stockolm papyrus, from the Theban hoard of Greek magical texts found by Jean d’Anastasi before the 1820’s, are 3rd century and among the earliest examples.  The techniques go back much further; but what is distinctive is the pagan religious element, including Jewish and gnostic material.

The religious language and imagery is very much a part of alchemy as a discipline.  The modern science of chemistry became definitely a separate entity during the 18th century, and consequently whatever survives of alchemy today forms part of occult literature.  With this we are not, of course, concerned.

Zosimus wrote ca. 270 AD, and was perhaps the most important of the Greek alchemists.  Collections of Greek alchemical works are preserved in Greek, Syriac, Arabic and Latin.  The Greek manuscripts, dated to the 10-15th century, contain some 109 pages of Zosimus, and form the largest portion of his work.  The manuscripts are:

  • Venice, Marcianus graecus 299 (tenth or eleventh century),
  • Parisinus graecus 2325 (thirteenth century)
  • Parisinus graecus 2327 (fifteenth century)
  • Florence, Laurentianus graecus 86, 16 (fifteenth century).

This material was translated by Berthelot and Ruelle in 1888 as the Collection des Alchimistes Grecs, which I found at Archive.org here (vol. 1) and here (vols.2 and 3).

In the late 1980’s Michèle Mertens undertook the project of sorting out Zosimus’s writings in these Greek manuscripts. These she catalogued in four groups, from Greek, Syriac, Arabic and Latin manuscripts:2

  • Authentic Memoirs
  • Chapters to Eusebia
  • Chapters to Theodorus
  • Book of Sophe and Final Account

Some 64 pages of Zosimus are extant in three Syriac manuscripts of the 15-16th century:

  • Cambridge University Library Mm 6.29 (fifteenth century)
  • British Library, Egerton 709 (fifteenth century)
  • British Library, Oriental 1593 (fifteenth or sixteenth century).

These were collected by Berthelot, translated into French by R. Duval, and published in 1893 in a three volume series entitled La Chimie au Moyen Age.  The Syriac material is different from that in Greek, and contains material now extant in Greek only in abbreviated form.

The Arabic and Latin manuscripts only contain a few pages of his work.  But the Arabic mss., which date from the 13-15th century, do contain a list of all his works, most of which are now lost.  The Latin mss. contain extracts from the Chapters to Eusebia which are also found in Greek.

Sadly I  fear that all this literature is quite dull!

1. Shannon L. Grimes, Zosimus of Panopolis: Alchemy, Nature and Religion in Late Antiquity, Diss. Syracuse University 2006.
2. Michèle Mertens, Zosime de Panopolis: Mémoires authentiques, Les Alchimistes Grecs, Tome IV, 1re partie (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1995), xii-cxii.

 

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The tomb of a Greco-Egyptian priest and his papyrus codices

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Felling rather lighter in heart, I spent this evening creating a Wikipedia article for Leyden papyrus X.  This is an alchemical papyrus codex of 20 leaves, dating from around 300 AD or just before, and dedicated to metalurgy.  It came out of Luxor in Egypt, or rather, out of Thebes.  It’s written in Greek with some demotic, and in the same hand as the so-called Stockholm papyrus, which contains recipes for dyes and stains to make metals look like gold or silver.  The history of these manuscripts is interesting.

In the early 19th century, there was an Armenian adventurer at the Khedevial court in Alexandria.  His true name is unknown, but he called himself Jean d’Anastasi or d’Anastasy.  This was not long after Napoleon’s adventure in Egypt, and the rout of the Mamelukes by the French was perhaps still fresh in the minds of the Egyptians.  A French name he had, anyway. 

Egypt at that period was still part of the Ottoman empire.  When that empire had been at its height, it had issued various legal concessions to westerners, giving immunities from the corrupt attentions of Ottoman officials, and the arbitrary and objectionable taxes and customs and simple robberies involved in being an Ottoman subject.  In consequence many nations employed local people as consular representatives, and such roles were sought out for the same reasons.  This d’Anastasi, at all events, obtained credentials as the Swedish vice-consul, a role that doubtless involved him in much activity on his own behalf in the name of the King of Sweden, and found him very little inconvenienced by any Swedish travellers in that period.

Such “consuls” were keenly interested in the antiquities trade.  The discovery of ancient Egypt by Napoleon, and the savants with whom he travelled, had created a market for such things.  The decypherment of the hieroglyphics was underway, and papyri were much sought-after.  Several decades later, Amelia Edwards in her A thousand miles up the Nile records her own interest in buying such a thing.

It seems that d’Anastasi, as we may as well call him, got lucky.  His agents told him of a ‘find’.  In Luxor, in the ruins of Thebes of the Hundred Gates, someone discovered the tomb of a Greco-Egyptian priest, who had interests in magic and alchemy, and had taken his precious codices to the grave with him.  D’Anastasi acquired them, doubtless for money.  In 1828 he came back to Europe, and disposed of the lot in a series of sales, mostly to European governments.  These were keen to acquire them; but such low-grade literature was of little interest to scholars mainly interested in the Greek classics. Publication with Latin translation took most of the century, and translation into English is only partial even now.

I have no list of d’Anastasi’s collection.  A study of his life and times and, above all, of his collection of papyri and their modern whereabouts and contents, is one that a scholar would be well advised to undertake.  It is likely that much has escaped the attention of scholars, because of the dispersal of the collection.

But let us return to our priest.  A scholar he was, for his interests were antiquarian.  Whether he was a practising magician we do not know.  He knew both Greek and Demotic, and there is writing in Old Coptic, so he was certainly a native Egyptian.  The material at his disposal was heavily influenced by ancient Egyptian magic, and also by Jewish magicians — for whom Moses was a name of power — and even elements from Christian sources.  All was grist, if it “did the trick”.

We do not know his name.  It’s probably written on the walls of his robbed-out tomb, if that still exists and was not destroyed for lime and raw stones.  So much was destroyed, after all.  Flinders Petrie, the founder of scientific archaeology, was horrified at how everything was just being destroyed all around him.  The great temple of Horus at Armant was blown up with gun-powder by “a rascally Italian” to furnish stone for a sugar factory — there is a drawing of it in the Description de l’Egypte of Napoleon’s day, and little else now.

But whoever our priest was, he upheld the reputation of the Egyptians as great magicians.  The texts he assembled have reached us.  The Luxor find is little known, but it once again highlights just how many books there are in the sands of Egypt.

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Coptic fragments from Sothebys

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Alin Suciu has a couple of interesting posts, identifying some Coptic fragments recently auctioned at Sothebys.  More info here!

http://suciualin.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/the-identification-of-the-coptic-fragments-auctioned-by-sothebys/

http://suciualin.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/the-sothebys-coptic-fragments-supplementary-identifications/

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The colophon of the Tura papyrus of Origen Contra Celsum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At the end of book 1 of the papyrus containing extracts of books 1 and 2 of Origen’s Contra Celsum, is an interesting note:

μετεβληθη και αντεβληθη εξ αντιγραφου των αυτου ωριγενους βιβλι[ων]

Revised and corrected from the copy of the books of Origen himself.

This is quite a statement, in a manuscript of the 7th century.  Presumably this means at Caesarea, where Origen’s library ended up.

One interesting feature of this papyrus is that two readings are given in some cases.  The editor of the papyrus, Scherer, suggests that this is because the ancient editor — presumably at Caesarea — found two readings in his sources.  In other words … we have indications of an ancient edition with a critical apparatus.  More interesting still, the two-fold reading makes its way even to the 13th century codex of Contra Celsum.

We’re all familiar with the colophons in biblical mss recording the editorial work of Pamphilus.  It’s interesting to see evidence of the same activity on other works being copied.

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