With regard to the material conditions in which people lived, their culture, education, religion, habits and amusements, the papyri are a mine of information. This is one of their more immediately attractive sides, and nowhere are their peculiar qualities and significance more evident. Much private correspondence is found, and in this and the equally numerous petitions, contracts, accounts, etc., may be seen an almost endless variety of intimate and unposed scenes of common life. In one letter a person in financial difficulties is warned to beware of moneylenders ; in another, a father describes how, egged on by his wife and daughter, he got his son transferred from the in fantry into the cavalry ; in another a prodigal confesses that he had brought himself to destitution and begs for forgiveness. There are formal invitations, couched, like those of to-day, in the third person, to dinner; lists of viands; contracts with musicians and other artistes who were engaged to perform on festive occasions; an order for an inquest on a slave who had fallen from a house in an endeavour to get a good view of some dancing-girls ; athletic diplomas; a list of articles in pawn; a question addressed to the local oracle about a man's matrimonial prospects; the complaint of an outraged wife that her husband had locked her out of doors: these are a few samples of a material from which a realistic picture may be made.
The legal side of the papyri is also of much im portance. Both Greek law, which came to Egypt with the Ptole maic dynasty, and Roman law, which was afterwards engrafted upon the earlier system, obtain in them valuable evidence and illustration. As in the department of history, single texts of special interest sometimes occur, e.g., a papyrus at Halle which preserves in eleven columns a number of ordinances in force at Alexandria in the third century B.C. (Dikaiomata, 1913), or a still larger text of the Roman period at Berlin, which is a kind of manual for the guidance of the minister of finance (Gnomon des Idios Logos, 1919). But here again much is to be gleaned from the multifarious edicts, reports of judicial proceedings, petitions, wills, contracts and other such papers.
Another subject having a considerable debt to acknowledge is philology. In the new edition of Liddell and Scott's Greek lexicon, now in course of publication, there are many references to the papyri; and they figure prominently in every page of Moulton and Milligan's Vocabulary of the New Testament. It is indeed in its bearing upon what has been mis called "Biblical Greek" that the linguistic evidence of the docu ments has proved to be especially illuminating. They have shown that the supposed peculiarities of the Greek of the New Testa ment were illusory; its vocabulary and syntax reappear in the documentary papyri, where are found many of the words and con structions formerly explained as due to Semitic influence. In
short, the New Testament, like the papyri, merely reflects the vernacular of the day.
Numismatics and Metrology are also subjects which find valu able data in the papyri, where, naturally, money matters are a constantly recurring topic, and references to weights and measures are frequent. Occasionally tables drawn up for purposes of refer ence or for committing to memory are found.
The palaeography of papyri, both literary and documentary, is dealt with elsewhere (see PALAEOGRAPHY : Greek). For the history of Greek writing they are of course highly important. In the literary and cursive hands of the papyri is to be found the origin of the uncial and minuscule scripts of the vellum codices, and the date and source of the older of these have sometimes to be revised in the light of the papyrus evidence. A useful contribution is made also to Latin palaeography.
Wilcken and L. Mitteis, Grand ziige and Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde (Leipzig, and Berlin, 1912) ; W. Schubart, Einfiihrung in die Papyruskunde, dealing with both literary and non-literary texts (1918) ; G. Milligan, Here and there among the Papyri, treating the papyri primarily in relation to the New Testament (1922).
Descriptions of Excavations.—Egypt Exploration Society, Archae ological Reports (1896-99, 1902-07) ; B. P. Grenfell, A. S. Hunt and D. G. Hogarth, Fayum Towns and their Papyri (190o) ; Bull. de corr. Kellen., vol. xxv. pp. 380-411 (1901) ; Archiv. fur Papyrus forschung, vol. i. pp. 376-78 (1901), vol. ii. pp. 293-336 (1903).
Principal editions of Texts.—W. Brunet de Presle and E. Egger, Papyrus grecs du Musee du Louvre (1866) ; Sir J. P. Mahaffy and J. G. Smyly, The Flinders Petrie Papyri, vol. i.–ii. (Dublin, 1891 1905) ; F. G. Kenyon and H. I. Bell, Greek Papyri in the British Museum, vol. i.–v. (1893-1917) ; U. Wilcken and others, Griech.
Urkunden aus den Museen zu Berlin, vol. (1893-1926) •, C.
Wessely, Corpus Papyrorum Raineri (1895) ; B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. i.–xvii. (1896-1927) ; B. P. Grenfell, Greek Papyri, chiefly Ptolemaic (Oxford, 1896) ; J. Nicole, Les Papyrus de Geneve (Geneva, 1896-1906) ; B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, New Classical Fragments, etc. (Oxford, 1897) ; U. Wilcken, Griech. Ostraka aus Aegypten u. Nubien (Leipzig and Berlin, 1899) B. P. Grenfell, A. S. Hunt and D. G. Hogarth, Fdyum Towns and their Papyri (1900) ; B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, Amherst Papyri, vols. i. and ii. (190o, 1901) and Tebtunis Papyri, vols. i. and ii. (1902-1907) ; H. Diets, U, v. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, W. Schubart, etc., Berl. Klassikertexte (1904-1o) ; T. Reinach and others.