HISTORY OF THE DISCOVERY OF PAPYRI 18th Century.—Herculaneum.—The first discovery of Greek papyri, of which we have record, was made at Hercula neum, where in 1752 the charred remains of a library were found, consisting almost entirely of philosophical works, mostly by Philo demus, an Epicurean contemporary of Cicero, others by Epicurus himself or writers of his school. Copies of some of these were edited by Walter Scott (Fragmenta Herculanensia, 1885), others have been published in Italy. That find is as yet an isolated event.
In Egypt Greek papyri first made an appearance in 1778, when a European merchant bought one of a number of rolls said to have been unearthed at Gizeh. The rest were torn up by the native finders and burned for the sake of their aromatic smell. Such is the picturesque but not very convincing story. That the home of the discoverers was Gizeh no one familiar with that village will doubt. As the place of discovery, however, the Fayum (the ancient Arsinoite nome), is plainly indicated by the contents of the single surviving roll.
About 182o further appreciable finds began to be made. In the decade from 1815 to 1825 several groups of documents, many of the second century B.C., were un earthed, chiefly at Memphis and Thebes, and for the most part found their way to the museums of London, Paris, Turin, Vienna and Leyden. The Turin section was edited by Amadeo Peyron in 1826, and the others were brought out in more or less successful form during the next forty years. The first literary papyrus ob tained from Egypt was a roll containing Book XXIV. of the Iliad, bought by William Bankes in 1821 and passed on by him to the British Museum. That institution also acquired in 1847 the papyrus of a lost classic which contains three orations of Hyper ides, and subsequently the Funeral Oration of the same orator, which followed in 1856.
The sporadic finds just described, though important, were relatively sparse, and it was only in the last quarter of the century that the great possibilities of Egypt as a source of papyri became fully apparent. The second period in the history of papyrus discovery began in 1877 and lasted for rather less than twenty years. It was marked by very large finds made in the ruins of Arsinoe and other places in the Arsinoite come, and of Heracleopolis and Hermopolis, farther south in the Nile valley. Many of these finds were the accidental fruits of digging in the ancient mounds for sebakh, i.e., nitrous earth which is extensively used by the natives as a fertilizer. The fellahin had gradually awakened to the fact that papyrus was a marketable commodity, so that what formerly passed unheeded came to be more or less carefully preserved and handed on to dealers in antiquities. Other discoveries were the outcome of work under taken by the dealers themselves, or by mere plunderers. The united result was a copious and fairly constant stream which flowed mainly to London, Berlin and Vienna. During this period, in the winter of 1889, Prof. (now Sir Flinders) Petrie, excavating at Gurob in the Fayilm, came upon some mummies of the early Ptolemaic age, in the cartonnages of which papyrus had been used in place of cloth (see below). About the same time the Brit ish Museum purchased a most important group of literary papyri, including Aristotle's treatise on the Constitution of Athens, the Mimes of Herondas, and part of the oration of Hyperides against Philippides, while another speech of Hyperides, that against Athenogenes, was acquired by the Louvre.
The earlier discoveries outlined above proceeded almost entirely from the unskilled work, some times authorized but often illicit, of natives, whose desultory methods involved much damage and loss. Those of the latest period, now in progress, have largely been the product of system atic exploration superintended by properly qualified Europeans. In the winter of 1895-96 the first expedition of such a kind, definitely undertaken for the discovery of papyri, was conducted on behalf of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society) by Drs. D. G. Hogarth, B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt in the north of the Fayum. Its results, subsequently published in Fayiim Towns and
their Papyri, justified further efforts, and in the following season an enormous find was made by Grenfell and Hunt in the mounds of Behnesa, the ancient Oxyrhynchus, once the capital of a prov ince. Among their earliest discoveries there was a leaf contain ing new sayings of Jesus, which were published in a brochure under the title of Logia in 1897. Prompted by this success the Society founded in that year a Graeco-Roman branch with a view to systematic publication of what had already been secured as well as to further exploration. Work was carried on by the same pair at various sites in the Fayilm, at El Hibeh in the Nile valley, and for five more seasons at Behnesa, and subsequently by Mr. John Johnson on the sites of Heracleopolis, Aphroditopolis and An tinoe. French scholars conducted excavations in the Fayurn and middle Egypt (1901-4) ;. Germans at Heracleopolis
Elephantine, Hermopolis, Abusir at the entrance to the Faytlm, and in the Fay1.1m itself ; Italians at Hermopolis (1903) and later at Oxyrhynchus, while at Aphroditopolis a representative of the Cairo Museum made one of the most notable of recent dis coveries, remains of a papyrus book containing comedies of Menander (1905). Meanwhile native digging, though overshad owed, was not suspended, and papyri from that source continued to be offered for sale. A most important literary acquisition, the Bacchylides papyrus, came in this way to the British Museum at the end of 1896. Another highly valuable find of a different char acter occurred in 1915, consisting of a very extensive group of documents known as the archives of Zenon, in which the central figure is an official of the third century B.C. The lion's share of this was obtained by the Museum of Cairo, but large sections have gone also to the British Museum and Florence, and a sprinkling to the United States. Since the interruption caused by the World War little in the way of scientific excavation has been attempted, except by an American expedition from Michigan university which has worked for several winters in the Fayilm on the site of the ancient Karanis, and discoveries by natives, either in the course of their agricultural operations or by less legitimate means, have again become the chief source of supply. Of the material recently placed on the market much has been secured by institutions in the United States, whose active participation both in field work and purchases marks a new departure in papyrology.
Of the papyri re covered hitherto, the bulk has proceeded from the ruins of ancient towns and villages. They may be found in deserted houses, where useless or forgotten papers were left lying about or perhaps put by for safety in a pot or other receptacle. Such conditions have been exemplified in sites on the edge of the Faytim desert. Papyri are to be found, again, in mere rubbish heaps, where waste paper was thrown away along with other house refuse. These piles of ancient rubbish may be the growth of several centuries, and may rise to a height of some 3o feet.
A second principal source is tombs. Books or papers were occasionally buried with their dead owners, and valu able literary finds have sometimes been made in this way, e.g., the Persae of Timotheus, which was found by German excavators at Abusir. Moreover, in the Ptolemaic period waste papyrus was often employed in the process of mummification. It was the fashion to decorate human mummies with pieces of painted car tonnage, in the composition of which papyrus was a common in gredient. By removing the overlying plaster and paint and separating the layers the documents used may be recovered in a more or less legible condition. The Petrie Papyri, as mentioned above, and many others since, were so obtained. Sometimes, too, waste paper was utilized in the mummification of crocodiles and other sacred animals. The discovery of papyri in mummified crocodiles was first made by Grenfell and Hunt in the Fayilm when working for the University of California; over 25o texts derived from this source were published in Tebtunis Papyri, vol. i.