Nor are the Greek papyri found in Egypt less important ; and recent discoveries have not only ridded considerably to the stock of Greek literature, but excited hopes of finding still greater treasures. The 150 papyri found in the vicinity of the Serapeum of Memphis have revealed the inner life and government of that temple—the mode of transacting public business, the administration of justice, the value of commodities, the state of the chancery of the Ptolemies, the rules of the religious orders, and many other curious particulars connected with the history of that temple. [SEnassum.] Those exhumed from the ruins of Thebes have also been of great interest, throwing considerable light upon the history of the pLice,eapecially the sale of the mummies, liturgies, and houses, the quarrels of the various classes of undertakers and others in that declining city. Besides these, letters of private individuals, advertisements for runaway slaves, a treatise on astronomy, a horoscope, and a treatise on grammar, with extracts from lost authors, and other miscellaneous writings have been found. The dis covery of a book of the ' Iliad,' and of two lost orations, and portions of two others of Hypereides, have proved what important manuscripts in this material may come from the Theban tombs. The Psalms of David, in uncial characters, on papyrus, in the form of a book, have also been found in Egypt.
Although there is no doubt from the mention of papyrus, either in its natural or manufactured state, by Homer, Alcieus, iEschylus, lierodotus, and Plato, that the Greeks were acquainted with its use at an early period, yet it is doubtful if it was universally employed, not withstanding the spurious letter of Sarpedon, said to have been written from that monarch when at Troy, and sent to Lycia. It appears from an Athenian inscription that a sheet of papyrus, charta, in the days of Pericles, cost 1 draclim 2 obols, or about ls. lid., which, taking the value of money at that period as four times greater than at pre sent, amounts to about 4s. 6d. [IthangabG Ant. Hell. I.,' 1842, No. 56-59 ; Egger, Rev. Contemp.' 1856, p. 171.] Probably the state ment of Varro is substantially correct, and it was not much in use till the time of Alexander the Great—before which period the Greeks used palm-leaves, linen, lead, or wax. Among the Ionian Greeks dipthertr, or skins, appear to have been anciently employed, for they gave this name to papyri. At the time of the Ptolemies papyri and books were exported from Egypt, but the trade was stopped by the rivalry of the kings of Egypt and Pcrgainua—Ptolemy Epiphanes V. and Attalus, or Eumenes II., in whose reign the grammarian Crates s said to have invented pergamena, or parchment, or rather to have substituted its use, this material having already existed long before in Egypt—rolls of brown leather of the 14th, and of white Leather or parchment of the subsequent dynasties existing in the 2ollections of the British Museum of nearly 1000 years older than the parchments of the kings of Pergamus.
The use of papyrus in Rome dated from the earliest period, the books of Numa and the Sibyl were said to have been made of this material, but Varro, in a passage controverted by Pliny, states that the paper was first invented long after, in the days of Alexander the Great. It is clear, however, that it was in use in European and Asiatic Greece, and consequently Gnecia, long before. According to other authorities it was raised in Apulia and Calabria, and even in the marshes of the Tiber, in the vicinity of Rome ; but there appears to be seine doubt whether the Romans manufactured paper at Rome or merely improved and adapted the raw papyri exported from Egypt. In the days of the empire various kinds of papyri then in use were named from their size or fineness. The Romans prepared their paper with greater care, and sized it with a paste of fine flour stirred iu boiling water with a few drops of vinegar, and some leaven, which was filtered and kept for one (lay ; after sizing it was beaten with a hammer and sometimes sized a second time, pressed and smoothed. The names of the principal kinds were the Marta Augusta, 12 inches broad, of a fine and white quality, anciently called the hieratica, because used for religious purposes, rather too thin for books, and used only for letters, hence called epistolaris; the Liriana, named after Livia, was the second quality ; the third quality was the amphitheatrica, so called from being made near some amphitheatre, of 9 inches, breadth, being beaten out from an Egyptian papyrus of 8 inches ; an improved kind called the Fanniana, was prepared by the grammarian Rhemmius Fannius Paliemon, in the reign of Claudius I., 10 inches in width, and
very fine, and capable of being written on both sides; the Claudia, invented by the same emperor, was 13 inches wide, and underlaid with a-second layer ; besides which there were the emporetica, or warehouse paper, for packing, of 6 inches ; the saitica, made either of coarser or old material, and narrow ; the tamiotica, very coarse, sold by weight ; and other qualities and kinds as the Thcbaica, Carica, 11lemphitica, named from the places where produced ; the Corneliana, said to have been called after Cornelius Gallus ; the ivgia, or royal, finer, but not large ; and the macrocollus, larger than 13 inches. The quire, scapus, consisted originally of twenty sheets, or plagulcr, but was afterwards reduced to ten. The defects were roughness, spots, and gaps. The length of the writing on the pages was narrow, and the Herculaneum papyri do not exceed 4 inches ; the writer used an ink made of soot, of pine-wood, burnt pitch, and resin, and special writers, called chrrographi, wrote gold letters ; all wrote with the calamus, Carian or Egyptian reed, on blind lines, alol.cs, generally on one side only, the back being generally stained with saffron or cedar-oil. The writings or books were rolled up upon a stick, like the Egyptian, into a cylindrical form—each cylinder was called tolumcn ; and those of Iler culaneunt have the stick, bacillus, or the umbilicus, concealed in the rolls : at each end was a projecting knbb, arta ; the edges were coloured black. Volumes were often placed in purple leather comes, called sittylar ; and the title of the roll, titulus, was written on a small strip of papyrus or parclnnent, lorum,in letters of a light red colour,— besides which, a portrait of the author was sometimes drawn on the first page of the roll. The titles of works were suspended to the door-posts, columme, of the booksellers, who formed an important class. Books were not very dear : a copy of the first book of Martial's Epi sold for 5 denarii, or about 4s., in the author's lifetime. The Alexandrian trade in books was very great; and nothing astonished Hadrian more on his visit to that city than the activity of the paper manufacture at Alexandria, which formed one of the staples of Egyptian commerce, which is mentioned by Philostratus, A.D. 244 ; and the pretender to the empire, Fianna, A.D. 272, boasted that lie could feed his army off the papyrus and glue of his paper manufactory. The Alexandrian papyrus is mentioned by St. Cyril, A.D. 409, and a Latin deed of sale is known of the same century, found at Philos. St. Jerome in this century mentions its use as universal. The use of this material continued to be universal in the following century, and there remains of this age the homilies of St. Avitus, &D. 525 ; the charters of Ravenna,;of A.D. 552 ; the homilies of St. Augustine, written on papyrus with sheets of parchment introduced ; and fragments of Josephus. The most remarkable event of this ago is the abolition of the paper duty by Theodoric, recorded in the pompous and flowery panegyric of Cassiodorus, A.D. 562. It is also mentioned in this century in the legend of St. Eugendus, and by Gregory of Tours, as exported from Alexandria. The Greek charters of Mauritius and Heraclius, A.D. 606 616, and the Latin of Dagobert I., A.D. 690, show its use in the east and west in the 7th century ; the bull of Pope John VIII., A.D. 876, brings its use down to the 9th ; and in Italy it continued to be used till the 11th or 12th, the latest known document being the bull of Paschal II. in favour of the see of Ravenna, but Eustathius, A.D. 1170, speaks of papyrus as extinct in his days ; and it appears to have been quite superseded by the use of cotton-paper, Charta Bombgrina, or Damascena, introduced by the Arabs from Asia, of which they obtained the knowledge in A.D. 704, according to some authorities, but no Antic paper manuscript bearing a date older than about A.D. 950 14 known. Sarni indeed tusert that the seealled papyri of these later cesturies are really made of bark, and are a kind of charte corticeo.