The meet remarkable of the Roman papyri are the 1750 rolls, and fragmesu found in an exceration of I lerculancum, about A.D. 1753, in a book ease Ina small room In a boom, utterly reduced to carbon, and twisted so as to reelable ranis horns, by the effecu of the eruption of Vesuvius. They were at first Lelioesel to be mere billets of carbon, but letters having been observed on some, attempu were made to unrol and deep hee them. The first attempt. to unroll them were made by Pieternl. who In 1755 incised theta to the centre in two opposite places of the cylinder so as to reveal two pages, but otherwise to spoil the beet papyri. The first sucteedul attempts were made by Pingo in 175S, and since his time no Improvement on his system has been made, the attempta of Laidrit, Davy, and Sickler, being equally uusseemsful The proems of Piaegi still practised at Naples, Is to lay the papyrus In a convex trough on cotton supported by two uprights of wood, hie!' lower at the pleasure of the unroller; the trough la suspended by a band passing over it at each cud, and attached above the outer portion of the papyrus is slightly saturated with gum or glue, and the layer of writing detached with a needle, and as quickly as detached fixed by the back on a layer of gold-beater's akin placed vertically ; a third band passes in the middle between them of the ends, and is attached to the gold-beater's skin which is drawn up with the pages attached as the operation proceeds. After a few pages have been unrolled, the skin is cut off and the pages handed to the artiste who draw and engrave them, they are then passed to the interpreters who collate and transcribe them. The process is one requiring the greatest care, experience and patience, and the progress is neceserily slow, not more than about an inch can be unrolled in four or five holm, and it took four years to unroll thirty-nine pages of Philodentus on music, and one year and a half to perform the same operation for twenty-nine pages of rhetoric. When unrolled they are framed and glared, and published. The work proceeds but slowly, owing to the interest taken in them haring diminished since their discovery, and the contents not having had the literary importance that was eapected. The rolls were in the library of an epicurean, and consist of philosophical chiefly by the philosophers of that school ; there is one treatise by Epicurus himself on Nature, another by Chrysippus on Providence, several by Philodemus on Music, Morals, and other subjects, and others by Colotes, Carniseus and Polystratus. The papyri with latin texts are differently prepared, and present still greater difficulties to unroll. Neither the dimen sions nor the fabric of these correspond with the description of Pliny, and it may be generally remarked that the monuments and literature of the ancients rarely agree. The breadth of the papyri at Hercu laneum is from 8i to 12f inches for that of the Creek, the Latin are wider ; the pages are quite black, and the letters only distinguishable in a favourable light by the greater intensity of colour, or by their polish. From the similarity of the letters it is evident the rolls were new. The space occupied by ancient libraries of these rolls appears to have been considerable; from the portion of the found at Elephantine, 8 feet long and 10 inches wide, it appears that a copy of the works of Homer would require 41 such rolls. In the Alexandrian library, a separate room contained his works and those of his commen tators in 1000 rolls. The libraries of the New Museum at Alexandria, and of the Serapeum have been estimated at from 54,000 to 700,000 such books or rolls. At Rome the first public library was that of Asinius Polio, in the time of Augustus; some private individuals possessed magnificent libraries, and that of Epaphroditus, the grammarian of Cluerouea, who lived from the reigu of Nero to that of Nerve, had 30,000 rare books in papyri. The rooms which held these papyri were probably small, and when required for reading, a few were carried out in cylindrical balm, cista, of bronze, standing on three legs with a vaulted cover, and placed on the floor beside the reader. The rolls stood vertical, and were taken out of the box by a strip of parchment attached. The reader fixed one end by his chin, unrolled as far as he
required, and then held the roll with both hands. The first pages were called or protocols, the last eskatocolla. So important was the due supply of paper to the Roman scribed and public, that a deficiency in the reign of l'iberius gave rise to a riot.
The manufacture, for the sake of verifying the statements of Pliny, was revived in the lett century. Its existence in the vicinity of Panor ama at a farm called the Massa Papyreti, had been already mentioned by Gregory and by llugo Falcandus, at a place called Papero, and in the pools of the Liana, near Syracuse, where it was discovered by the Cavalier Landolina, and a coarse stout papyrus, inferior to the ancient, produced from it, small quantities for curiosities being made to the present day. It was introduced from Egypt under the reign of one of the later tyrant. of Syracuse.
The catremo value obtained by papyri, some extraordinary manu script. having fetched from 90/. to 2001., and all of thorn being a highly prized elaaa of antiquities, menaces these ancient rolls with destruction. The Arab fellabeen, who dive into the cemeteries of Gizeh and (Journal, tear into pieces" these frail rivals of the pyramids," as they have been called, and for the sake of obtaining greater sums from the ignorance of travellers, are accustomed to make out of the unfortunate fragment. fictitious rolls of papyri. They make a core or body of blank papyri, or of the dried stem of on ancient plant found in the sepulchre, and then glue over thia cylindrical mass fragments of one or tuore broken papyri, the writing outwards in an admired confusion, tie the whole with a strip, and seal it with a clay seal bearing the impression of a scarabseue. It is painful to think how many Egyptian and Greek manuscripts of the highest value to science and literature have been in this way destroyed.
The extremely brittle condition in which Egyptian papyri are found, renders it impossible to unroll them in their actual condition without injury, but they regain their elasticity by the application of cold or hot water, or exposure to damp, and still better by carefully steaming them in a covered vessel ; those that have much oil or bitumen require the application of alcohol to separate them more easily : they should then be unrolled and laid down, if only written on one side, on drawing paper, and fixed with a paste containing alum or a alight quantity of corrosive sublimate to prevent the ravages of insects. Formerly they were unrolled on a gauze and glued at the edges, arid gently pressed with linen, but it is preferable to mount them as prints. When they arc only endorsed in a few places, it is merely necessary to leave the endorsements not mounted, and place over them goldbeater'e-skin or tracing-paper for protection. At Leyden, the papyri are fixed on tissue paper made transparent by glue, and they are rolled up ; those in the Vatican arc pasted on pages of cloth; those of Paris are glazed or fixed' on thin but compact pasteboard ; those in the British Museum are mounted in frames, or in separate pages of pasteboard and glazed. The custom of rolling up papyri is objectionable, owing to the fibres splitting with the unrolling and injuring the writing. Facsimiles of hieroglyphic hieratic, demotic, Greek, Latin, and other papyri have been published at various times, exhibiting the palaeography, textures, size, and other peculiarities of these rolls.
(The principal works to be consulted are, Guilanlinus, Papyrus, l2mo, Madrid, 1007; Mabillon, De Ile Diplomatica, i. c. 8, p. 38 and foil. • Idontfaucon, Palmographia Gram i. 2,p. 13 and foll.; Caylus, tar le Aleut. d'Acad. xxvi., p. 267; Jomard, Descr. de l'Eyypte, iii., p. 117-118; Winclelmann, ii., Bd. I.; Goodwin, C. W., Cumbridye Essays, 1858, p. 226; Library of Entertaining Knowledge—Egyptian Antiquities, ii, c. 7; Do Rougd, Revue Contemporaine, xxvii., p. 3S9; Chabas, Revue Arelgeologique, 1857; De ]tough, Rev. Areheol., 1852; Moniteur,7 et 8 Mara, 1851; Hincks' Cat. of Eg. Man. Trin. Coll. Debt, 8vo, 1843; Goodwin, Grreco-Egyptian work on Magic, 8vo, 1852.)