volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Discovery of Papyrus Books. 341
and the mud-brick base in which they were set, all
showed that the books were regarded as a priceless
treasure. The natives who found the books made one
or two attempts to open them, but the leaves were
stuck together by the gum in the ink almost in a solid
block, and they waited for me to come to tell them
how to dry and open the books. This I did, and found
that one volume contained a complete copy of the Coptic
version of the " Book of the Psalms, " nxcjocojULe ft
neilf^-^JULoc, including the Apocryphal CLIst Psalm, in
Sahidic, or the Coptic dialect of Upper Egypt. ^ The
other volume contained Coptic translations of a set of
Ten Homilies by great Christian Fathers, viz., John,
Archbishop of Constantinople, Athanasius, Theophilus,
Archbishop [of Alexandria ?], Proclus, Bishop of Cyzicus,
Basil of Caesarea, and the great Eusebius of Csesarea.^
Neither native nor European had ever before seen
such pap5a-us volumes, and I took possession of them
with great satisfaction. My friends at Suhag were
overjoyed at their success, and said to me, "If you tell
us to dig in the Nile we will do it." From this same
site I obtained between the years 1895 and 1907 many
valuable Coptic papyri and other documents. Among
these may be mentioned :
(i) a portion of a large papyrus
volume,' which (when complete) contained the text
of the Coptic version of the Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,
Canticles, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus in the dialect
of Upper Egypt (1901) — the volume was probably
written in the sixth or seventh century of our era"
^ Now Brit. Mus., MS. Oriental, No. 5000. I edited it under the
title of The Earliest Known Coptic Psalter, London, 1898. For a
technical description of the volume see Crum, W. E., Catalogue of the
Coptic MSS. in the British Museum, London, 1905, p. 393.
^ Now Brit. Mus., MS. Oriental, No. 5001. They were edited by
me for the Trustees as Coptic Homilies in the Dialect of Upper Egypt,
London, 1910.
5 Now Brit. Mus., MS. Oriental, No. 5984.
* See Crum, op. cit., p. 395. The name of Mr. C. Murch is
appended to the descriptions of a great many MSS. in this Catalogue
as if they were obtained by or from him ; but such is not the case.
Being a permanent resident in Upper Egypt, Mr. Murch was so kind