volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

346 I take Possession of the Papyrus from Meir.
a tin box, and said he had a papyrus to sell. He opened
the box and produced a roll of light-coloured papyrus,
with many fragments which had been broken off it, and
when one end of the roll was laid flat I saw that it contained
several columns of Greek uncials. I had not
sufficient knowledge of Greek literature to be able to
identify the text, but I understood enough to see that it
was a literary composition, and that it was written
before the end of the second century, and I was certain
that I must do my utmost to secure it for the British
Museum. But I showed no interest in the document,
and we all talked about everything except the papyrus,
and sipped coffee and "drank smoke," until the owner
began to tie up his box and make ready to go. Then,
as a sort of afterthought, I began to talk about the
papyrus and to ask his price. When I came to bargain
with him I found him " solid " and " dry," as the natives
say, and, compared with what I had paid for Greek
papyri in previous years, his price seemed preposterous.
I determined to have the papyrus, but I wanted to know
what the text was before I came to the offer of my " last
price." So I told him that I was only a waMl (i.e. agent)
of the Mijlis {i.e., Committee of Trustees) in London,
that I was myself not a mu'allim (learned man) in this
kind of papyrus, that I must submit his price to the
Mijlis, and that it would make the business go better
and faster if he would let me copy a few lines of the writing,
for I would send my copy to London, and the Chief
Scribe of the Mijlis would tell me what to do^ He made
no objection to my proposal, and I copied about a dozen
lines of the text.
We continued to drink coffee, for I wanted to find
out where the papyrus came from, and I had made up
my mind that when I left the house I must have it in
my possession. In the course of our talk he told me
that he had found it in a square {i.e., rectangular) coffin,
in a tomb in a hill close to Meir. There were many
coffins in the tomb, but they had all been opened and
ransacked in ancient times, and he had found nothing
worth carrying away except this papyrus, which was