Egypt Exploration Fund [Hrsg.]: Archaeological report: comprising the work of the Egypt Exploration Fund and the progress of egyptology during the year ... (1903-1904)

Graeco-Roman Branch.

17

goddess, comic masks, animals, &c), and bronze, iron, and wooden imple-
ments of various kinds, we may signalize a leaden medallion of Septimius
Severus and Caracalla (?), a small bronze vase on three legs (Cairo), a
wooden figure of Serapis (Cairo), several clay moulds (one of Apollo in a
chariot with ij %api? <&ipnos scratched on the reverse, at Cairo), and a female
figure painted on pitch.

We have this summer commenced the formidable task of unrolling the
large collection of papyrus cartonnage from mummies of the Ptolemaic
period which we have amassed during the last five years. The process of
separating and cleaning the different layers of papyrus, which are often
extremely fragile, is long and difficult, and will occupy us for several
summers to come, especially as in order to obtain the Greek it is necessary
at the same time to unroll the demotic documents, which tend to pre-
ponderate in the cartonnage, but which in the present condition of demotic
studies are not of much value. The first instalment, consisting of the
Greek papyri found at Hibeh in 1902, will form the annual volume of the
Graeco-Eoman Branch for 1904-5, to be issued in the autumn of next
year. The numerous classical fragments in it include both verse and
prose, and are likely to be of special interest on account of their extreme
antiquity, since the accompanying documents belong to the reigns of the
second and third Ptolemies. One contract written in the fourth year of
Philadelphus (b,c. 281-0) is the earliest dated Greek papyrus that has yet
been discovered.

Bernard P. Greneell.
Arthur S. Hunt.

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