Notice of a Second-Century Text in Coptic Letters

Abstract

On January 2, 1932, the Egyptian Expedition of the University of Michigan found in the underground passage and adjacent rooms of House No. 1-1121 several score of papyri which seem to have formed a private archive, perhaps belonging to a certain Melas, son of Horion, a priest of the god Soknopaios. The house belonged to the top occupation level on the west side-a level which dates from the early first and early third Christian century. The Greek papyri in this archive range from the time of Trajan to the year A.D. 193. The demotic papyri, found in considerable number with the Greek, have not been examined. On the verso of one of the Greek papyri is a text in Coptic characters. The papyrus is in a very fragmentary condition, and the Greek text of the recto unfortunately has not yet given any clue to the arrangement of the pieces. A few isolated Coptic words, no two connected, and groups of letters which may be imagined as Coptic elements, can be made out, and the language may thus be supposed to be Coptic or Egyptian; but the character and content of the text remain unknown. A very natural disinclination to attempt the reproduction of a text so little understood and the impossibility of publication have been balanced by a feeling of obligation to make some statement in regard to it because of its great age.2 The date of the latest dated hieroglyphic text is August 24, A.D. 394, and of the latest dated demotic text, December 2, A.D. 452.3 The Old Coptic remains are well known:4 a horoscope of the years between A.D. 95 and 1305 on the back (really the recto) of a Greek