Greek Papyri at Semitic Museum.

The papyri recently received by the Semitic Museum from the Egypt Exploration Fund of London, have just been mounted and put on exhibition in the Semitic collection in the Peabody Museum. They are in the railing case on the north side of the Semitic room.

The collection, which is a very interesting one, is made up of nineteen fragments, written in Greek, in different states of preservation, and of various sizes. Twelve of them were found at Oxyrhynchus, an Egyptian town, and the seven others came from various towns in the Fayum, a district west of the Nile valley. All of these fragments, with many more which have been found by the Egypt Exploration Fund, are described at some length in the publications of the Fund,--"The Oxyrhynchus Papyri," a work in two volumes by B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt of Oxford, and "Fayum Towns and Their Papyri," by Grenfell, Hunt, and D. G. Hogarth also of Oxford.

One of the most interesting of these papyri is a fragment--marked 2211 in the collection--which Professor Blass attributes to Alcman. It contains seven hexameter lines, of remarkable beauty. A translation of the only four lines which are complete is:

"We came to great Demeter's fane, we nine,

All maidens, all in goodly raiment clad: In goodly raiment clad, with necklets bright

Of carven ivory, that shone like snow."

Another very valuable fragment is no doubt a schoolboy's exercise, written in an unformed hand with a few mistakes in spelling. It consists of the first seven verses of the first chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. It was written probably about 316 A.D., judging from external and internal evidence. The number in the Museum is 2218.

Number 2224 is a fragment of the first or second century, in a much mutilated condition, containing parts of Homer's Odyssey, lines 366, 367, 373-380, and 389-402 of the tenth book.

Fragment 2223 is an agreement for the sale of a young female donkey, at the very low price of fifty-six drachmae. The date is A.D. 126.

Another fragment, number 2219, is a complaint from a weaver of Oxyrhynchus, to the strategos Tiberius Claudius Pasion, because Apoliophanes, a tax-collector, had extorted sixteen drachmae from him.

Number 2213 is an order from Aphthonius to Ofellius to pay ten jars of new wine "for the service of the land-owner's house," and to Amethystus, a veterinary surgeon, for one jar of wine. Another one, 2214, is a list of personal property, chiefly clothing.

The other fragments are registers for sales, portions of a banker's accounts, receipts, and other business documents.