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THE GREEK PAPYRUS PROTOCOL.

THE recently published vol. iii. of the late Jean Maspero's Catalogue of
Greek Byzantine Papyri at Cairo1 contains a text (No. 67316, Plate VIII.)
which is of considerable importance for the study of that palaeographical
crux, the Greek papyrus protocol. It may be well to recall that the protocol
was the official mark placed at the top of each roll of papyrus, the manu-
facture of which was a Government monopoly. When the practice was first
instituted we do not know, but no protocols earlier than the Byzantine period
have been discovered. Justinian's Nov. xliv. c. 2 forbids notaries to use any
papyrus except such as has irpo/ceifievov TO KcCKovfievov irpw.ToicoWov, fyepov
TTJV TOV KCLTCL /caipbv evBo^oraTov /co/j,r)TO<; T&V delwv q/jMV XapyiTiovav
irpocrqyopiav, ical TOV ypovov, KaO' ov 6 X^P^V* yeyove, teal oTroaa eirl TS)V
TOIOVTIOP TrpoypdfaTai. The Byzantine protocol is written in an exceedingly
artificial and illegible script, mainly consisting of indistinguishable upstrokes,
to which, therefore, I have elsewhere given the name of 'perpendicular
writing' (a name which Maspero adopts), and which I am inclined to suspect
was modelled on the chancery hand seen in a well-known order for the release
of a convict now in the Berlin collection of papyri. The writing seems to
have been done with a brush rather than a pen, as the strokes are very thick.
Under the Arabs the manufacture of papyrus continued to be a Government
monopoly, and the protocol was still affixed to each roll; but during the
reign of 'Abd al-Malik, according to the historian Al-Kisa'i,2 the Arabs
substituted for the traditional formula a new one, which varies indeed not
inconsiderably, but contains, in rough but comparatively legible script, the
Mahommedan confession of faith in Arabic and Greek, retaining however the
illegible script at the sides as a sort of frame to the Greek lines. It seems
highly probable, as suggested by C. H. Becker (Zeitsehr. f. Assyriol. xxii.
pp: 178 f.), that the scribes at this period attached no meaning whatever to
this ' perpendicular writing' but inserted it merely to equalize the length
of the Greek and Arabic lines or for aesthetic reasons.
The first approximately legible protocols of the Byzantine type to be
discovered (except perhaps one published bjr Wessely in his Studien zur
Paldogr. und Papyruskunde, II. xli., where, however, Wessely's reading of
1 2
Catalogue ghiiral des anliquMs egyptiennes See the passage quoted by Karabacek,
du Musie du Gaire: Papyrus grecs d'dpogue Stzgsber. d. k. Akad. d. Wiss. in Wien, 161 Bd.
byzantine, Cairo, 1916. 1 Abh., pp. 11 ff.
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THE GREEK PAPYRUS PROTOCOL 57
the name is not probable) were some published in the second volume of
Maspero's catalogue. The most legible was that in No 67151, and Maspero
gave a tentative reading of part of this. Now at last 67316 gives us a
protocol which, instead of an all but uniform succession of' upstrokes with,
at most, one or two recognizable letters here and there, shows a script not
very dissimilar from the cursive of ordinary use. There is little doubt that
if the protocol were complete it could be read entirely, but it is unfortunately
fragmentary. Nevertheless Maspero reads a considerable part of it, and it
should not be impossible eventually to decipher the whole. His reading is:—

q,Tr\p] VTT\CL\T<; «
Si . pia . /*[ ]

. . . wa

monogramme.'
This is valuable jiot merely in itself but because it confirms. Maspero's
tentative reading of 67151, thus showing, in the first place, that the general
formula was probably fairly constant, and secondly, that where one or two
recognizable letters occur and favour a reading a priori likely it is justifiable
to adopt somewhat heroic methods in dealing with the remainder.
As regards the details of Maspero's reading, in 1. 1 Evf is at least as
likely to be the beginning of the name as £?j[. The reading after the lacuna
is quite certain. In 1. 2 air vir<a>T(a>v) is the reading suggested by the
facsimile ; /c? [Trarpijic^ is quite uncertain so far as this protocol is concerned,
but is supported by 67151, where xai irarpiia begins 1. 2, following ey&ogor
/co/iejs (Maspero; I should prefer /co/nyr?) in 1. 1. It is there followed by
Biqa-rjficpT<; (Maspero 8tao-?j/u.oT?); but though Si seems certain in 67316 at
the beginning of 1. 3, it is quite impossible to read Siao-ijfioTs. The traces,
as seen in Maspero's facsimile, would most naturally suggest 8i(a) fi\e]piafi<a\y,
if any tolerable sense- could be obtained from such a phrase in this context.
In 67151, where Maspero reads 1. 3 . X . . . ptoOs ... ofprs, I am inclined to
read Bf, with a certain p later in the line, so that very possibly the same
word or combination of words occurred in both cases. The rest of 1. 3 is
lost in 67316, but in 1. 4 <npq,TrfkqT<; is all but certain. Now in 67151 1. 4
seems, as Maspero says, to begin with crrp, and at the' end of 1. 3 one might
read ei>8ofoT? without much forcing of the characters. Hence [evSo£oT?]
may perhaps be suggested in the lacuna in 1. 3 of 67316. For /8tX.\, if the
facsimile can be trusted, I should prefer y.. <r. In 1. 5, for ira fiovK,
. . ra /8ou\ might equally be read, and perhaps, at need, Kara ySou\, though
ica is difficult. In 1. 6, which is a very short line, Maspero, if I understand
him aright, takes the characters as a monogram of 'Iaawi/5. It seems
much more likely that the monogram is.lv8(i,/cTiovo<;); the number might
be a.
58 THE GREEK PAPYRUS PROTOCOL
From the foregoing some general conclusions at all events can be drawn.-
The <f> which regularly begins 1. 1 of the perpendicular. writing, even down
to Arab times, is, as seemed probable from the first, the beginning of 4>Xawo?,
not of ^pay&vii (the supposed place of manufacture), as Karabacek con-
jectured. This incidentally confirms the supposition that in the Arab period
the perpendicular writing was meaningless; for the comes sacrarum lar-
gitionum would certainly not be named in a protocol containing the
Mahommedan formulae, and the only names which ever occur in the legible
portions are those of the Khalif arid the Governor, which were of course
Arabic.
Secondly, the apparent fi or tf which in the majority of cases ends 1. 1,
both in Arab and Byzantine times, is the T of KO/IIT (/coper, KO/JUJT), followed
by the sign of abbreviation — that is to say, in Arab times, it is a
reminiscence of it.
In 1. 2 Arab protocols often have at the beginning a cartouche enclosing
an t), which Karabacek in one case tried to read rj ( = 8) octaua, and in one
case non (deus nisi Deus unus). This is possibly a survival of the mysterious
Si of 67316, 67151. The /S or iX, which usually ends 1. 2 may be part of
Siaarj/ioTi or evSofjors. In 1. 3 (the last line of perpendicular writing in
Arab protocols) indiction dates sometimes occur (see my ' Latin in Protocols
of the Arab Period' in Archiv fur Papyrusforschung, v. p. 153); in 67316
I have already suggested a date in the last line. The apparent e, which
nearly always ends 1. 3 in Arab protocols, finds no explanation in 67316
(where the end of 1. 5 is lost) or 67151.
It will be seen from the above that protocol writers seem to have kept
fairly constantly to a traditional model even when the strokes they made had
ceased to have any significance for them. It may further be inferred that
6,7316 and 67151 give Karabacek's theory of trilingual (Latin, Greek, Arabic)
protocols its coup de grace if that were still needed; for if the protocols were
in Greek only while Egypt recognized the authority of the ' Roman' Emperor
at Byzantium, Latin can hardly have been felt to be necessary under the
Arab Khalif at Damascus.
H. I. BELL.

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