Unintentional Errors

1. Confusing similarly shaped letters: Some letters in the Greek alphabet were easy to confuse when handwritten. For example, the round letters epsilon (ϵ), theta (Θ), omicron (Ο), and sigma (Ϲ) all have similar shapes.

Alpha (Α), delta (Δ), and lambda (Λ) all have triangular shapes and were sometimes confused.

Sometimes two letters written closely together were mistaken for one letter. For instance, a tau followed by an iota (ΤΙ) could end up looking like a pi (Π); a lambda followed by an iota (ΛΙ) could look like a nu (Ν).

2. Dittography and haplography: These terms describe errors that result in repeating text or omitting text. They frequently occur when a word, phrase, or line begins with a similar string of letters (homoeoarcton) or ends with a similar string of letters (homoeoteleuton), causing the eyes to skip forward or backward. One example of haplography resulting from homoeoteleuton can be found in Matt. 5:19-20 of the Codex Sinaiticus.* The first sentence of verse 19 ends with ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν and the end of the verse also ends with ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν. Thus, the scribe of the Codex Sinaiticus has accidentally omitted everything from the first occurrence to the end of the verse. The scribe of the Codex Bezae has gone even further by skipping from the end of the first sentence of verse 19 to the end of verse 20 which also ends with ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ τῶν οὐρανῶν.

3. Confusing similar sounding letters: Sometimes scribes would write from dictation or would read the words aloud to themselves while copying. The blog post “Papyrus as Evidence of Linguistic Change,” has already presented some of the changes in pronunciation that occured in the Greek language over time which often resulted in spelling variations. This is evident in many biblical papyri as scribes who relied on hearing often mixed up similar sounding diphthongs and vowels of that period. One excellent example of this confusion can be found in Rom. 5:1 where the manuscript evidence is quite equally divided between ἔχομεν and ἔχωμεν.

4. Word substitions: Errors could also occur when scribes trying to retain a line in their memory accidentally replaced some words with close synonyms. Prepositions like ἐκ and ἀπό, or conjunctions like ὅτι and διότι are some examples of synonyms which mistakenly get replaced.

5. Transposition of words: Sometimes scribes would unintentionally reorder a string of words, especially if the sense of the phrase remained virtually the same. This is another type of error related to faulty memory.

6. Assimilation of marginalia: Some manuscripts contained notes or glosses in the margins from earlier scribes. These notes sometimes found their way into the actual text of the manuscript.

Intentional Changes

1. Harmonization: The wording of a particular phrase or sentence was sometimes altered to reflect the wording of another similar but more familiar one. This was especially common with quotations that had a longer form in a different book or quotations from the Septuagint that did not conform to the exact wording of the Septuagint.

2. Conflation of readings: Conflation tended to happen more often in biblical manuscripts than elsewhere. A scribe would sometimes make his copy using more than one manuscript. Where the wording of the exemplars differed from each other, a scribe would sometimes conflate both readings into one.

3. Grammatical adjustments: Although the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, the rise of Atticism in the 2^nd century AD led scribes to try to improve the style of a text. Other times, they would tend to make slight adjustments to improve clunky grammar. A good illustration of the tendency to correct can be found in Mark 1:37 which reads, “καὶ εὗρον αὐτὸν καὶ λέγουσιν.” One variant occurring in a majority of manuscripts attempts to improve the grammar with the following: “καὶ εὕροντες αὐτὸν λέγουσιν.”

Bibliography:

Aland, Kurt and Barbara. 1989. The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and To the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism. Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Ehrman, Bart D. and Metzger, Bruce M. 2005. The Text of the New Testament. Oxford University Press.

Metzger, Bruce M. 2005. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, London: United Bible Societies.

*For more information about the codices Sinaiticus and Bezae, see

http://codexsinaiticus.org/en/codex/     and

http://legacy.earlham.edu/~seidti/iam/tc_codexb.html

The process of reading the papyri has become a much easier in the last couple of decades with the advent of imaging technology. Multispectral imaging in particular has facilitated incredible advances in reading the charred texts by its ability to distinguish between the black letters and the black background surface. Pieces of the same roll that were once separated are being joined back together.

Possible developments for the future include using tomography, imaging by sections, (used, for example, to see inside a human body) in virtually unrolling the texts.

Work also continues on the publication of the various texts from the Herculaneum papyri. The director of this work is Marcello Gigante, whose journal Cronache Ercolanesi chronicles their progress.

If you find this research interesting, check out the website for the archeological sites in the bay of Naples, http://bloggingpompeii.blogspot.com/2012/01/cronache-ercolanesi-412011.html

See Carol C. Mattusch’s bibliography for Herculaneum, http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195389661/obo-9780195389661-0076.xml?rskey=3kdqVZ&result=21&q=

Also see David Sider, “The Special Case of Herculaneum,” in Roger S. Bagnall, ed. Oxford Handbook of Papyrology, pp. 303-319

And Sider, The Library of the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, 2005

On the technology side, check out this article about multispectral scanning at Oxford: http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/09/document-analysis

OHP = Oxford Handbook of Papyrology

A prosperous seaside town on the bay of Naples (modern Ercolano), Herculaneum was buried, like Pompeii, during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE. Of the parts of the town that were eventually unearthed, one villa was especially significant. The elegant style and culture of its inhabitants was evident in their library, where the discovery of papyrus scrolls led to the designation Villa dei Papiri, or ‘house of the papyri.’ The papyri were found in the library and in the hallways nearby, suggesting the inhabitants may have tried to gather some as they escaped the volcanic eruption.

Close to 1100 papyrus rolls were found in this villa in the 1750’s. Some were eventually identified as works by the philosopher Epicurus (c. 341-270 BCE) along with Stoic texts and a few “scraps” of Latin poetry. Most turned out to be philosophical treatises by the 1^st c. BCE poet Philodemus who wrote in Greek and was a follower of Epicurus. It has been suggested that this may have been Philodemus’ library, or it may have belonged to his friend L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus who was consul of Rome in 58 BCE (and father-in-law of Julius Caesar).

The papyri are not only significant for their content, but for the centuries of trial and error it has taken to perfect a process for unrolling these charred book rolls. Early attempts included slicing them open (which caused loss of the letters along the cut and the possibility that the text, now in two pieces, would be separated) and peeling the sheets apart (equally damaging). Next, the experimenters tried mercury (thinking that it would force the layers to separate), and rosewater. Neither worked, but instead destroyed the papyri. Then, they tried gas, but the smell was horrible and the results disappointing. One experimenter even tried putting a roll in a bell jar and waiting for the sun to steam apart the layers. This failed in that the steam caused the letters to run and gave the false impression that they were written in Oscan, not Greek.

Not until Antonio Piaggio, a specialist from the Vatican, took over in 1793, would any real progress be made.

(to be continued…)

The conservatism of standard spelling, to which most educated writers aspire, often masks actual pronunciation and can obscure the fact of change. (Think, for example, of the disparity in English now between the spelling and pronunciation of –ough in words such as enough and bough, which though they once rhymed have been pronounced as “inuf” and “baw” for centuries.) For this reason it can be next to impossible to figure out precisely when and how changes in pronunciation happened, unless documents written by people educated enough to write but not enough to write without occasional spelling errors survive from a range of time.

But thanks to the abundant survival of just such documents for Greek written on papyrus, modern scholars have been able to answer these questions, which had been lingering since the Renaissance. Not long after Greek was “rediscovered” in Western Europe during the Renaissance, scholars had worked out which changes in pronunciation Greek had undergone since antiquity and established the 5^th-century BC as their terminus a quo, but they were unable to figure out more precisely when and how these changes had happened, because they lacked sufficient documentary evidence from the intervening 2000 years.

Here are a few examples of spelling errors as a result of iotacism from P66, a 2^nd century AD papyrus containing nearly the entire Gospel of John:

ἐγιρεται instead of  ἐγειρεται ( he/she is awakened or raised)

  ὑμις instead of ὑμεις (you (pl.))

But a couple lines later, the scribe has spelled it right:

This raises the possibility that the scribe merely made a few “typos,” but in P46, another 2^nd century papyrus containing fragments of the New Testament, we see an instance of “reverse iotacism,” where a scribe has written ὑμειν instead of ὑμιν (to you (pl.)):

If scribes are using “ei” and “i” interchangeably at a certain point in time, then we can be fairly confident that those vowels were no longer distinctly pronounced and that the iotacisms of P66 were not merely typos.

Another change in the pronunciation of Greek vowels that appears in P66  is the merger of αι and ε, which resulted in the occasional confusion of these two in writing. Thus we see in P66:

  οἰδαται instead of οἰδατε (you (pl.) know)

And we see the reverse in P.Oxy. 2783 from the early 3rd century AD (which is to say not much later than when P66 was written):

  εὐχομε instead of εὐχομαι (I pray)

Although the consonants of Greek changed their pronunciation as well, they nonetheless remained distinct enough that they were not mixed up in spelling. However, the use of different consonants to transliterate foreign words over time yields evidence of changing pronunciations. For example, Latin words beginning with v were spelled in Greek with ου, as in this example from P.Oxy 3758 from the 4^th century AD:

 ουεδαριος for Latin veredarius ‘courier’. But by the 7^th or 8^th century AD this was spelled βερεδαριος, since β had started to sound rather like Latin v. For example:

   βερ(ε)δ(αριου)   (P.Ross.Georg. 4 2)

References:
Browning, Robert. 1983. Medieval and Modern Greek. Cambridge University Press.
Dickey, Eleanor. 2009. “The Greek and Latin Languages in the Papyri”. In The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology. Oxford University Press.
Moleas, Wendy. 1989. The Development of the Greek Language. Bristol Classical Press.

Papyrus was the most common writing material of the ancient world. The stalk of the papyrus plant was cut into thin strips, which were laid in two perpendicular sheets: one with the plant’s fibers running horizontally (generally the front side, or recto) and the other with the fibers running vertically (the back, or verso). The sheets were stuck together by the natural juices of the plant. Sheets could be joined to form rolls or stacked to form codices. (The codex, a “proto-form” of the book, started rising in popularity in the second century and eventually came to replace the roll.) Ink was made of soot and gum arabic in water. A reed pen was used for Greek and Latin, a brush for Egyptian.

Parchment

To make parchment, the skins of animals (mainly calves, sheep, and goats) were cleaned and the hair was scraped off; they were then stretched out to dry, and treated with chalk and alum.

Wax Tablets

Wax tablets were pieces of wood hollowed out and filled with beeswax. They were written on with a stylus made of wood, bone, or bronze. One end of it was pointed, the other flat for smoothing out mistakes. Tablets could also be strung together to form codices. They were generally used for everyday activities like bookkeeping.

Wooden Boards

Wooden boards, sometimes covered with white paint, were used for various purposes in different places. In Athens, they were used to publish official texts. In Egypt, they were used as labels for packages and mummies.

Ostraca

An ostracon is a piece of stone or pottery. Here are several types:

-Athenian black glaze, written on by scratching through the glaze

-Egyptian flat limestone, written on with ink

-potsherds written on with pen/brush and ink

Ostraca were less appealing than papyrus because they were heavy, couldn’t be bound together or easily archived, and contained only short texts. They were, however, free. In Athens, ostraca were used as ballots; Many in Greek and demotic are tax receipts. They are most important for Coptic texts: most of those that survive are letters.

For more information, see chapter entitled “Writing Materials in the Ancient World” by Adam Bülow-Jacobsen in The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology

Α α   Alpha /a/ as in father (when long) or /a/ as in feta (when short)

Β β   Beta /b/ as in bed

Γ γ   Gamma /g/ as in gate

Δ δ   Delta /d/ as in dog

Ε ε    Epsilon /e/ as in red

Ζ ζ    Zeta /ds/ as in cords

Η η   Eta /ey/ as in they

Θ θ   Theta /th/ as in thin

Ι ι      Iota /i/ as in ski (when long) or /i/ as in lit (when short)

Κ κ    Kappa /k/ as in kiss

Λ λ    Lambda /l/ as in lamb

Μ μ   Mu /m/ as in mat

Ν ν    Nu /n/ as in nest

Ξ ξ     Xi /x/ as in ax

Ο ο    Omicron /o/ as in often

Π π     Pi /p/ as in picture

Ρ ρ      Rho /r/ as in red

Σ σ/ς   Sigma /s/ as in sit  (Note: The ς is only used at the end of a word.)

Τ τ      Tau /t/ as in tea

Υ υ      Upsilon /u/ as in food (when long) or /u/ as in put (when short)

Φ φ     Phi /ph/ as in phone

Χ χ      Chi /ch/ as in Bach

Ψ ψ     Psi /ps/ as in lips

Ω ω     Omega /ō/ as in sole

The letter γ (gamma) is pronounced like an “n” sound when combined with certain letters.

γγ   /ng/ as in linger

γκ   /nk/ as in sink

γχ   /nk/ as in sink

Below are all the possible Greek diphthongs.

αι    /ai/ as in aisle

ει    /ei/ as in weight

οι    /oi/ as in oil

αυ   /ow/ as in cow

ευ   /eu/ “eh-oo”

ηυ   /eyu/ “ay-oo”

ου   /ou/ as in soup

υι    /uee/ as in queen

The Milan papyrus was recently discovered and has been immensely valuable for modern scholars. In 2001, the first edition of a collection of Hellenistic poetry was published and a new era began in the study of the 3^rd century BCE poet, Posidippus of Pella. The papyrus was once part of the material that formed the chest cavity of a mummy, one that was preserved in the dry desert sands of Egypt for more than two thousand years. The papyrus itself is about five feet long and about a foot wide. Some sections of the text were cut out and there is writing on both sides. One side contains approximately 600 lines of verse in a hand that has been dated to c. 230-200 BCE. The other side has some mythological material which dates to the early 2^nd century BCE. There were also five other documents in the cartonnage and many little fragments of papyrus.

This poetry book was a professional copy that had been repaired at some point. Then, around 176 BCE, the papyrus was sent to a recycling center and formed into the pectoral of a mummy, most likely in the region of the Fayum in Egypt. After this cartonnage was rediscovered in the 1990’s, it ended up in the collection of the Università degli Studi di Milano, in Milan, Italy (catalogued as P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309) and it is now known as ‘the Milan papyrus.’

An exciting part of this discovery is the fact that two of the epigrams on the papyrus were already known and had been attributed to Posidippus of Pella, a Macedonian poet who was one of the earliest of the Hellenistic epigrammatists. Tzetzes, a Byzantine scholar writing in the 12^th century, quoted the text of what is now known as AB 15. A second epigram from the Milan papyrus (AB 65) appears in the Greek Anthology (AP XVI 119), another Byzantine source created from earlier books of poetry (the oldest being Meleager’s Garland from the 1^st c BCE).

The discovery of this new material has been a boon to scholars of Hellenistic poetry and poetry books. Previously, the Posidippean corpus consisted only of about thirty poems: thirteen undisputed epigrams in the Greek Anthology; nine in the same collection that are doubly ascribed; four epigrams quoted by Athenaeus (who flourished c. 200 CE); two epigrams (AB 115 and 116) from a papyrus dated to 160 BCE, written in the Serapeum at Memphis (P. Firmon-Didot); one poem on a 1^st century BCE papyrus (P. Tebt. I 3 32-25), AB 117; an epigram that includes the author’s name (AB 118) from a wax tablet (P. Berol. 14283 = SH 705); and some others of more or less dubious authorship. There are 110 new poems on the papyrus, a significant addition including some that seem innovative (e.g. poems on stones or bird omens) and others that seem familiar from the Greek Anthology (e.g. poems on shipwrecks or epitaphs).

Edited during a time of famous scholarly activity in Ptolemaic Egypt, the Milan papyrus is not only a significant artifact for the study of Posidippus of Pella and of the development of literary epigram in Alexandria under the Ptolemies, but it is also evidence of an actual poetry publication, and a link to literacy, book editing, scribes, education. Today, what was once treated like trash survives as the oldest example of a Greek poetry book. It has even been suggested that the book was edited by the poet himself!

A couple of other fun papyri to compare: a 3^rd century BCE papyrus that may be by Posidippus (P. Cair. 65445, vv. 140-154; AB 113); and the “Lille Callimachus,” another 3^rd century BCE papyrus from the mask and chest piece of a Fayum mummy.

For more information, see:

Austin, C. and G. Bastianini, eds. Posidippi Pellaei Quae Supersunt Omnia,
Milan: Universitarie di Lettere Economica Diritto, 2002
Acosta-Hughes, B., E. Kosmetatou, M. Baumbach, eds. Labored in Papyrus Leaves:
       Perspectives on an Epigram Collection Attributed to Posidippus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII 309),
       Washington, D.C.: Harvard University Press, Center for Hellenic Studies, 2004
Center for Hellenic Studies website, especially the online publication with the latest version of
the text of Posidippus
Oxford Bibliographies Online on Posidippus

Since Ancient Lives went live in July of 2011, we have logged have over 1.5 million transcriptions. “Volunteer papyrologists” have specifically helped in identifying over 100 texts, including important pieces from ancient authors like Plutarch and Simonides.

With this mass amount of data Ancient Lives is now capable of moving into the emerging field of Digital Philology. We have generated, for the first time, a database of digital Greek texts. Consequently, the project is now working with programming analysts on creating an innovative interface and potential digital text-editing environment that will make this data more accessible to professional scholars and papyrologists. Furthermore, although the core dataset of Ancient Lives has been the Greek papyrus fragments from the city of the sharp-nosed-fish (Oxyrhynchus), the project, in the future, would also like to start collecting transcriptions from the other languages present in the collection (ancient Egyptian, Aramaic, Arabic, Coptic, etc), as well as try to incorporate other datasets from the ancient world. The Ancient Lives team is very pleased with the response and hard work of the Zooniverse volunteers, and would like this site to transform into an online hub where users from around the world can help scholars study the languages and manuscripts of the ancient world.

1. Look for words and phrases that typically appear in documents, like χαίρειν (see greeting formula at the end)

2. Watch out for ligatures and unusual forms

Many letters appear differently in different documents.

Epsilon can be straightforward…

…but it often looks like this:

or even this:

Rho can also have several forms:

straight

or with a curled tail:

Upsilon is sometimes written higher than the other letters.

It may be long and broad…

…or small and more pointed

Sometimes letters in documents bear almost no resemblance to their usual forms.

The letter on the right, for example, is open-topped beta.

Look for ligatures…some common ones are:

alpha + iota

epsilon + iota (χαιρειν)

sigma + epsilon

You will also find symbols in documentary papyri. (See the post below for a list of symbols and their meanings.)

The L-shaped year (ἔτους) symbol is very common.

Sometimes horizontal lines are used to mark abbreviations or numbers. (See post on numbers also below.)

 (abbreviation for ευχομαι)

Here is an example of a greeting formula. The person who is sending the message is in the nominative case (Ἡράκλειος). The person receiving it goes in the dative (Θεμιστοκλεῖ). Ιn this case, an adjective is used to describe Themistocles: τιμιωτάτωι: most honoured. The last part of the formula is the word χαίρειν, greetings!

[All images from published Oxyrhynchus papyri]

Happy Transcribing!

ἄρουρα: area measure; 2756 square meters

ἀρτάβη: dry measure; 38.808 liters

χοῖνιξ: dry measure; .97 liter

λίτρα: a measure of weight; 12 ounces

τάλαντον: 6,000 drachmas

δραχμή: coin (about 323 g) worth 6 obols

στιγμα: the number six

multiple uses: it can stand for drachma, the number ½, or the year (ἔτους)

τριώβολον: 3 obols

δηνάριος: Roman monetary unit

μυριάς: the number 10,000

νόμισμα: the “solidus” gold coin

πυρός: wheat

σαμπι: the number 900

κοππα: the number 90

γίνεται: total

ἔτους: indicates a year (see blog post on numbers)

forked paragraphos: indicates a specific break in the text

This one has many uses! Its most famous use is as a Christian sign (Christ = χριστος), but it was also used as an editorial symbol, χρησις (passage) and χρηστον (useful); other appearances include in Magical papyri and for χρονος.

coronis: marks significant breaks or subsections of text

Coronides come in many forms. This bird-shaped one appears in Timotheus’ Persae, one of our oldest Greek papyrus fragments.

Sources:

Bagnall, Roger S. The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print.

The TLG Beta Code Manual (Maintained by Nick Nicholas, TLG, 2000-08-21)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronis_(textual_symbol)

http://tebtunis.berkeley.edu/collection/glossary

http://www.sizes.com/units/artaba.htm

Theresa Chresand