Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XI.djvu/140

 132 MANUSCRIPT eminent persons with 700 portraits. In the imperial library at Vienna is a Roman calen- dar with allegorical figures of the months, sup- posed to have been executed in the first half of the 4th century; and in the same library is a copy of Dioscorides, dating from the beginning of the 6th century, containing numerous minia- tures and illustrations of plants. There is also a fragment of a Virgil of the 4th century in the Vatican library, which is profusely orna- mented with miniatures. The Codex Cottoni- anus Geneseos, the remains of which are in the British museum, had originally 250 minia- tures, each about four inches square. This manuscript, which contained fragments of the Old and the New Testament in 165 quarto leaves, is said by tradition to have belonged to Origen in the first half of the 3d century, but it is now ascribed to the 6th century. It was almost entirely destroyed at the burning of the Cottonian library in 1731. In the Am- brosian library in Milan is a part of a very an- cient copy of the Iliad illustrated with minia- tures. The Persians, Hindoos, Chinese, and other eastern nations illuminated their manu- scripts, but no very ancient specimens are known to be extant. Some of the Arab man- uscripts are remarkable for the beauty of their arabesque ornamentation, and for the absence of any representations of living figures, the painting of which is forbidden by the Koran. The most ancient manuscripts extant are the papyrus rolls from the tombs of Egypt, where the dryness of the climate and of the sand beneath which they were buried pre- served them in an almost perfect condition for thousands of years. They may be considered under two general heads, the Egyptian proper and the Greek. Of the former three classes are found, written respectively in the hiero- glyphic, the hieratic, and the demotic or en- chorial characters. The first are mostly books of a religious and moral character, the most common one being the ritual of the dead. Hie- ratic manuscripts contain the great body of Egyptian literature. One of the oldest known is the Prisse papyrus in the national library at Paris, a moral treatise written by Prince Ptah- hotep of the 5th dynasty, the beginning of which is placed by Mariette at 3951 B. C. Manuscripts in the demotic character, consisting principal- ly of contracts, bills of sale, accounts, letters, &c., are found -dating from the beginning of the 9th century B. C. to about the 2d century A. D. (See EGYPT, LANGUAGE AND LITERA- TUBB OF.) The Greek papyrus manuscripts found in Egypt are of two classes : books prop- er, written in uncial letters, and public and pri- vate documents, in cursive characters. Among the oldest specimens of the first class extant are fragments of a treatise on rhetoric and a part of the 13th book of the Iliad, written in the 3d century B. C., in the national library at Paris; and among the papyri recovered from Herculaneum is a fragment of a treatise on music by Philodemus, of the 1st century B. C. Among the oldest cursive manuscripts is a petition to Ptolemy Philometor, written in the 2d century B. C., also in Paris. The invention of parchment is usually ascribed to the reign of Eumenes II., king of Pergamus, in the 2d century B. C., but manuscript rolls of brown leather of the 14th dynasty have been found in the Egyptian tombs, and rolls of white parchment made more than 1,000 years before Eumenes are preserved in the British museum. A recently discovered leath- er manuscript of the ritual of the dead, written in black and red hieratic characters, is now in the Berlin museum. It is ascribed to the 18th dynasty. Of parchment manuscripts made since the beginning of the Christian era, prob- ably the most ancient one in existence is the palimpsest of Cicero's De Republica in the Vatican library, supposed by its discoverer, Cardinal Mai, to have been written in the 2d or 3d century. (See PALIMPSEST.) It con- tains 302 pages, and is written in double col- umns of 15 lines each, in fine Roman uncials, with no division of words. Over it is St. Au- gustine's commentary on the Psalms. In the library of Verona is a palimpsest Virgil of the 3d or 4th century, with the Gregorian com- mentary on Job written over it in a script of the 8th century. The same library possesses the celebrated palimpsest of the 4th century, containing the greater part of the Institutes of Gains, overwritten with a copy of the let- ters of St. Jerome. A palimpsest in the Brit- ish museum contains, under fragments of the sermons of St. Chrysostom, written in Sy- riac, the only extant portion of the annals of Licinianus, in uncial characters of the 4th century. In the Vatican are a Terence of the 4th or 5th century and a fragment of a Sal- lust of jthe 5th. The Lanrentian library of Florence possesses the celebrated Medicean Virgil, the most perfect of the ancient copies existing, wanting only a part of the Bucolics. It contains 440 leaves, is written on both sides, and the first three lines of each book are in vermilion. It belongs to the 4th or 5th cen- tury. No authentic manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts of the Bible of the first three centuries are known to exist. The Codex Sir naiticiis, which was obtained by Tischendorf in 1859 from the convent of St. Catharine on Mt. Sinai, and is now in the imperial library at St. Petersburg, is generally conceded to have been written -about the middle of the 4th century. Tischendorf considers it not improb- able that it is one of the 50 copies of the Scriptures which the emperor Constantino in the year 331 directed to be made for Byzan- tium, under the care of Eusebius of Ceesarea. It consists of 345$ leaves of very fine vellum, made probably from the skins of antelopes or of asses, each leaf being 14 inches high by 13 J inches wide. The writing on each page is in four columns (excepting in the poetical books of the Old Testament, where there are but two), each containing 48 lines of from 12