ity must be found in the best, not in the average of what they have left us.

In these preliminary observations the magical hodgepodge to which the copyist resorted when he turned to the verso, is soon disposed of. It begins (XVIII, 1) :

Incantation for driving out the wind of the year of pest.

It contains a group of rather interesting incantations, followed by three recipes for female troubles, the whole section occupying three and a half columns (XVIII to XXI, 1-8) and stopping in the middle of the column (XXI). Here a new hand completed the column (XXI, 9-21) and continued for half a column more (XXII, 1–14). This concluding section bears the title:

ก

Beginning of the Book of Transforming an Old Man into a Youth of Twenty.

This delectable mixture seems to be an ointment and it is to be put into a vase cut of precious stone.

The Edwin Smith Papyrus, therefore, is drawn from three different sources :

(1) The seventeen columns of the front, containing forty eight cases, in 377 lines;

(2) Three and a half columns on the back (XVIII XXI, 8) containing incantations against pestilence, in 65 lines; and

(3) A fragment of a book (XXI, 9-XXII) containing the secret of eternal youth, in 27 lines.

Of this total of 469 lines, and quite separated from the insignificant remnant of the roll on the back, the

We should read rap.t id.t, as is shown in a variant in XVIII, 2.

front carries almost exactly four fifths of the document, the seventeen columns which we have found containing the torso of our lost book of early Egyptian surgery and medicine. The irony of unfeeling events is curiously indifferent to human feelings and out of forgotten rivalries and jealousies of over half a century ago the name of Edwin Smith emerges, attached to a document of far greater importance in the history of science than would have been the case had Professor Ebers left it associated with the long more famous papyrus to which Ebers attached his own name by displacing that of Edwin Smith.

THE PRECEPTS OF LIFE

BY

AMEN-EM-APT, THE SON OF KA-NEKHT,

DESCRIBED BY

E. A. WALLIS BUDGE.

The Egyptian literary composition which I have called The Instruction of Life", i. e. the teaching which will instruct a man how to guide his actions with sense and discretion during his career, official or otherwise, is found written in the hieratic character on a papyrus in the British Museum bearing the number 10474. The papyrus is 12 feet 1/2 inch in length and 9 1/2 inches in breadth, and is mounted under glass in seven sheets. The obverse is occupied by twenty-eight columns of hieratic text. Columns 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 12-14 contain 19 lines each; cols. 5, 9, 11, and 26 contain 20 lines each; cols. 10, 15, 21, and 25 contain 21 lines each; cols. 16, 17, 20, 22-24 contain 22 lines each; cols. 18 and 19 contain 23 lines each; cols. 3 and 27 contain 18 lines each; and col. 28. contains one line. The whole text, including the name of the scribe, contains 550 lines. The handwriting is comparatively small, and in places where the scribe crowded his words together, is not very clear; but usually the characters are well formed and easily legible, and to me they suggest that the papyrus was written under the XXIInd dynasty, or a little later. On the reverse is written in hieratic characters a copy of a Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days. It fills twelve columns of text, and each column when com

pleted enumerated 30 days. The opening lines of cols. I, II and IV are mutilated. The year here represented is the primitive year of 360 days; the seasons are three in number and each contains four months. The epagomenal days are not mentioned. Each day in this Calendar, as also in that given by the papyrus Sallier IV (1), is divided into three parts, each containing presumably eight hours. A lucky part is indicated by † and an unlucky one by; the former sign is always in black ink and the latter in red ink. Sometimes in Sallier IV the sign seems to be used as an equivalent of 4, e. g. Paophi 4 but it does not occur in the British Museum papyrus 10474. The two Calendars do not agree in their verdicts as to certain days and parts of days, as may be seen from the transcripts which I have published (2). In connection with such tables of lucky and unlucky days I venture to put on record the fact that in the modern popular Calendars which are in use among the fallahin I have seen long passages which agree substantially with parts of the Calendar given in papyrus No. 10474. The modern Calendars are printed in Arabic and belong to the class which in England is represented by Old Moore's Almanack".

B

The hieratic text of the Instruction of Life" is divided · into thirty houses" or sections, which vary in length and are numbered from I to XXX. The opening lines of Col. I. read:

(See BIRCH, Select Papyri, pl. CXLIV ƒƒ; — CHABAS, Le Calendrier, Chalon-sur-Saône, 1863.

(2) See Facsimiles of Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, London, 1910, pl. XVII, For a facsimile of the Calendar see plates 31

and 32.