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An excerpt from the beginning of the PREFACE: The MS., dating from the third century A.D., which is here edited for the first time in a single whole, has long been known to scholars. Its subject-matter - magic and medicine - is not destitute of interest. It is closely connected with the Greek magical papyri from Egypt of the same period, but, being written in demotic, naturally does not reproduce the Greek hymns which are so important a feature of those papyri. The influence of purely Greek mythology also is here by comparison very slight - hardly greater than that of the Alexandrian Judaism which has supplied a number of names of Hellenistic form to the demotic magician. Mithraism has apparently contributed nothing at all: Christianity probably only a deformed reference to the Father in Heaven. On the other hand, as might have been expected, Egyptian mythology has an overwhelmingly strong position, and whereas the Greek papyri scarcely go beyond Hermes, Anubis, and the Osiris legend, the demotic magician introduces Khons, Amon, and many other Egyptian gods. Also, whereas the former assume a knowledge of the modus operandi in divination by the lamp and bowl, the latter describes it in great detail. But the papyrus is especially interesting for the language in which it is written. It is probably the latest Egyptian MS. which we possess written in the demotic script, and it presents us with the form of the language as written - almost as spoken - by the pagans at the time when the Greek alphabet was being adopted by the Christians. It must not be forgotten, too, that this is the document which contributed perhaps more than any other to the decipherment of demotic, partly through its numerous Greek glosses. We have therefore thought that a complete edition, with special reference to its philological importance, would be useful.

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