Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings and a Literal Translation

new verses of Sappho had been found among the Fayum papyri in the possession of the Arch-duke Rénier. When the paper on His Imperial Highness’ papyri was read before the Imperial Academy of Science by Dr. Wilhelm Ritter von Hartel on the 10th of March, it became evident that the remark was made, not in allusion to the Archduke’s possessions, but to that portion of the Fayum manuscripts which had been acquired by the Imperial Museum in Berlin. The verses referred to were indeed no other than the two fragments which had been deciphered and criticized by the celebrated scholar, Dr. F. Blass, of Kiel, in the Rheinisches Museum Rhenish Museum for 1880; and further edited by Bergk in the posthumous edition of his Poetae Lyrici Graeci Greek Lyric Poets. I am now able, not only to print the text of these fragments and a translation of them, but also, through the courtesy of the Imperial Government of Germany, to give an exact reproduction of photographs of the actual scraps of parchment on which they were written a thousand years ago. Dr. Erman, the Director of the Imperial Egyptian Museum, kindly furnished me with the photographs; and the Autotype Company has copied them with its well-known fidelity.

Among many other additions, that which I have been able to make to fragment 100 is particularly interesting. The untimely death of