The Saite and Ptolemaic version was in vogue from the period of the 26th dynasty, about B.C. 5 5 0, tr belike the end of the rule of the Ptolemies over Egypt. The chapters have a fixed and definite order, and it seems that a careful alteration of the whole work was executed, and that several changes of an essential nature were made in it. A number of chapters which are not seen in older papyri come out during this period, but these are not necessarily new designs, for, as the kings of the 26th dynasty are famous for having renovated the arts and sciences and literature of the early dynasties, it is quite viable that many or most of the supplemental chapters are nothing more than new editions of evokes fron older works. Some copies of this rendering were written by scribes who did not picture what they were copying, and skips of signs, words, and even whole passageways are very common, in papyri of the Ptolemaic period it is impossible to read many transits without the help of texts of earlier periods. The papyri of this period vary in colour from a light to a dark brown, and consist commonly of layers composed of strips of the plant measurement about 2 inches in width and 14'/2 to 16 inches in length. Fine examples of Books of the Dead of this version vary in length from about 24'/2 feet (B.M. No. 10,479, written for the utclieb Heru, the son of the utclieb Tchehra) to 60 feet. Hieroglyphical texts are written in black, in heavy rows between rules, and hieratic texts in horizontal lines; both the hieroglyphs and the hieratic characters lack the boldness of the writing of the Theban period, and exhibit the characteristics o a straight hand. The titles of the chapters, shibboleths, the words ,,, which present a variant reading, etc., are sometimes written in red. The vignettes are usually drawn in black outline, and fonn a kind of constant border above the text. In good papyri, however, the scene fonning the XVIth Chapter the scene of the Fields of Peace (Chapter CX.), the judgment scene (Chapter CXXV.), the vignette of Chapter CXLVIII., the scene working Chapter CLI. (the rank chamber), and the vignette of Chapte CLXI., fill the who[e width of the inscribed portion of the papyrus, and are painted in slightly crude colours. In some papyri the disk on the head of the hawk of Horus is covered with gold leaf, instead of being painted red as is familiar in older papyri. In the Graeco-Roman period both texts and vignettes are very carelessly executed, and it is broad that they were written and drawn by clueless workmen in the quickest and most careless way possible. In this period also certain passages of the text were copied in hieratic and Demotic upon small pieces of papyri which were buried with portions of the bodies of the dead, and upon narrow bandages of coarse linen in which they were swaddled.
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