[Rarebooks] PRESENTATION BINDING. VERY SCARCE STUDY ON GREEK PAPYRI FOUND IN THEBES, EGYPT.

[Kenneth Karmiole]

Babington, Churchill (ed.)
[in Greek]  HYPERIDES KATA DEMOSTHENOUS.  THE ORATION OF HYPERIDES AGAINST DEMOSTHENES, Respecting the Treasure of Harpalus.  The Fragments of the Greek Text, Now First Edited From the Facsimile of the Ms. Discovered at Egyptian Thebes in 1847.Together with Other Fragments of the Same Oration Cited in Ancient Writings.  With a Preliminary Dissertation and Notes, and a Facsimile of 
a Portion of the Ms.London:W. Parker and George Bell; Cambridge:J. Deighton. 1850.  Lg. 4to.  xxxii, 84pp. plus 2 lithograph plates (facsimiles).  Title page and text throughout printed in red and black.  Bound in cont. full vellum, with numerous gilt and blind-ruled panels and spine gilt with "Hyperides Adversus Demosthenem".  This is a special publisher's presentation binding with the binder's ticket of Westleys & Co., London.  A 3" x 4 1/2" card is pasted to the front pastedown endpaper inscribed "The Hon. C. E. Law, M.P. from the Editor" and with the signature of the second owner Sir John P. Boileau (d.1869) a British archaeologist.  Boileau's signature appears again on the half-title.  Very scarce.
$750
The "Editio Princeps" of this speech by Hyperides against Demosthenes written in Ptolemaic Egypt on papyrus, discovered in a tomb in Thebes in 1847.  This publication led to Babington being recognized as an important Greek scholar.  Two further studies of newly found Greek manuscripts of Hyperides were published by Babington in 1853 and 1858.