The Sotis Calendar on the backside of column 1 of the Papyrus Ebers suggests that the papyrus, which constitutes a comprehensive overview of ancient Egyptian medicine, was written during the reign of pharao Amenopis I (1525-1504 B.C.) making it the oldest remaining science book in the world. The length of the original roll was 18.63 m.! Sotis is ancient Egyptian for Sirius, the brightest star on the northen hemisphere whose heliacal rising used to set the beginning of the Egyptian year. Titles as well as numbers, i.e. quantities, are written in red, the remaining text is in black. You may wish to read the fascinating account by Reinhold Scholl[in German] on the occasion of the restoration and exhibiton of the papyrus in 2002.	Only three ancient Mayan manuscripts have survived, among them the Dresden Codex from the 13th century A.D, with a total written length (on the two sides) of 3.56 m. The stamp links to its main resource [in German]. The fragment above seems to show part of the Moon Goddess almanac and reading from right to left, as the Mayas did, we recognize five vigesimal numbers whose decimal values are 13, 9, 4, 10, 7 and 11, respectively. [the ancient Mayas already used a positional counting system (including zero), but with base 20 instead of 10]. A horizontal bar is equivalent to five units. The present state of knowledge of Mayan logographs and glyphs	Heinz Gittig has written a detailed online publication on the treasures in the "Staatsbibliotheek zu Berlin" , the former "Deutsche Staatsbibliotheek", from a philatelic point of view. On the relevant page 5 we find as the source of the above miniature a 16th century manuscript of a French translation of Petrarca' s Canzone "Standomi un giorni solo, alla fenestra". I can only read parts of the six lines of the sonnet and would like to copy the complete text here, so if you can help me...