The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1882-03-04
TIE PACIFIC
& Commercial A0Ocrtl5cr.
SATURDAY
Buried Treasure.
t-46ridg.a for ne P. c. ADVERTISER from he Lon
don TimCs.
MARCH, (. 1852.

We live in an age Of archaeological surprises,
each more startling than its predecessor. Nine
veh, HarIicaruassus, Troy, Mycenae, Cyprus.
Thebes, In turn yield their wonders OF sculpture.
Of arms, Of jewels, OF papyri, OF long buried
dead. Yet these discoveries are. after all, less
important than some others which, without help
Of pick OF trench, have been achieved by stu
dents Of language. ChampolIion, writing his
famous letter to Dacier, Sir Henry RawlinsOn
Wrestling the secret Of ages from the rock of
BeListun, Sayce, by a fash Of inspiration divin-
ing the sense Of au inscription craven on a boss
Of silver, make no appeal to the popular lma5I-
nation; enrich our museums with no SPOTS OF
marble, bronze, or gold. But they unlock for Us
the literature Of the greatest Oriental nations of
antiquity, and they restore 10 our use the most
precious part Of the inheritance bequeathed to
Us by the ancestors Of the human race. Buried
treasure is not necessarily Of that kind which
tempts the spectator Of temples and tombs. In
scriptions craven in a language TO which no key
has yet been found, records written in a script
SO forgotten and obscure that it bIffies the keen
est scientific expert. are virtually treasures as
much buried in the galleries Of museums and on
the shelves of libraries a. if they lay hidden In
the most secret rccesses of Il Theban sepulchre.
/ OucnG treasure 50 buried EAS, NltHlu the last
five or ten years been rescued from the oblivion
Of nearly six and twenty centuries. Yet the
general public remains almost wholly ignorant
not only of the work that has been done, but of
the mere name of the field in which the workers
have labored. That field is the Egyptian Denote.
The writing Of the ancient Egyptians was of
three kinds the Hieroglyphic, Hieratic and Demo-
tic, the first Of an unknown antiquity, the sec
~ ,ur.;y. f,rr, Of Tho fret invented oh,r,t
the date of the sixth dynasty; the demotic, an
abbreviated form of the hieratic, dating from the
Goth dynasty-about 700 b. C. This last is a
sort of shorthand and very Difficult. to decipher.
Even at this date, although the number of
saUanis who devote their lives to the translation
of hereoglyphic and hieratic literature is very
considerable, the roll-call OF denote scholars
contains little more than a half a dozen names.
One OF these, Revillout, was appointed in 1877
to an official post at the Louvre, and gave his
attention TO the denote papyri in the French
national collection, and afterwards to Il systema-
tic examination of other similar papyri in the
British, Leyden, Turin and Berlin collections.
The treasures thus analysed proved to be of
unsupported interest and importance, compris-
ing deeds OF sale. of transfer, of gift, of partner
ship, of leases of houses and lands;
4ipAA5b6tHs bCAiNA'S NNNAlh 4A eHEA~" anu c'AANA
payments, marriage contracts. marriage settle
ments, title deeds, inventories, etc. Besides
these there We're found a collection of Moral
Precepts, another of Fables, a Philosophical
Treatise, in the form of a dialogue, a Manual of
Witchcraft, a book of patriotic prophecies and a
very curious tale, half historical half magical,
called The Romance of Setna." The last
named manuscript was discovered in 1865, in
the grave of a Coptic monk at Thebes. Taking
them one with another, these papyri may be
said to range over a period of about five centu-
ries, beginning with the reign of Darius l., COM
prising the whole Ptolemaic period, and ending
about the time of the Roman conquest.
1t will at once be seen that such documents
open up an almost ineXhaustible source of infOr-
nation respecting a period and a society of which
till now we have known little or nothing. 1t is
indeed scarcely too much to say that until the
other day, we knew less about the condition of
the native Egyptians during that period than we
knew of the manners and customs of the Egyp-
tians of the Ancient Empire. Now, turning
over the pages of Revillout's ChreSiOmGHic De
m0fique, we see these dead and gone priests and
scribes at their daily work, buying and selling,
lending and borrowing, marrying and giving
in marriage. Their usuries, their law suits,
their divorce cases are brought before US with as
much detail as if reported in the daily press.
Taken in conjunction with the later Greek and
still later Coptic papyri, these denote treasures
become the earliest links iii an almost unbroken
chain of legal and commercial archives covering
a space of 2OO0 years.
Abbreviating and emitting much that is purely
formal, we re-translate from the French version
of NJ. Reyillout, one of the bonds taken in
security for a debt
Il. date, the fifth OF Cleopatra-Ci Gree and
second year of Ptolemy-Alexander, her SOM.
The receiver of taxes upon stutfS, ThOth, son of
Amenhotep, whose mother is Tauoum, to the
Pastophorus, of Amen-Api, of the Metropolis of
Diem, N~eckhtmonth. son Of Horus, whose moth
er Is Chachperi, saith For the wheat thou hast
| lent to me, thou hast To reclaim from me nine
aureus. interest included. l engage to pay thee
thy nine aureus, above-named in pure ungrourd
wheat (value of the said money paid back, Car
ried and delivered into the hands of thy servants
in thy house mt Diem, without cost or outlay, on
the Both day of the month Pakhon. and l may
pay thee no part of the above-na:H 1,aunl the
9Th Pakhons at the time and dag ~ f,appoint-
ed. ] may not say to- thee, 't% eady de
POSTED wheat with thee or .ade thee a
payment on account of thy " TiSheThere Is no
redemption (of the debit, the .ccording to
this deed. the legal consec lere # which rest
upon me and upon my cF' "|,rno.. The whole of
my goods which 1 now Ere - nd all such as
NAV hereafter become mi Al pledged to thee
as security for thy nine aureus; and if l fail to
act conformably to this writing, the whole penal
ty will be due, aud l must code to thee, without
opposition or delay, all that which is herein
pledged"
Now, 10y comparing of this class,
we arrive at three principal facts Il. That the
old Egyptian law continued in force side by side
with the Macedonian law at the time of the
Greek dominion ,. That loans were invariably
contracted for short periods 3. That payment
was rigidly enforced on a fixed day, before which
the creditor would accept no instalments, and
after which, though it were a delay of only "a
hours, the unhappy debtor became liable to a
fine equivalent to his utter ruin. The debtors
house Is frequently specified as the penalty of
default, and it was secured to the creditor by a
deed resembling a bill Of sale. Sometimes, as i'll
the ~jjregoins contract, the debtor gives a mort
ga: upon the whole of his worldly possessions :;