The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-04-16
A GREAT DISCOVERY OF ANCIENT
DOCUMENTS.

The Egyptian Exploration Fund has
made some recent and most valuable
discoveries. At Behnesa, an Arab town
eighty miles south of Cairo, Egypt, the
site of the ancient Oxyrynchus has been
found. 1t was in he far back a flour
| ishing Greek-Roman town. The find
there is most interesting, but it would
take a column or two to give a proper
idea Of it's value. Great masses of
documents mostly in decay have been
found buried in mounds. 1t REQUIRES
the utmost patience, care, expertness
and industry to assert and decipher
the best ones found. Fragments have
been read, classified and c~atalogued
and two volumes are now ready with
the title "Oxyrynchus Payri." We
learn from a highly interesting paper
in the Literary Era hat the manu-
scripts in the two volumes are present.
ed fully with a critical translation of
the text and commentary. An occa-
sional facsimile plate is added" 1t
says that portions of T~hucydides,
Homer, Xenophon, Plato, Euripides,
Sophocies, Demosthenes, Herodotus.
Alcman CD, Menander. A~ristophanes
CD and Sappho are foundi in the collec-
ton. To students of classic literature
these must especially appeal-and such
unique documents as a hitherto un-
known poem of Sappho of the third
century A. D. stand out with peculiar
attractiveness." We have read it and
it is worthy of the genius of the great
est poetess of antiqity. The writer
quoted from, Sera Y. Stevenson, says:
Not less interesting, perhaps, from
the scientific and historic standpoint
is the mass o. public and private doc
uments that must prove of invaluable
help, not only to the historian for the
reconstruction of the administrative
and official life of the Graeco-Roman
%colonists of Egypt, but to the archaeo-
| logiSt for a clearer understanding Of the
work-a-day existence of the people,
from the first to the seventh centuries
of our era"
There are all sorts of documents found
| and presented. The fragments are very
numerous. 1t is curious to see how
| the Egyptian home life A. D. 223 was
SO much like that of Wilmington life
in 1901. We give a sample of the re-
ports from the fragments:
"An order for a payment of wheat
drawn on the overseers of the gran
| aries of the village of Petne.
An account of a cook for meat con-
sumed during a little over a month.
A invitation to a wedding feast in
the third century A. d.
The acknowledgment of one Flavius
| Apion, or his heirs, for the loan of n
solidus to one Ptollion.
"a Cancelled note of hand with the
acknowledgment and repayment and
docket of the bank of Pamphilon. A.
| D. 35.
"a list of private entertainments with
assessment of contributors in proper
ton to the value of their holdings.
"a registration of the sale of one
half share in a slave thirty years of
| age, dating from the end of the first
] century.
, "a request to the agoranomus to free
a female slave.-also of the first CEN
fury.
"A fragment of the same date relat-
| ing to a cession of land, and another
relating to the tax to be paid on a
mortgage of forty aroura of land in the
| district of OlympiodoruS and on other
land in that of Heracles and Callistra-
tus.
"A document relating to extortion by
a tax collector, about SO A. D..
IAN extra from a tax receipt for the
forty-two years of Caesar Augustus,
early first century.
1.-The beginning of a notice to register
a sale, about A. d. 85.'
The papyri have been distributed
among certain universities. Harvard
| gets eighteen. There are fragments of
parts of the Holy Scriptures, among
them the first seven verses of Paul's
Letter to the Romans, Dating 316. A.
D. Some fourteen verses from first
chapter of Matthew, A. D. $50, and of a
later date a considerable part of Mat
thew is found. The account says:
The text is written in exquisite gold
uncials, upon purple parchment,s and is
Illuminated with beautiful miniatures
of scenes in the life of the Lord. At
the sides of these, as in the Rossano
CodeX, are portraits of the prophets
bearing scrolls representing the Mes
sianic prophetic books"
The author of the paper quoted from
says, and it is of singular interest:
N recent event in the scientific
world has done more to give us a clear
understanding of the intellectual and
social life of the early Christian settle
ments in Egypt.
From the 'Logia,' or sayings Of
Jesus, to Scholia' on the Iliad; from
Xenophon's 'Hellenica' and Plato's
'Phaedo' to a list of Olympian v%ictors;
from a treatise on metres or an horos-
cope to medical prescriptions, an invi-
tation to a wedding, a notice of death,
a cession of land, a marriage contract,
a deed of divorce or of bail for a pris-
oner, down to a lament for a pet-this
marvellous collection brings wildly be-
fore us the early years of the Christian
Roman world"
The result of the Franco-Italian fetes
at Toulon was a trump for President
Loubert. The affair was we'll managed,
and once more Italy and France are
ready to hug and kiss. The signii-