The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-02-16

c1nation of the other branches of Egyp
 tology. It has little of the excitemen
 Of the exploration of buried temples O
 tombs; and the objects obtained are, t
 all appearance, absolute rubbish. Ye
 in recent years the refuse of Oxyrhyn
 chus and the Fayoum towns has givel
 us such precious fragments as th
 Logia or Sayings of Jesus,' poem o
 Sappho, ylap of Menanderf, and nov
 q letter of Hadrian, as we'll as severa
 fragments of the New Testament, an(
 the important papyrus fragment in tn,
 collection of Ford Amherst of Hack ney, which contains the LXX version O. Genesis i, 1-5, followed by the versios
 of Aquila, written about the age O.
 Constantine, which may claim to be the
 oldest authority for this portion o1
 Scripture. In the volume which Messrs
 Hunt and Grenfell now publish, con
 taining the Fayoum papyr, there are
 many interesting finds among the waste
 papers of the first four centuries of oul
 era.
 Among the classical fragments the
 most interesting is portion of three
 columns of the romance of "Chaeraas
 and Callirrhoe," by Charlton. The evil
 dence for the textof this work has hith-
 erto been a single manuscript at Flor 1 ence of the thirteenth century and in
 this papyrus we have a text which is
 nearer by a thousand years to the age
 of the author, who may be placed in
 the early years of the second century. We have also fragments of Homer, De- nosthenes (Third Philippic), and two propositions of Euclid q, 39, 4D, the latter of which presents curious vari- ants, among them that the diagram of Prop. S9 is drawn at the end of the de- monstration.
 The letter of Hadrian is remarka- ply interesting document, although it's manifest use as school exercise pre- cludes us from attaching too much inl- portance to it. In the text the empe- TOT refers to his approaching end and declares his intention of meeting 1t with fortitude and resgnation, based on a comparison of the length of his own life with that of his parents. He says, My father died at the age of forty a private person, so that have lived more than half as long again as my
 
 agreement with what we know of the life os Aelius Hadrianus Afer, who died when Hadrian was ten years old There is also pathetic reference to "one who is attending and comforting" the emperor who can be none other than Antoninus. The great antiquity of the papyrus shows that it was writ ten probably within thirty, certainly within sixty, years of the emperor's death. It may, therefore, be an authen- tic version of a letter of Hadfian.
 Among the miscellgneous papers which have bsen recovered are tax re- ceipts, revenue returns. accounts of various kinds, as well as large num- Der of private letters. Of the latter the most interesting are the bundle of let ters of certain Lucius Bellennus Gam ellus, who owned extensive estates in the neighborhood of Euhemeria in the Fayoum. The letters were found in room in a house at Kasr-el- Banat, the ancient Euhemeria, probably that of Epagathus, to whom most of them are addressed and the correspondence coy- CTS period of sixteen years GA. D. 94- l10) The life of this ancient landowner Is set before us with very full details In these letters From contract dated in A. D. 99 we know that Gamellus was a soldier discharged from the legion, and at that time aged sixty-seven, so that from this correspondence it ap- pears that he reached the age of seven- ty-seven. He had two sons, Sabinus and Harpocration, and a daughter, of whom he was very fond, named Camel la. His letters reflect his age, for the is very sbaky and feeble, | and in some cases he employs scribe. Most of the letters relate to the man. agement of his estates, the olive groves md the farms. As specimen we may quote the following: 1T blame you greatly for the loss of the two pigs, owing to the fatigue of the journey. when you had in the village ten anil nals fit for work. Heraclidas, the don Sey driver, shifted the blame from him. 'elf, saying that you told him to drive he pigs on foot" The meaning IS that, IS there were plenty of animals the [ pigs should have been sent in cart, of < which there were several.
 If there was severe side to the char lcter of this old veteran, there was also jovial one. He never neglects the public festivals, or domestic anniversa- ies Thus we read, Buy some pres nts for the festival of Isis, for those ve are accustomed to send them to, es- ,ecially the strategi," In another, Send ten cocks from the market for he Saturnalia, and for Gemella's birth lay some delicacies and white bread" 7ery kindly is the request, Send welve drachmas' worth of fish for the title one's four -hundredth day festi- al" This no doubt was his grand on, the child of Gemella. Such Is the tory told by this bundle of old letters, sft behind in deserted house in the arly part of the second century. Many ther examples might be quoted, but, l concluding, mention may be made of
 curious early Christian letter, of mich few have as yet been found. It ates from the fourth century, and ap- ears to be addressed to some Chris ans who have fled from their homes: Knowing that you have me to aid { ,ou?) in whatever you may suffer, the 1 ord helping you. Therefore heed no l ne rather than me, and return from here you are, before some one fetches { ou, and there is no longer grace in you. l is better for you to be in your homes, hatever they be, than abroad. l offer ] any prayers for your health. It is evident that we have reference