Amador ledger., 1906-07-06
Letters of Long Ago.

"Antiquarians are now engaged in
the fascinating task of searching the
waste paper of antiquity-that of
Greece and Rome-and much new light
is being shed upon the every day life
OF those wonderful people, said DIR.
Moses Emanuel Cassanowitz of the
Smithsonian institution to NewYork
Sun correspondent.
"We find" he continued, =" from
the relics thus garnered from rubbish
that human nature was then very
much what it is at present. ''Here,
for instance, is letter written by
boy IN the country, in Egypt, to his
father, contemplating trip to Alex
andria. eighteen centuries ago. 1t is
on papyrus but as you see, when new
much resemhled the modern sheet of
note paper. 1t reads thus, in very
good Greek.
" Theon, to His Father, Theon,
Greeting-You have done fine thing
not to take me with you to the city.
Ii you won't take me with you to
Alexandria l won't write letter or.
speak to you or say good by to you,
and if you go to Alexandria 1 won't
take your hand nor ever greet you
again. That Is what will happen. if
you won't take me. Mother said to
Archelaus: cit quite upset him to
be left behind" 1t was nice of you
to send me presents on the 18th,
the day you sailed. Send me a Tyre,
please. If you don't, | won't eat, l
won't drink. There, now! Good
by.''
'lt is just beginning to be recog-
nlzed that these sources of informa-
ton on the life of the ancients aIe
full of human interest, to say nothing
of their value IN the eye of the anti
quarian. 1t is only recently that ex-
plorers have undertaken to sift the
rubbish heap OF antiquity for those
memorials contained in letters, busi-
ness papers, official documents, etc.,
eloquent as telling what manner OF
people they emanated from and their
social and political environment.
""Ihe Egyptian exploration fund has
been productive of much that has been
done in that direction, and the lower
valley of the Nile has yielded a vast
wealth of papyri, written in all pos
sible languages and separated in time
by thousands of years. Unlike the
literary find of previous explorations,
such as that undertaken, for instance,
in the valleys of Mesopotamia, these
papyri do not represent the remains
of royal and patrlcian Libraries or
temple archives. They are the fugitive
remains that have survived from the
discarded rubbish of long vanished
centuries old, minute books and led
gers from public and private offices,
second hand and worn out books.
6 These finds are of unquestioned
value to the historian of the future.
No district has yet yielded so plenti-
full supply OF documents of this dis
cription as the Fayum, situated west
of the Nile and southwest of Cairo,
and in ancient times containing the
famous Lake Moeris and the Laby-
rinth.
1.-The great mass of these papyri is
of non-l literary character, and their
contents of the most varied descrip-
tion-love letters, leases and loans,
bills and discharges, marriage con-
tracts and divorces, proclamations and
notices of penalties, minutes of law
proceedings, assessments and receipts,
beside school exercises, magical tests,
charms and horoscopes, day books,
etc.
"Those in Greek, numbering many
thousands, cover period of about a
thousand years. The oldest go beck
to the time of the early Ptolemies or
to the third century b. c.. while
others are of the byzantine era. A
lesser source of supply has been found
IN the padding and wrapping of mum
mics for which inscribed papyri we're
often used especially in the Fayum.
CA REAs
Bear. the NV The 1I@z Kind You Aa-s Always Bought