Part 18 (1/2)

The Graeco-Egyptian doc.u.ments are of all kinds, consisting of letters, lists, deeds, notices, tax-a.s.sessments, receipts, accounts, and business records of every sort and kind, besides new fragments of cla.s.sical authors and the important ”Sayings of Jesus,” discovered at Behnesa, which have been published in a special popular form by the Egypt Exploration Fund.*

* Aoyla 'Itjffov, 1897, and New Sayings of Jesus, 1904.

These last fragments of the oldest Christian literature, which are of such great importance and interest to all Christians, cannot be described or discussed here. The other doc.u.ments are no less important to the student of ancient literature, the historian, and the sociologist. The cla.s.sical fragments include many texts of lost authors, including Menander. We will give a few specimens of the private letters and doc.u.ments, which will show how extremely modern the ancient Egyptians were, and how little difference there actually is between our civilization and theirs, except in the-matter of mechanical invention.

They had no locomotives and telephones; otherwise they were the same. We resemble them much more than we resemble our mediaeval ancestors or even the Elizabethans.

This is a boy's letter to his father, who would not take him up to town with him to see the sights: ”Theon to his father Theon, greeting. It was a fine thing of you not to take me with you to the city! If you won't take me with you to Alexandria, I won't write you a letter, or speak to you, or say good-bye to you; and if you go to Alexandria I won't take your hand or ever greet you again. That is what will happen if you won't take me. Mother said to Archelaus, 'It quite upsets him to be left behind.' It was good of you to send me presents on the 12th, the day you sailed. Send me a lyre, I implore you. If you don't, I won't eat, I won't drink: there now!'” Is not this more like the letter of a spoiled child of to-day than are the solemnly dutiful epistles of even our grandfathers and grandmothers when young? The touch about ”Mother said to Archelaus, 'It quite upsets him to be left behind'” is delightfully like the modern small boy, and the final request and threat are also eminently characteristic.

Here is a letter asking somebody to redeem the writer's property from the p.a.w.nshop: ”Now please redeem my property from Sarapion. It is pledged for two minas. I have paid the interest up to the month Epeiph, at the rate of a stater per mina. There is a casket of incense-wood, and another of onyx, a tunic, a white veil with a real purple border, a handkerchief, a tunic with a Laconian stripe, a garment of purple linen, two armlets, a necklace, a coverlet, a figure of Aphrodite, a cup, a big tin flask, and a wine-jar. From Onetor get the two bracelets. They have been pledged since the month Tybi of last year for eight... at the rate of a stater per mina. If the cash is insufficient owing to the carelessness of Theagenis, if, I say, it is insufficient, sell the bracelets and make up the money.” Here is an affectionate letter of invitation: ”Greeting, my dear Serenia, from Petosiris. Be sure, dear, to come up on the 20th for the birthday festival of the G.o.d, and let me know whether you are coming by boat or by donkey, that we may send for you accordingly. Take care not to forget.”

Here is an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a gymnastic display:

”The a.s.sault-at-arms by the youths will take place to-morrow, the 24th.

Tradition, no less than the distinguished character of the festival, requires that they should do their utmost in the gymnastic display. Two performances.” Signed by Dioskourides, magistrate of Oxyrrhynchus.

Here is a report from a public physician to a magistrate: ”To Claudia.n.u.s, the mayor, from Dionysos, public physician. I was to-day instructed by you, through Herakleides your a.s.sistant, to inspect the body of a man who had been found hanged, named Hierax, and to report to you my opinion of it. I therefore inspected the body in the presence of the aforesaid Herakleides at the house of Epagathus in the Broadway ward, and found it hanged by a noose, which fact I accordingly report.”

Dated in the twelfth year of Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 173).

The above translations are taken, slightly modified, from those in The Oxyrrhynchus Papyri, vol. i. The next specimen, a quaint letter, is translated from the text in Mr. Grenfell's Greek Papyri (Oxford, 1896), p. 69: ”To Noumen, police captain and mayor, from Pokas son of Onos, unpaid policeman. I have been maltreated by Peadius the priest of the temple of Sebek in Crocodilopolis. On the first epagomenal day of the eleventh year, after having abused me about... in the aforesaid temple, the person complained against sprang upon me and in the presence of witnesses struck me many blows with a stick which he had. And as part of my body was not covered, he tore my s.h.i.+rt, and this fact I called upon the bystanders to bear witness to. Wherefore I request that if it seems proper you will write to Klearchos the headman to send him to you, in order that, if what I have written is true, I may obtain justice at your hands.”

A will of Hadrian's reign, taken from the Oxyrrhynchus Papyri (i, p.

173), may also be of interest: ”This is the last will and testament, made in the street (i.e. at a street notary's stand), of Pekysis, son of Hermes and Didyme, an inhabitant of Oxyrrhynchus, being sane and in his right mind. So long as I live, I am to have powers over my property, to alter my will as I please. But if I die with this will unchanged, I devise my daughter Ammonous whose mother is Ptolema, if she survive me, but if not then her children, heir to my shares in the common house, court, and rooms situate in the Cretan ward. All the furniture, movables, and household stock and other property whatever that I shall leave, I bequeath to the mother of my children and my wife Ptolema, the freedwoman of Demetrius, son of Hermippus, with the condition that she shall have for her lifetime the right of using, dwelling in, and building in the said house, court, and rooms. If Ammonous should die without children and intestate, the share of the fixtures shall belong to her half-brother on the mother's side, Anatas, if he survive, but if not, to... No one shall violate the terms of this my will under pain of paying to my daughter and heir Ammonous a fine of 1,000 drachmae and to the treasury an equal sum.” Here follow the signatures of testator and witnesses, who are described, as in a pa.s.sport, one of them as follows: ”I, Dionysios, son of Dionysios of the same city, witness the will of Pekysis. I am forty-six years of age, have a curl over my right temple, and this is my seal of Dionysoplaton.”

During the Roman period, which we have now reached in our survey, the temple building of the Ptolemies was carried on with like energy. One of the best-known temples of the Roman period is that at Philse, which is known as the ”Kiosk,” or ”Pharaoh's Bed.” Owing to the great picturesqueness of its situation, this small temple, which was built in the reign of Trajan, has been a favourite subject for the painters of the last fifty years, and next to the Pyramids, the Sphinx, and Karnak, it is probably the most widely known of all Egyptian buildings. Recently it has come very much to the front for an additional reason. Like all the other temples of Philse, it had been archaeologically surveyed and cleared by Col. H. Gr. Lyons and Dr. Borchardt, but further work of a far-reaching character was rendered necessary by the building of the great Aswan dam, below the island of Philse, one of the results of which has been the partial submergence of the island and its temples, including the picturesque Kiosk. The following account, taken from the new edition (1906) of Murray's _Guide to Egypt and the Sudan_, will suffice better than any other description to explain what the dam is, how it has affected Philse, and what work has been done to obviate the possibility of serious damage to the Kiosk and other buildings.

”In 1898 the Egyptian government signed a contract with Messrs. John Aird & Co. for the construction of the great reservoir and dam at Sh.e.l.lal, which serves for the storage of water at the time of the flood Nile. The river is 'held up' here sixty-five feet above its old normal level. A great masonry d.y.k.e, 150 feet high in places, has been carried across the Bab el-Kebir of the First Cataract, and a ca.n.a.l and four locks, two hundred feet long and thirty feet wide, allow for the pa.s.sage of traffic up and down the river.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 447.jpg The Great Dam Of Aswan]

Showing Water Rus.h.i.+ng Through The Sluices

The dam is 2,185 yards long and over ninety feet thick at the base; in places it rises one hundred feet above the bed of the river. It is built of the local red granite, and at each end the granite dam is built into the granite hillside. Seven hundred and eight thousand cubic yards of masonry were used. The sluices are 180 in number, and are arranged at four different levels. The sight of the great volume of water pouring through them is a very fine one. The Nile begins to rise in July, and at the end of November it is necessary to begin closing the sluice-gates to hold up the water. By the end of February the reservoir is usually filled and Philae partially submerged, so that boats can sail in and out of the colonnades and Pharaoh's Bed. By the beginning of July the water has been distributed, and it then falls to its normal level.

”It is of course regrettable that the engineers were unable to find another site for the dam, as it seemed inevitable that some damage would result to the temples of Philae from their partial submergence. Korosko was proposed as a site, but was rejected for cogent reasons, and apparently Sh.e.l.lal was the only possible place. Further, no serious person, who places the greatest good of the greatest number above considerations of the picturesque and the 'interesting,' will deny that if it is necessary to sacrifice Philae to the good of the people of Egypt, Philae must go. 'Let the dead bury their dead.' The concern of the rulers of Egypt must be with the living people of Egypt rather than with the dead bones of the past; and they would not be doing their duty did they for a moment allow artistic and archaeological considerations to outweigh in their minds the practical necessities of the country. This does not in the least imply that they do not owe a lesser duty to the monuments of Egypt, which are among the most precious relics of the past history of mankind. They do owe this lesser duty, and with regard to Philae it has been conscientiously fulfilled. The whole temple, in order that its stability may be preserved under the stress of submersion, has been braced up and underpinned, under the superintendence of Mr. Ball, of the Survey Department, who has most efficiently carried out this important work, at a cost of 22,000.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 449.jpg THE KIOSK AT PHILAE IN PROCESS OF UNDERPINNING AND RESTORATION, JANUARY, 1902.]

Steel girders have been fixed across the island from quay to quay, and these have been surrounded by cement masonry, made water-tight by forcing in cement grout. Pharaoh's Bed and the colonnade have been firmly underpinned in cement masonry, and there is little doubt that the actual stability of Philae is now more certain than that of any other temple in Egypt. The only possible damage that can accrue to it is the partial discolouration of the lower courses of the stonework of Pharaoh's Bed, etc., which already bear a distinct high-water mark. Some surface disintegration from the formation of salt crystals is perhaps inevitable here, but the effects of this can always be neutralized by careful was.h.i.+ng, which it should be an important charge of the Antiquities Department to regularly carry out.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: 450.jpg THE ANCIENT QUAY OP PHILae, NOVEMBER, 1904.]