Ἐπειδήπερ πολλοὶ ἐπεχείρησαν ἀνατάξασθαι διήγησιν περὶ τῶν πεπληροφορημένων ἐν ἡμῖν πραγμάτων .....
Forasmuch as many took in hand to draw up a narrative concerning the matters which have been fully believed among us....
Luke i. 1
I
Egypt, in our days, ceasing to be any more the land of bondage, has, in more senses than one, become a veritable Land of Promise. It is a rich mine of historical and literary wealth, alas! most inadequately worked, and in that fine climate, with its clear dry air, the footprints of Time, leaving scarcely a trace, the treasures of an ancient civilisation, even of the most delicate texture, have been preserved to us with wonderful perfection. The habits of the peoples that have occupied the land have happily combined with the natural advantages of the climate, in transmitting to the modern world an inheritance of which we are now beginning to take possession. The dead have long been giving up their secrets, but it is only in recent times that we have been able to realise the fact that the tombs of Egypt may contain many a precious work, now known to us but in name, and many a writing which may change the current of controversy, and strangely modify many a cherished opinion. Without referring here to earlier discoveries in support of these remarks, we may at once pass to the more recent, with which we have particularly to do.
In the course of explorations carried on during the winter of 1886-87 by the order of M. Grébaut, then Director of the Museums of Egypt, two Greek manuscripts were discovered in the necropolis of Akhmîm, the ancient Panopolis, in Upper Egypt. The first of these was a papyrus, which was really found by some Fellahs who quarrelled regarding the partition of their precious booty and thus allowed the secret to leak out. It came to the knowledge of the Moudir, or Governor of the Province, who promptly settled the dispute by confiscating the papyrus, which he forwarded to the Museum of Gizeh at Boulaq. This MS. is a collection of problems in arithmetic and geometry, carefully written out, probably by a student, and buried with him as his highest and most valued achievement.
The second manuscript was of much higher interest. It was discovered in the tomb of a “monk.” It consists of thirty-three pages in parchment, measuring 6 inches in height by 4-½ inches in breadth, without numbering, bound together in pasteboard covered with leather, which has become black with time. There is no date, nor any other indication of the approximate age of the MS. than that which is furnished by the characteristics of the writing and the part of the cemetery in which it was discovered. These lead to the almost certain conclusion, according to M. Bouriant, who first transcribed the text, that the MS. cannot be anterior to the eighth century or posterior to the twelfth. The ancient cemetery of Akhmîm stretches along to the north and west of the hill on which have been discovered tombs of the eighteenth to the twentieth dynasties, and it has served as a burial-place for the Christian inhabitants of the neighbourhood from the fifth to the fifteenth centuries, the more ancient part lying at the foot of the hill and extending gradually upward for about [pg 003] 700 metres. The tomb in which the MS. was found is in a position which approximately tallies, as regards age, with the date indicated by the MS. itself.[1] Of course, these indications refer solely to the date of the MS. itself, and not to the age of the actual works transcribed in its pages.