Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/301

SOME OF OUR FELLAHEEN DIGGING FOR PAPYRI.

greater security, the cemeteries were hidden far back in the hills. At Oxyrhynchus there were no hills nearer than seven miles, and the intervening ground is a flat plain with scarcely a rise. In this plain, however, and parallel with the town, at a distance of a quarter of a mile to a mile from the ruins, we found many tombs, chiefly of the second to the fourth century. As is the case with so many Egyptian cemeteries, most of the tombs which were worth plundering had been opened long ago; and those which had not been disturbed contained little of interest, especially as they had been dug in low ground and were affected by damp working up through the soil, so that any papyrus which might have been buried there would have perished long ago. So, after three uneventful weeks, we resolved to start work upon the town.

On January 11th we sallied forth at sunrise with some seventy workmen and boys, and set them to dig trenches through a mound near a large space covered with piles of limestone chips, which probably denotes the site of an ancient temple, though its walls have been all but entirely dug out for the sake of the stone. The choice proved a very fortunate one, for papyrus scraps at once began to come to light in considerable quantities, varied by occasional complete or nearly complete private and official documents containing letters, contracts, accounts, and so on; and there were also a number of fragments written in uncials, or rounded capital letters, the form of writing used in copying classical or theological manuscripts. Later in the week Mr. Hunt, in sorting the papyri found on the second day, noticed on a crumpled uncial fragment written on both sides the Greek word ΚΑΡΦΟΣ ("mote"), which at once suggested to him the verse in the Gospels concerning the mote and the beam. A further examination showed that the passage in the papyrus really was the conclusion of the verse, "Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye;" but that the rest of the papyrus differed considerably from the Gospels, and was, in fact, a leaf of a book containing a collection of sayings of Christ, some of which, apparently, were new. More than that could not be determined until we came back to England.

The following day Mr. Hunt identified another fragment as containing most of the first chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. The evidence both of the handwriting and of the dated papyri with which they were found makes it certain that both the "Logia" and the St. Matthew fragment were written not later than the third cen-