* Illustrated on Plate IX of Fayum Towns and Their Papyri.

     ** See Dr. Stein’s Sand-buried Ruins of Khotan, London,
     1903.

The Graeco-Egyptian documents are of all kinds, consisting of letters, lists, deeds, notices, tax-assessments, receipts, accounts, and business records of every sort and kind, besides new fragments of classical 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 documents are no less important to the student of ancient literature, the historian, and the sociologist.  The classical fragments include many texts of lost authors, including Menander.  We will give a few specimens of the private letters and documents, 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 pawnshop:  “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