They consist of Greek and Latin documents of
all ages from the early Ptolemaic to the Christian. In fact, Messrs.
Grenfell and Hunt have been unearthing and sifting the contents of the
waste-paper baskets of the ancient Ptolemaic and Roman Egyptians, which
had been thrown out on to dust-heaps near the towns. Nothing perishes
in,, the dry climate and soil of Egypt, so the contents of the ancient
dust-heaps have been preserved intact until our own day, and have been
found by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt, just as the contents of the houses
of the ancient Indian rulers of Chinese Turkestan, at Niya and Khotan,
with their store of Kha-roshthi documents, have been preserved intact in
the dry Tibetan desert climate and have been found by Dr. Stein.** There
is much analogy between the discoveries of Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt in
Egypt and those of Dr. Stein in Turkestan.
* 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.
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