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Early Egyptian chronology is in a great measure merely conjectural, and new information from the monuments only adds to the obscurity. The historical papyri are records of the kings or accounts of contemporary events.
The fortunate find, a few years back, of a hoard of Aramaic papyri at Elephantine has given us an unexpected acquaintance with the conditions of the Jewish colony in Upper Egypt during the fifth and fourth centuries, and furnished a new chapter in the history of the Diaspora. But this is an archeological substitute for literary history.
In the papyri it is interesting to note the gradual increase of Arab names after the conquest, more especially in those of the Archduke Rainer 's collection from the Fayyûm, which was so near the new capital city, Fustât. These documents, part of which have been published by Mr.
After passing, in turn, the papyri, the enamels, the vases that contain human entrails, we reach the mummies of the sacred beasts: cats, ibises, dogs, hawks, all with their mummy cloths and sarcophagi; and monkeys, too, that remain grotesque even in death.
There were also the weapons for defence and for the chase, the toilet objects, the stores of clothing, the draughtsmen, and even the literature of papyri buried with the dead. The later form of this system was the representation of all these offerings in sculpture and drawing in the tomb.
I got to the printed catalogues, and for an hour was upstairs among the dim sacred galleries of this still place, and at the sight of certain Greek and Coptic papyri, charters, seals, had such a dream of this ancient earth, my good God, as even an angel's pen could not half express on paper.
The testimony of the Greek writers has fortunately been confirmed, and we now have in addition a mass of facts translated from the original sculptures, papyri, and inscribed bricks, dating back thousands of years. The stars seemed to be fixed on this vault; the moon, and later the planets, were seen to crawl over it. It was a great step to look on the vault as a hollow sphere carrying the sun too.
"I should wear the symbol-broidered robe of a soothsayer," the sculptor told himself. "You made a longer sojourn of your visit to Tape than you had intended," the lady said, after the greetings. "Nay, I have been in Memphis twenty days at least." "So?" queried Nechutes. "Where dost thou keep thyself?" "In the garb of labor among the ink-pots and papyri of the sculptor class," the lady answered.
The papyri of the princes and princesses of the family of Pinotem in the Museum of Gizeh show that the best traditions of the art were yet in force at Thebes in the time of the Twenty-first Dynasty. Under the succeeding dynasties, that art fell into rapid decadence, and during some centuries the drawings continue to be coarse and valueless.
The papyri do not illustrate the phenomena described by Iamblichus, such as the 'light, levitation, music of unknown origin, the resistance of the medium to fire and sword points, and all the rest of his list of prodigies. Iamblichus probably looked down on the believers in these spells written on papyri with extreme disdain.
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