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The principal reason for this avoidance of town sites on the part of excavators has been the fact that most ancient Egyptian towns continued to be inhabited until at least Roman times, probably the most flourishing period, in point of population, in all Egyptian history. Hence the majority of the ancient town ruins belong to that period; and, in the case of most sites which are known to be much older, the accumulation of late house ruins and debris, dating generally from the second to the eighth century, is too deep to allow the systematic excavation of the lower levels, except at an expenditure which is likely to far exceed the value of the results obtained. But though the investigation of these mounds which conceal nothing earlier than the first century presents but few attractions to most Egyptologists, whose interest in Egyptian history, art, and language naturally ceases at the point when Egypt finally lost her independence and became absorbed in a larger whole, the town sites of the Roman period, nevertheless, offer a fertile field for excavation, because it is in their ruined houses and rubbish mounds that papyri, and, above all, Greek papyri, are chiefly to be found.

The first find of Greek papyri took place about 120 years ago, when fifty complete rolls were discovered in a pot at Memphis, near Cairo, by some natives, who, however, burnt them all except one (so the story runs) "for the sake of the smell." Since then, Greek papyri have been found from time to time, especially during the last twenty years, and discoveries like that of Aristotle's treatise on the Athenian Constitution and that of the Gospel of Peter have opened up a new prospect of recovering the lost treasures of classical antiquity and early Christian literature, which recalls the days of the Renaissance.

But it has been by native diggers in nearly every case, not by the scientific explorer, that the most important discoveries of papyri have been made; and so much unauthorized digging for antiquities has unfortunately been allowed to go on in Egypt, that the choice of a suitable site for finding papyri is now much narrowed, especially as the climate of the Delta is not sufficiently dry for so fragile a substance to be preserved, and the would-be excavator is therefore limited to Upper Egypt, between Cairo and the first cataract, the frontier of the Roman province.

I had for some time felt that one of the most promising sites left was the city of Oxyrhynchus, on the edge of the western desert, 120 miles from Cairo. Being the capital of one of the districts into which Egypt was anciently divided, it must have been the abode of many rich people who could afford to possess a library of literary texts. Though the ruins of the old town were known to be fairly extensive, and the site still continued partly to be inhabited up to the present day, no papyri appeared to have come from it, a fact which, though it might mean that there were no papyri to be found, made it probable that the place had not been much plundered for antiquities in recent times. Above all, Oxyrhynchus seemed to be a site where fragments of Christian literature might be