| Show ancient papyrus book D discovered discovered is covered gospel of st john in coptic found by explorers searching ruins along nile washington A report on the work of the british school of archaeology archeology Arclie Arche in egypt in connection with the excavations at qua el kehar recently made in london by W al Plin flinders drs petrie of university college shows that objects covering every period ardin the pre lits torte to coptic have been discovered the scene of the excavations carried on last winter la Is about thirty miles south r of asyet this place was the capital of a district said to have been important in the alio dark ages of the seventh and el eleventh dynasties when its princes cut vast tombs in the cliffs of tile nile the main result of the excavations tins has been in clearing the period between tile the sixth and eleventh dynasties it Is now found that the syrian invaders who formed tile the seventh and eighth dynasties brought with them the geometric stylo style of orna ornament as well as the button badges says tile the report in tho geometric style tho iho spirals became fret patterns as later in greece st john gospel in pot the figures of men and animals wore were treated in cubist fashion and ro buted to square angles and the fancy ran on labyrinths devices there are indications that the square patterns belong rather to tile the western tribes while the round buttons with animal figures come from the euphrates people of these regions poured into egypt and though much that found there tile they v kept up their original styles of ornament unaltered A surprising discovery came from a pot burled in the open ground it contained a bundle of rags in which was a papyrus papyrus hook book of tile the gospel of st john this aa I 1 a coptic of the enri earliest lest style being between that of the two foundations of biblical manuscripts the vatican und find Sin altic codices codle cs much of it Is in perfect condition and though it had been roughly doubled up but little Is lost this differs from the receipted coptic text and will be decisive 0 as to the nature of tuo the greek text first accepted in egypt another historical result all the work has been directed by mr brunton assisted by other students and it Is hoped at an early date to work at this and other sites with a large staff another historical result has come from the tomb with arable inscriptions that eliat I 1 found ifould in the previous sea son the inscriptions havo have been studied egypt M noel giron with photographs photograph taken by the department of antiques he has sent a report saying there aro are references to Phar pharaoh noli and to 1 I and necho his father it seems that a jewish or syrian family was living at over miles south of calro cairo as early as aa tho the reign of manasseh eighty years before the destruction bif h the temple they can hardly have been alone and probably many other such families were seated between there mere and the frontier all of these must timet have come through the greek camp of and this implies a familiarity camill ar y with wt greek words and things in tho the midst of the age of the prophets criticism will 11 have to take account of this in future |
