volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The Papyri from HermopoUs. 149
we bought. It was only natural for Coptic antiquities
to be found at Malawi, for the modern village is built
near the site of the famous old Coptic town of Manlau,
of the name of which Malawi is a corruption. In the
early centuries of the Christian era there were many
churches at Manlau, and the place was a thriving
business centre. In the course of our conversation a
native from the other side of the river reminded me
that the Greek magical papyri which I bought in 1887
had come from him, and I asked him where he obtained
them. He mentioned a place a few miles down the
river on the opposite bank, and pressed us to go and
visit it with him that day. We crossed the river and
then rode donkeys northwards to the site of the ancient
city of Khemenu {i.e., the centre of the cult of Thoth
and his Eight Gods). Keeping well away from the
ruins of the old city, which the Greeks called " Hermopolis,"
we bore to the east and came to a low, flat
spur of the hills close by, where there were the remains
of many fine ancient rock-hewn Egyptian tombs of
the twenty-sixth d5masty. In one side of the spur of the
hill two series of tombs had been hewn during the Roman
period, the upper series had been occupied by Greek
or Roman settlers or officials in Egjrpt, and several
mummies of the fourth or fifth century a.d. had been
taken out of them. The lower series had not been
excavated because of the immense heaps of stone and
sand that blocked up the approaches. There seemed no
doubt that the tombs of the lower series contained
important antiquities, and I suggested to the Copts
who had come with us from Malawi that they should
apply to the Service of Antiquities for permission to
excavate the site. They absolutely refused to do this,
saying they had no faith in that Department. Finally
I made an arrangement with them personally, and
undertook to purchase from them one-half of everything
they might find in the tombs ; and I agreed that
if they found nothing I would pay one-half of the
actual cost of clearing away the stones and sand which
blocked the entrances to the halls of the tombs. Close