volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

The White Monastery. 333
demand of the archaeologist that caused these people
to ransack the Roman burials, I felt that remonstrance
on my part would be ludicrous.
On our way back to the river my friends took me to
see the ruins of a small building which lay close to the
Monastery of the famous monk Shenuti/ or the White
Monastery. Very little of its walls remained above
ground, but that little showed that its walls had been
very strongly built. "Where a clearance below the
level of the ground had been made I saw several tablets
affixed to the walls, and they had Coptic inscriptions on
them, which seemed to date from the eighth century
of our Era. For what purpose the building had been
used I could not make out, but the natives who took
me to the ruins told me that they had found there Coptic
crosses in iron, bronze and wood, and earthenware
lamps with figures of frogs upon them." They assured
me that there were many antikdt Nasrdni, or " Christian
antiquities," under the ruins, and asked me to join with
them in the expense of clearing the little building down
to its foundations. As I had been told categorically
that Coptic antiquities would not be claimed by the
Service of Antiquities, I agreed to the proposal of the
natives, and told them that I expected them to find
me something very good in return for the outlay.
From Suhag I rode to BalyanS., and on my way I
passed through several villages, where I saw many
earthenware vessels, jars, pots, saucers, bowls, etc.,
flat green stone figures of animals, unpierced beads,
etc. In material, shape and decoration many of these
vessels resembled the pots and bowls of a small series
of objects which the British Museum acquired in 1891.
No doubt as to their genuineness could be entertained
Bom A.D. 333, died at midday July 2nd, a.d. 451, aged 118
years
The frog was a symbol of re-birth or new birth, and the early
Christians associated it with their beUef in resurrection. As to the
little tree frogs which appear in the Sudan a day or two before the
rise of the Nile, see my Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, vol. i,
p. 281.