volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Coptic Antiquities. 369
disappointing, but I secured all the other statues, and
they are now in the British Museum. ^
In yet another way Maspero rendered me great
assistance. My publication of the complete text of
the Coptic version of the Psalter in the dialect of Upper
Egypt from a papyrus codex helped to increase the
demand for Coptic manuscripts and antiquities, and
the natives began to seek out and excavate the ruins
of Coptic monasteries and churches all over the country.
I had paid several visits to Edfu^ from Aswan in 1886,
1887 and 1888, and had seen several Coptic tombs cleared
out, and from what I saw there and from what I read
I became convinced that a very large Christian community
must have flourished there between the fourth
and the eleventh centuries. It was evident that this
community maintained churches and monasteries, ' and
that the priests and monks who lived at Edfu must
have possessed
Patristic texts.
manuscripts containing
Between 1887 and 1900
Biblical and
the " finds "
of Egyptian antiquities, both predynastic and dynastic,
were so numerous and important that I could not induce
the natives to turn their attention to Edfu until the
winter of 1902-3. Then we dug up several memorial
inscriptions and important architectural fragments, and
as Maspero made no claim to any of them I secured them
all. In 1907 the natives cleared out several ancient
Coptic sites on behalf of the Service of Antiquities, and
Maspero decided to form a collection of Coptic remains
in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The Coptic monuments
in the British Museum were at that time few
and comparatively unimportant, and I therefore arranged
with Maspero to purchase from the natives all the
funerary stelas and memorial tablets which he did not
require, and thus I acquired a good typical collection
of these classes of Coptic antiquities at very reasonable
prices. In 1907, 1911 and 1913 I obtained some interesting
specimens of wood work from one Coptic church,
^ Two are published in Hieroglyphic Texts, part v, pi. 32.
* The i.xftUJ of Coptic writers.
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